TIME RUNNING OUT FOR TRAPPED BRITONS
Boris pressures U.S. to extend evacuation deadline as Kabul death toll hits 20
BRITAIN is pressing Joe Biden to extend next Tuesday’s Afghanistan withdrawal deadline as the Prime Minister prepares to lead world crisis talks.
The death toll in Kabul from the scramble to escape the Taliban reached 20 yesterday, and a senior diplomat said the effort to evacuate UK nationals was “gathering pace”. But
he warned: “There is still a huge amount of work to do.”
Last night the pressure appeared to be working when President Biden opened up the possibility of a deadline delay.
He said: “There are discussions going us among us and the military about extending – our hope is we will not have to extend.
“But there are going to be discussion I expect about how far along in the process we are.
“We are working closely with the G7. I am doing a conference with them on Tuesday.”
More than 5,000 UK nationals and Afghans have been evacuated but unofficial estimates suggest up to 2,000 are awaiting flights out.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson’s push to head a world response to the Taliban takeover continues when he chairs those “urgent” talks with G7 leaders tomorrow.
Aides say the online summit will focus on Afghanistan’s longterm future.
Mr Johnson said: “It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years.”
Armed Forces minister James Heappey earlier said the Government was making “representations” to the White House to allow the massive airlift to continue beyond Mr Biden’s August 31 deadline.
However, he warned even if successful they could not guarantee they “will be able to get everybody out”. He added: “The hard reality of complex, chaotic, dangerous situations like this is that simply may not be the case.”
President Biden, whose rapid troop withdrawal triggered worldwide condemnation, indicated on Friday he wanted the operation completed within 10 days.
Officials fear the timing of the final US troops pulling out from Kabul airport remains in doubt. A Downing Street source said: “There is no fixed end date.Things are in flux.”
UK ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Laurie Bristow, who is leading efforts at the airport to process passengers, said the evacuation was “gathering pace” as officials worked around the clock. He said yesterday: “It’s a huge effort. In the last 14 hours alone we’ve managed to get 1,000 people on their way. But there is still a huge amount of work to do.”
On the ground, Lt Col Justin Baker of 16 Air Assault Brigade said his troops were “facing challenges that nobody has experiences for”.
And Mr Heappey reported: “In the last 24-hour period 1,721 have been airlifted from Kabul by the Royal Air Force.
“The Taliban have pushed their outer cordon away from the Baron Hotel and they appear to now be marshalling people into separate queues for the US evacuation and the UK evacuation.
“That is making a big difference to the size of crowds outside the UK gate and allowing us to process people much more quickly.”
Asked about hopes the US will extend the final troop withdrawal deadline, Mr Heappey said: “We are assuming nothing.
“The Foreign Secretary has made representations to his opposite number and to the Secretary of Defence and likewise.
“If the programme is extended, then there is the opportunity to continue with flights. But the Taliban get a vote in that too. It’s not just a decision made in Washington. It’s important people shouldn’t despair that whenever the military airbridge ends, that is the end of their chances of leaving Afghanistan.” Operation Pitting, the military evacuation of British nationals and eligible Afghans, has so far flown 5,725 people out of Kabul, plus more than 3,100 Afghan individuals and families. Joint forces operations commander Brigadier Dan Blanchford said: “The horrific difficulties which families and individuals have in getting to the airport are clear and my men and
women have witnessed some harrowing scenes.
“We are redoubling our efforts to speed up the processes and support the most vulnerable. We have flown forward 30,000 litres of water a day, food for 5,000 people and have purchased and are distributing 2,700 nappies, 3,600 bottles of baby milk and 2,025 sanitary packs.”
The MoD said the evacuation process would run as long as the security situation allowed, in coordination with the US.
More aircraft, including some from the Royal Australian Air Force, have been flying people from Kabul to Dubai.
Former Labour PM Tony Blair, who sent UK troops to Afghanistan in 2001, claimed yesterday the Taliban takeover would allow al-Qaeda to return to the country. He said: “It’s not just about the Afghan people and our obligation to them. It’s about us and our security. Because you’ve now got this group back in charge of Afghanistan.
“They will give protection and succour to al-Qaeda, you’ve got ISIS already in the country trying to operate at the same time.
“You look round the world and the only people really cheering this decision are the people hostile toWestern interests.”
In an article on Saturday, Mr Blair described America’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan as “imbecilic”.
WESTERN intervention in Afghanistan was built on a lethal combination of liberal dogma, imperialist arrogance and wishful thinking. Infused by deluded vanity, our leaders proclaimed that in place of a failed theocratic state, they would build a modern, democratic nation. Instead, their expensive meddling only fed conflict, extremism and corruption. The Taliban takeover is a tragic monument to the wholesale failure of their policy.
Yet the interventionists have still learnt nothing from this folly. Yesterday Tony Blair issued a statement which showed neither contrition for the Afghan mess nor any recognition of reality. Having prattled about illusory “gains” from British involvement, he trumpeted the importance of “holding the new regime to account”.
Who does he think is going to do that job, when the humiliated West is struggling to get their own citizens out of Kabul?
THIS kind of grandiosity runs right through our political class. It was on full display last week in the Commons debate on Afghanistan, full of self-important MPs pontificating about Britain’s global role. Typical was the demand from Theresa May that in the absence of US forces, our Government should assemble an international coalition to maintain a military presence.
As one Whitehall insider commented, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace tried that but found few takers.An even more ridiculous example of such conceit can be found in the confected row over the conduct of Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was on holiday in Crete at the time of the Taliban advance into Kabul.
There are now calls, inevitably led by Labour, for him to resign for failing either to return swiftly from his break or to put in a telephone call to his Afghan counterpart. But this clamour for him to go is Westminster bubble hysteria at its worst. What was he meant to achieve when the Afghan government was falling apart? The idea that the British Foreign Secretary had the power to alter the course of events in Afghanistan reveals the same patronising colonialist mentality that dragged us into this misguided adventure 20 years ago.
Indeed, the sudden collapse of President Ashraf Ghani’s administration illustrates how the Western claims about the progress of nation-building were just fantasies. Our forces were largely viewed by the Afghans, not as the agents of freedom, but as foreign occupiers. That is why the experiment in social and political engineering was always doomed.
Much of the West’s vast largesse of more than £1.6trillion worsened poverty, disorder and tribalism, while waste and exploitation were endemic. This draining commitment could not have continued indefinitely.
Yes, the departure has been shambolic, but that is usual with the end of foreign rule. When Britain left India in 1947, between one and two million people died in the subsequent turmoil. Equally fallacious is the accusation that, through its Afghan withdrawal, the West is giving up the fight on terrorism.
SUCH an argument is hopelessly outdated, for sophisticated technologies like drones and satellite surveillance are much more effective counter-terrorism weapons than large occupying armies.
So attached to nation-building abroad, progressive warriors are less keen on the protection
of our own national fabric. Soft on crime, contemptuous of our heritage, they support open borders as an instrument to refashion the make-up of our society.
This reckless outlook helped to push the annual rate of immigration before Covid to over 700,000 arrivals-a-year and now inhibits robust action to deal with the anarchy in the Channel, where a record-breaking total of more than 800 migrants made the illegal crossing on Saturday.
The credibility of border controls, the fairness of the asylum process and even the rule of law is now breaking down in the face of this surge in people trafficking on our southern coast, with the influx dominated by young men who can afford to pay the gangsters.
Given the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, we urgently need a just, rigorous system that can impartially assess refugee cases, particularly those of interpreters to whom we have an obligation.
An Afghan immigration freefor-all of the sort enthusiastically advocated by the left, would hit the vulnerable and further undermine social cohesion. Enough chaos has already been inflicted by destructive ideology dressed up as compassion.
‘Expensive meddling has only fed conflict, extremism and corruption’