The chairman of the Defence Select Committee in the British House of Commons has hailed the accomplishments of the Islamist Taliban regime in restoring order to Afghanistan following the disastrous American withdrawal under President Joe Biden.
Following a recent diplomatic mission to Afghanistan, Tory MP Tobias Ellwood has claimed that under Taliban rule, the country is at its most peaceful state “since the 1970s”.
“The congested streets are bustling with life as everyone goes about their business – free from the infinite checkpoints and perpetual fear of violence. The Taliban authorities are no more visible than our own police are in London,” the Defence Select Committee chairman wrote in The Telegraph.
Ellwood reported a “transformative shift” in the country, praising the Taliban for installing solar panels and finally setting to use the British supplied electro turbine at the Kajaki Dam, which has been laying to waste for over a decade but now serves as a “lifeline for local economies, facilitating extraction, processing and export of minerals, such as marble, on a huge scale.”
“This, to put it mildly, was not what I was expecting,” the Tory MP wrote. “After a dozen visits to the country urging Nato and the UN to do exactly what the Taliban have now achieved, I had to grapple with the harsh reality of the West’s strategic missteps.”
“The insistence on implementing a top-down Western governance model, for instance, was unsuited to a deeply tribal nation unfamiliar with democratic norms. The lack of post-conflict economic vision, offering no hope for ordinary Afghans, compounded the failures.”
My report from Afghanistan:
Hold your breath – but this is a country transformed.
👉 security vastly improved
👉 corruption reduced
👉 opium trade endedShouting from afar will not improve women’s rights.
We need to re-engage.
We need to re-open the British Embassy. pic.twitter.com/q1VRIgbFtt
— Tobias Ellwood MP (@Tobias_Ellwood) July 17, 2023
The Bournemouth East MP argued, therefore, that the West should start to engage with the Taliban, reopen embassies, restart international aid programmes, and release the $9 billion Afghan assets that were frozen following the collapse of the once-American-backed government which fled the country shortly after the Biden administration hastily withdrew American forces in 2021.
The ban on international aid has come largely over bans on female education and participation in the workforce. Yet, the Conservative politician reported that women are actively engaged in the economy under the Sharia state, saying: “The Taliban is now issuing work permits across sectors, indicating that a complete ban on women’s employment is not viable.”
Ellwood warned that although the Taliban have restored order to the country, it still sits on a knife edge, susceptible to food shortages and economic instability that could trigger further waves of mass migration to Europe or indeed serve as an inspiration for terror attacks. The alternative, he said, would be to cede the country to the Communist Chinese, who are actively engaging with the Taliban with the hopes of being able to exploit Afghanistan’s rich rare earth mineral deposits.
“Afghanistan’s future could be war again or life as a Chinese vassal. The middle way I saw – however queasy we feel about it – needs us to rethink and re-engage,” he wrote.
The Tory MP — who is generally considered to be one of the more hawkish members of the British parliament, stressed that he is “no Taliban-appeaser,” noting that his own brother was killed by Islamist extremists in 2002.
“I recognise their policies will never align with our ideals. But I witnessed unreported compromises the war-exhausted nation is currently willing to accept,” Ellwood said.
International condemnation of Joe Biden's Afghanistan catastrophe has come swiftly. https://t.co/1VR3x8GQY7
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 16, 2021
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