The chairman of the U.K. parliament’s defense select committee has been accused of appeasement and of creating a Taliban propaganda video after calling for the West to re-engage with the authoritarian Islamist regime in Afghanistan and for Britain to reopen its embassy in Kabul.
Tobias Ellwood, a longstanding Conservative MP, reported his findings following a trip to the Afghan capital in an op-ed for The Telegraph newspaper in which he claimed the West should stop sulking, “get real,” and “re-engage with the victors” of the decades-long conflict in the troubled nation.
A former minister at the Ministry of Defence, Ellwood described a country “transformed” under the Taliban, claiming that security in the nation has “vastly improved,” there is less corruption, and the new extremist government had ended the opium trade.
He also spoke to Sky News about his visit and posted a video on social media, which critics described as “promotional” and “Taliban propaganda.”
Ellwood called for the West to implement “a more pragmatic strategy,” insisting that universal concerns over the suppression of women’s rights by the Taliban will not be allayed without engaging with the authoritarian regime.
“I am no Taliban-appeaser. Far from it. My brother was killed by Islamist extremists in 2002. I recognize their policies will never align with our ideals. But I witnessed unreported compromises the war-exhausted nation is currently willing to accept,” the Conservative lawmaker wrote.
In the social media video, Ellwood sought to show how the country was getting back on its feet after the Taliban insurgence in 2021 that toppled the government imposed on them and favored by NATO; this sparked an international crisis and resulted in Western troops hastily retreating from the nation.
He praised the building of infrastructure, including pylons distributing electricity; the installation of solar panels powering irrigation pumps to assist the agricultural sector; and the HALO Trust involved in mass de-mining operations across prospective farmland.
“Here in Kabul, the streets are relatively safe. The checkpoints have all gone. Businesses are reopening, and the economy is starting to function. There is a calm to the country that local elders say they’ve not experienced since the 1970s,” Ellwood said, warning that continuing to refuse to engage with the Taliban could further destabilize the country and lead to a rise in extremist activity and mass migration.
However, out of all the shots purporting to show a significant rebuild project across the country, the two-minute video showed just one woman purchasing groceries. Many campaigners remain extremely concerned over a significant backslide in women’s rights following the installation of the Taliban regime.
On Monday, a U.N. report stated that further increased restrictions on women and girls across Afghanistan have been imposed by Taliban authorities. These include a recent announcement from the Taliban’s Ministry of Public Health that banned females from undertaking exams in medical studies.
This follows previous bans on women attending university issued last December and several limitations imposed on women’s freedom of movement and employment.
“Girls in Afghanistan have been banned from secondary school and women from tertiary education. Women and girls have been banned from entering amusement parks, public baths, gyms and sports clubs for four months. Women have been banned from working in NGO offices. Women have been wholly excluded from public office and the judiciary,” stated U.N. experts in a joint report published in March this year.
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“All over the country, women report feeling invisible, isolated, suffocated, living in prison like conditions. Many are unable to have their basic needs met without access to employment or aid, including access to medical healthcare and psychological support in particular for victims of violence, including sexual violence,” they added.
Ellwood claimed in his Telegraph article that “the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s rights may well serve as a negotiation tool for shared understanding, but such a possibility will remain unknown until we wake up.” He believes the re-opening of the British embassy in Kabul would serve as a starting point for negotiations with the regime.
The social media video, which has comments disabled, sparked fury among many who believe negotiations with a regime insistent on repressing women’s rights, as well as persecuting ethnic minorities such as the Hazara, is equal to appeasement.
Dr. Homira May Rezai, a civil rights activist focusing on women’s issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tweeted: “While there is gender apartheid, Hazara Genocide & mass violations of human rights in Afghanistan, is Tobias Ellwood really asking us to do business with Taliban? There is nothing more frustrating than seeing politicians ignore the plight of innocent civilians like this.”
Mariam Solaimankhil, a former female Afghan MP, added: “If you advocate re-engagement, then live under their rule. Move your family to Afghanistan, experience the unfiltered Sharia law, not the sanitized version afforded by your passport and skin color. Your support for such an oppressive regime is reprehensible!”
“Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban’s brutal medieval misogynist dictatorship. Did he speak to any girls not allowed to go to school, young women forced to leave university or women no longer allowed to work? Did he speak to the families of people killed for working with NATO?” asked Ian Austin, an independent peer in the U.K. House of Lords.
Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), accused Ellwood of “whitewashing terrorists who are terrorizing a whole population of a country.”
Ellwood was fiercely critical of the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan back in 2021, telling fellow lawmakers in the House Of Commons that Britain and its allies were not only “gifting this country to the very adversary (there) when we entered Afghanistan to defeat in the first place, but we’re actually seeing terrorist organisations now regroup and return back to their havens.”
“Really sadly, I predict another major hit on the West, the likes of 9/11. Because the terrorist groups will want to bookend our time in Afghanistan to show how futile the last two decades have been,” he added at the time.
