Fall of Kabul Raab: Our intelligence was wrong
THE UK Government did not expect the Taliban to take the Afghan capital before the end of the year, MPS have heard.
Dominic Raab was being scrutinised by the Foreign Affairs Committee at Westminster yesterday when he said the intelligence assessments suggested Kabul was “unlikely” to fall to the militants in 2021.
The Foreign Secretary said the assessment was “backed up by the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) and the military”, despite it turning out to be false.
THE UK Government did not expect the Taliban to take the Afghan capital before the end of the year, MPS have heard.
Dominic Raab was being scrutinised by the Foreign Affairs Committee at Westminster yesterday when he said the intelligence assessments suggested Kabul was “unlikely” to fall to the militants in 2021.
The Foreign Secretary said the assessment was “backed up by the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) and the military”, despite it turning out to be false.
The Taliban took over the city on August 15, while Mr Raab was still on holiday in Crete.
He told MPS: “The central assessment that we were operating to, and it was certainly backed up by the JIC and the military, is that the most likely, the central proposition, was that given the troop withdrawal by the end of August, you’d see a steady deterioration from that point and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year.”
Mr Raab told MPS he would be travelling to the region around Afghanistan last night, directly after the committee session, for talks on the rescue effort for those left in Kabul.
He was unable to say how many UK nationals were still in the country, but added: “We’re always very careful about signalling travel movements because of the security implications.
“But I can tell you I’m leaving after this committee to go to the region.”
The Cabinet minister was asked about his holiday plans during the Taliban takeover of Kabul, but refused to provide more details, dismissing MPS’ questions as “politically partisan” and a “fishing exercise”.
Stewart Mcdonald, SNP MP and the party’s defence spokesman, asked Mr Raab if his department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), had a policy of not allowing annual leave similar to the military’s, which cancelled all planned leave from July 23 due to the ongoing situation.
Mr Raab replied that there had been no such policy, but said that his department had devised a “rota system” as they did not know how long the situation would continue.
Mr Mcdonald responded: “I think maybe you would think that if all military leave was cancelled on July 23 it was a bad idea for yourself, the Prime Minister, and several other officials in the FCDO, the Home Office and the MOD to take breaks at that time, but I’ll leave it at that.”
The SNP MP also questioned Mr Raab on when he spoke to various UK ambassadors in countries neighbouring Afghanistan, but Mr Raab did not provide details.
He said he had a “whole call sheet” with him, but added: “As I said before, the advice from the ambassadors, and they will often attend the meeting that we have internally within the Foreign Office crisis centre, is distilled down so we have a single complete holistic view.”
Mr Mcdonald said it was important for the public and MPS to know where Mr Raab had been and who he had been in touch with “as the situation got worse and worse”, and his failure to answer was “absurd”.
Asked by Independent MP Claudia Webbe if he would consider resigning, Mr Raab said he understood people wanted to “use this committee to engage in the politics of this” before moving on to answer other matters.
Mr Raab was asked about the destruction of items at the British embassy in Kabul after photographs emerged of the
Taliban posing with a portrait of the Queen.
He told MPS that items, including the portrait, should have been “destroyed”, and appeared unaware of the images mentioned by MPS.
Mr Raab said: “Clearly we were conscious of the attempted propaganda coup around the Taliban taking over embassies.”
Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP and chairman of the committee, has previously been critical of the Government’s handling of the situation in Afghanistan.
The veteran described the withdrawal as the “single biggest foreign policy disaster” since the Suez crisis, and invited the minister to come back to the committee once he had time to “process” what had happened.