Tobias Ellwood condemned by Tories for promoting improved relationship with Taliban
Senior Tory MPs have condemned their colleague Tobias Ellwood for his "utterly bizarre" visit to Afghanistan.
Defence Select Committee chairman Mr Ellwood shared a video on Twitter on Monday night in which he called for the UK to re-open its embassy in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, following a visit to the country.
Conservative former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith claimed the video was "not a very welcome statement", while Conservative defence committee member Mark Francois said Mr Ellwood should be "very careful" in expressing his views if he wanted to remain as chair of the committee.
As the Commons heard an update on the accommodation of Afghan refugees in the UK, Sir Iain said: "I do want to ask him also peculiarly, has he seen the remarks of the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) in Afghanistan in which he has referred to Afghanistan as peaceful and stable and that we should welcome all of this?
"I saw that an Afghan woman who remained nameless promptly wrote on his Twitter 'shocked'. She said, 'Afghan women have been thrown to the wolves and that is referred to as peace'.
"Does he agree with me, it is not a very welcome statement to have made given the terrible time that those women have had and the persecutions that have taken place in Afghanistan?"
Mr Ellwood, on Monday, writing in the Telegraph, said Britain should reopen its embassy in Kabul and negotiate with the Taliban.
He said he is "far from" being a "Taliban appeaser" and said 20 years ago his brother was killed by Islamic extremists.
But Mr Ellwood, who is also a 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".
Mr Francois, a former defence minister, later said: "I hardly need remind the minister, as he fought in Afghanistan, but I will take the liberty of reminding the House, we lost over 450 personnel killed in that theatre, and thousands more sustained unfortunately life-changing injuries."
He added: "Last night, following a visit to Afghanistan, he (Mr 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', in which he made no mention of the fact that the Taliban are 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, he was speaking for himself, even though he used the title of chairman of our committee in a number of associated articles. Not in our name."
Mr Francois went on: "He is entitled to have whatever bizarre opinions he wants, but does the minister agree with me that any select committee chairman who wants to remain a select committee chairman should be very careful to say when he is speaking for himself, not even implying that he is speaking for a group of other people who barely agreed with a word he said?"
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer responded: "I think members do have to be extremely careful around identifying when they are speaking for themselves or when they are representing a group of individuals and elected members of this House.
"As I said previously, the Government's position remains unchanged. The fall of Afghanistan was a tragedy, the Taliban, we fought them for many years, 457 British service personnel lost their lives in Afghanistan in pursuit of freedom and peace, and women's rights that are all not in Afghanistan today."
In his video, Mr Ellwood claimed that security in Afghanistan had "vastly improved" since the Taliban had returned to power, and suggested Western countries should "incrementally" encourage the uptake of women's rights by engaging with the new regime.
"After Nato's dramatic departure, should the West now engage with the Taliban?" he asked. "You quickly appreciate this war-weary nation is, for the moment, accepting a more authoritarian leadership in exchange for stability."
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