LONDON — It is not only American officials who face tough questions over the shambles in Kabul. Britain's top diplomat defended himself in Parliament on Wednesday from withering criticism over the chaotic evacuation, maintaining that British intelligence had assumed the Afghan military and government could hold out for much longer.
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Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that “with the benefit of hindsight,” he would not have been on vacation on the Greek island of Crete while Kabul was falling to the Taliban.
Raab said the “central assessment” of British intelligence had been that after the departure of American troops at the end of August, “you’d see a steady deterioration from that point, and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year.”
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The rapid advance by the Taliban “clearly caught us unawares,” he said, noting that Britain was not the only country to be so surprised.
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But the chair of the committee, Tom Tugendhat, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, expressed skepticism, reading aloud from a July 22 report produced by Raab’s own ministry that warned of a “very real danger of cities collapsing” after the U.S. withdrawal.
Most of the Afghan military units melted away, in both the regional capitals and Kabul, in the face of the advancing Taliban forces.
Leaders from the opposition parties said Raab’s distracted handling of the affair required his resignation.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was also on holiday as the Taliban seized control, has faced repeated calls to sack Raab.
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The foreign secretary told lawmakers Wednesday that British intelligence on the capability of the Afghan military to slow or stop the Taliban advance initially suffered from “optimism bias,” meaning analysts assumed President Biden might relent and extend the U.S. troop presence to bolster the Afghan military beyond the Aug. 31 deadline.
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Britain was one of the leading voices pressing the Biden administration to extend operations. The entreaties were rebuffed.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, in which 67 British nationals were killed, the U.K. sent the second-largest contingent of forces to Afghanistan, deploying 150,000 military personnel over the years. In all, 457 British soldiers died. The U.K. ended its combat operations there in 2014. But some troops stayed on, along with British diplomats and contractors.
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Raab hailed Britain’s evacuation of some 15,000 people from Kabul in the past two weeks, the largest such military-led operation since World War II.
British Ambassador Laurie Bristow and the last British troops assisting the rushed departure left Kabul late Saturday.
When pressed by lawmakers about how many British nationals were left behind, Raab was “reticent about giving a firm figure,” only estimating that “low hundreds” were still awaiting rescue.
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He was equally unrevealing about the numbers of Afghan employees — including embassy guards — who needed to be evacuated. Committee members suggested it could be as many as 9,000 Afghans.
Raab confirmed that Afghans who guarded the British Embassy compound, even after the Taliban took Kabul, were left behind because the buses transporting them “were not given permission to enter the airport.”
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The guards, who worked for the British security firm G4S, told British reporters they were spending their days hiding out in homes and venturing out only at night.
Lawmakers also pressed Raab to explain how the fleeing staff of the British Embassy could have left documents behind with names of Afghan staffers, in addition to the job applications submitted by others.
Raab said the closing of the embassy was accelerated at the last moment — and that all those named in the documents have been transported to Britain.
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The committee members complained that the British government had set up multiple and competing “hotlines” and services designed to assist those wanting to flee. The Observer newspaper reported that “thousands of emails” to the Foreign Office from members of Parliament and others about urgent cases had not even been read.
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Lawmakers on the committee, including those from Raab’s Conservative Party, criticized the foreign secretary for not coordinating the evacuation with his counterparts in countries bordering Afghanistan.
Raab essentially conceded he had not spoken with the foreign ministers of Pakistan or Afghanistan in the months leading up to the Taliban victory.
He said he was headed to the region immediately to press neighboring countries to help Britain get its citizens home and bring out those who worked for the British government and military.