Tobias Ellwood Warned by MPs After ‘Utterly Bizarre’ Video Praising Taliban Rule

Tobias Ellwood MP speaking during the Veterans' Mental Health Conference at King's College London on Mar. 14, 2019. (Gareth Fuller/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The chairman of the House of Commons defence select committee has been heavily criticised by fellow Conservative MPs after he posted a video of himself in Afghanistan in which he praised the Taliban.

The video was described as “utterly bizarre” by Mark Francois, Tory MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, who also sits on the defence select committee.

On Monday night Mr. Ellwood posted the video on Twitter and wrote: “Hold your breath—but this is a country transformed. Security vastly improved. Corruption reduced. Opium trade ended.”

He added: “Shouting from afar will not improve women’s rights. We need to re-engage. We need to re-open the British embassy.”

The British embassy in Kabul closed in August 2021 after the Taliban retook the Afghan capital following several days of chaos.

The then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was later criticised for staying on holiday on the Greek island of Crete during the fall of Kabul as embassy staff tried to help evacuate hundreds of British nationals and residents who were stranded in the country following the sudden collapse of the Afghan National Army.

Mr. Ellwood visited Afghanistan as a guest of the Halo Trust—set up in 1988, and supported by the late Princess Diana—which is removing thousands of landmines left behind by decades of civil war in the country.

Ellwood Praises ‘Peace’ and ‘Stability’ Under Taliban

But his promotional video, which praised the “peace” and “stability” which he said the Taliban had restored to Afghanistan, has drawn criticism from critics of the extreme Islamist group, who support Sharia law and give only minimal rights to women and girls.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, said the video was “not a very welcome statement.”

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, during a debate on the accommodation of Afghan asylum seekers, Mr. Duncan Smith asked junior defence minister Johnny Mercer: “I do want to ask him also peculiarly, has he seen the remarks of the Member for Bournemouth East in Afghanistan in which he has referred to Afghanistan as peaceful and stable and that we should welcome all of this?”

Students attend a class bifurcated by a curtain separating males and females at a private university to follow the Taliban's ruling, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 7, 2021. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images)

Mr. Duncan Smith added: “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.'”

He asked Mr. Mercer: “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?”

The deputy speaker, Rosie Winterton, interrupted on a point of parliamentary protocol and prevented Mr. Mercer from answering the question because Mr. Ellwood had not been informed in advance of Mr. Duncan Smith raising the matter.

Mr. Francois reminded MPs that more than 450 British service personnel had been killed in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and many more had suffered life-changing injuries.

He said of Mr. Ellwood: “He 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.'”

Mr. Francois claimed the Taliban were, “still attempting to identify and kill Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces” and he said Mr. Ellwood had made, “no specific mention of the fact that young girls in Afghanistan don’t even have the right to go to school under that government.”

He said he wanted to point out Mr. Ellwood was not speaking on behalf of the defence select committee and he added: “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?”

Minister Warns Ellwood to be ‘Extremely Careful’

Mr. Mercer replied: “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.”

Mr. Mercer added: “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 an opinion piece in The Telegraph on Monday, Mr. Ellwood called for a more “pragmatic strategy” on Afghanistan.

He wrote: “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 re-think and re-engage.”

Mr. Ellwood, a former soldier, was elected as chairman of the defence select committee in January 2020 and will remain in the position until after the next general election, unless he chooses to resign.

PA Media contributed to this report.