Tobias Ellwood’s call to reopen talks with Taliban sparks backlash: ‘Were Afghan women spoken to?’

Senior Tories have criticised the chair of the defence select committee for posting “an utterly bizarre video” in which he seemed to praise the Taliban for “vastly improving” Afghanistan since their takeover.

Tobias Ellwood MP released the two-minute video on Monday calling on the UK government to resume talks with the Taliban and claimed that the oppressive regime had achieved peace not seen since the 1970s.

The video, with more than two million views on Twitter, drew flak for Mr Ellwood’s take on Afghanistan - which ignored the situation of women, journalists, and activists who have been imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban.

“It feels different now that the Taliban have returned to power. Well it may be hard to believe but security has vastly improved, corruption is down and the opium trade has all but disappeared. Solar panels are now everywhere, powering irrigation pumps, allowing more crops to grow,” he said in the video filmed in Afghanistan.

The post was criticised by member of the defence select committee and fellow Tory MP Mark Francois on Tuesday. Mr Francois told the House of Commons: “Last night, following a visit to Afghanistan, he [Ellwood] posted an utterly bizarre video lauding the Taliban’s management of the country - something which was described by a fellow member of the defence committee to me barely an hour ago as a ‘wish you were here’ video.”

He continued: “He made no mention of the fact that the Taliban was still attempting to identify and kill Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces, and also makes no specific mention of the fact that young girls in Afghanistan don’t even have the right to go to school under that government .

“I wish to make plain on behalf of the committee that he was speaking for himself even though he used the title as chairman of the committee in a number of associated articles. Not in our name.”

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the video was “not a very welcome statement” in light of the ongoing persecution in Afghanistan.

Veterans minister Johnny Mercer addressed Sir Iain’s concerns about the video, saying: “It is clear that as the Taliban currently stands it represents a serious threat to human rights, and to the treatment of women, and all those things we fought for.”

In his video to camera, Mr Ellwood also slammed the previous Nato-led administration for not introducing “game changing programmes” now being seen in the Taliban’s rule.

“I guess critical thinking skills is not a requirement for MPs. It is past TIME for the visiting officials to talk to women, to detained and tortured journalists and activists, to members of marginalised groups when they visit Afghanistan and to not deny the ongoing Gender Apartheid (sic),” said Shaharzad Akbar, Afghan human rights activist and chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

“Were Afghan women spoken to before the trip to Afghanistan and did they engage with women whilst there? This video comes across as promotional material for the de facto authority. Women are erased from public life. Safety where the terrorists are now in charge,” said Zehra Zaidi, Afghan activist and lawyer.

The fall of Kabul in August 2021 left millions of people internally displaced and the crisis has thickened with worsening living conditions. The economic collapse has driven large swaths of the population into poverty as the flow of foreign aid has slowed down, forcing people to seek work, shelter, and aid elsewhere.

Through their chain of diktats, the Taliban stripped girls over sixth grade of their right to education, banning them from schools. Women are not allowed to attend colleges and universities since December last year, and are barred from paid work by the Taliban.

Last month, the Taliban banned beauty parlours and salons for women. Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to be in public parks, gymnasiums and markets, and are to be escorted by a male guardian, in a stark repeat of the Taliban’s 1990s rule.

Mr Ellwood said he is “far from” being a “Taliban appeaser”. He said 20 years ago his brother was killed by Islamic extremists but in the video, he has asked if the West should now engage with the Taliban after Nato’s “dramatic departure”.

In a separate write-up, the lieutenant colonel in the army reserve said that during a recent trip to Afghanistan, he “witnessed unreported compromises the war-exhausted nation is currently willing to accept”.

“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 MP for Bournemouth East said it is time for Britain to “rethink and re-engage” with Afghanistan and the Taliban.

He said: “The first step is reopening our embassy.

“The second is to get real. Afghanistan’s future could be war again or life as a Chinese vassal.”

Nato left Afghanistan nearly two years ago, which saw the Taliban take back power.

International human rights groups have accused the Taliban of “organised, widespread, and systematic” international crimes.

The Taliban is waging a “war on women” and its actions in Afghanistan should be investigated as possible crimes against humanity of gender persecution, according to a new legal assessment by Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).