Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 14
First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan
Published 24 May 2022
Paragraph 48
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Government policy on Afghanistan All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Taliban takeover is a tragedy for Afghanistan, marking the single biggest reversal in the rights of women and girls in a generation. We welcome the Government’s pragmatic engagement with the Taliban at official level: it is valid to withhold recognition, but attempts to isolate the new regime entirely may only worsen the situation for the Afghan people, reduce the UK’s influence, and leave a vacuum to be filled by powers such as China. The Government should re-establish a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan as soon as it is safe to do so. It should coordinate its engagement with its partners to ensure that the international community delivers clear, consistent messages to the Taliban as far as possible, and should support international efforts to track and monitor commitments made by the Taliban, and hold the regime accountable for its actions. It should commit, and press other countries to commit, not to send male-only delegations to meet with the regime.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan (HC 169), paragraph 48, 24 May 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 29 July 2022 (deadline 24 July 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government accepts that parts of its crisis response need improvement and agrees on future engagement with Afghanistan, but does not agree that it failed to plan for an evacuation or for closing the Kabul Embassy.
- It states that it "does not agree that it failed to plan for a possible evacuation", or that the FCDO failed to plan for the possible closure of the British Embassy in Kabul.
- On people not directly employed by the UK, it "will consider these arguments carefully" in planning years 2 and 3 of Pathway 3 of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, but warns that very broad commitments would, "unless significantly qualified", go beyond the UK's practical ability to resettle people.
- The FCDO says it is "committed to seeing through the full implementation" of its Lessons Learned recommendations, with progress reviewed in November 2022 and an update to the Committee "early next year".
- On future engagement, it agrees that the UK should re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul "as soon as security and political conditions permit", and that aid should be sustained, committing the same amount again this financial year.