Afghanistan

Thursday

Robert Clark

Afghanistan will once again become a breeding ground for terror

‘Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war’. So said Joe Biden earlier this year when he announced his decision to pull US troops out of the country. The scenes of chaos that have followed that departure makes it vital that this myth – that western troops had already outstayed their welcome in Afghanistan – is not allowed to go unchallenged. The reality is rather different: Biden’s decision to ‘end’ the war (or at least America’s involvement in it) was a politically motivated one, which suited the president. As the Taliban stormed into Kabul, Biden told the American public that:

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Did parliament’s Afghanistan debate matter?

Today’s Commons debate on Afghanistan was unusually and surprisingly good. It had the benefit of speeches from many MPs who had themselves served tours of duty in the country, or were veterans of military action elsewhere. It had the advantage of a former Prime Minister speaking with all the authority of someone who knows just how difficult these matters are, rather than the criticisms of backbenchers who had only run their own constituency office. It was a full day’s session operating under usual rules, rather than the hybrid parliament of the past year and a half. This meant that MPs could intervene on speeches, amid the normal hubbub of the Chamber. So

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The German Greens can’t make up their mind on Afghanistan

The situation in Afghanistan has suddenly dominated the debate in the middle of a sluggish German election campaign. Candidates to succeed Angela Merkel are having to declare their positions. Military intervention is out of the question without US backing. The question then becomes a repeat of the Syrian crisis: will Germany once again open its doors to potentially hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants? It’s an unequivocal ‘nein’ from the government. ‘There will not be another 2015’ came the strong response from the ruling coalition of Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU and the SPD. The Green party, currently in opposition but the second strongest party in most polls, are fudging the

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Joe Biden’s shabby treatment of the Afghan army

Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?The President: No, it is not. Q. Why? The President: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable… Q. Do you trust handing over the country to the Taliban? The President: No, I do not trust the Taliban. Q. So why are you handing the country over…? The President: It’s a — it’s a silly question. Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Tom Tugendhat’s speech was a masterclass in oratory

An ounce of emotion, it has been said, is worth a ton of fact. Tom Tugendhat’s remarkable speech to the Commons today was delivered with a current of emotion – pathos, as scholars of oratory call it – that was all the more electric for its restraint. His jaw clenched and trembled; his voice, now and again, seemed on the verge of faltering. As he said in his opening words: ‘Like many veterans, this last week has been one that has seen me struggle through anger, and grief, and rage. The feeling of abandonment of not just a country but the sacrifice that my friends made. I’ve been to funerals

Tom Tugendhat

Afghanistan: The error of withdrawal

Like many veterans, this last week has been one that has seen me struggle through anger, grief and rage. The feeling of abandonment, not just of a country but of the sacrifice that my friends made. I’ve been to funerals from Poole to Dunblane; I’ve watched good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of us all. And this week has torn open those wounds, left them raw, left us all hurting. I know it’s not just soldiers. I know aid workers and diplomats who feel the same way. I know journalists who’ve been the witnesses to our country in its heroic

Joanna Williams

Harry and Meghan’s glib Afghan statement

Finally, some news to cheer us all up on this grim, relentless August. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been rendered ‘speechless’ by the news from Afghanistan and Haiti. No doubt, there’ll be no more Oprah interviews or birthday messages. And there’ll be no more lectures from Harry on the importance of imagining how it feels to be a raindrop or from Meghan on the importance of people asking her if she is okay. At least, that’s what we should assume, right? Surely being left ‘speechless’ is a sign that you are about to shut up? Unless, of course, you are Harry and Meghan. In their world, being ‘speechless’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

May and Starmer hold Boris’s feet to the fire over Afghanistan

Boris Johnson has had a very uncomfortable start to today’s Commons debate on Afghanistan. Not only did he have a series of critical interventions from his own backbenchers when he was speaking, he then had to sit through an unusually powerful speech from Sir Keir Starmer. The Leader of the Opposition criticised the PM’s ‘careless leadership’, slammed the Foreign Secretary’s ‘dereliction of duty’ in remaining on holiday as the situation worsened, and pointed to an ‘unforgivable’ lack of planning over the 18 months following Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban.  This was swiftly followed by an equally furious Theresa May. She reminded her successor that he and Joe Biden had indicated

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson opens Afghanistan debate to frosty reception

Boris Johnson opened the debate on the situation in Afghanistan to a packed house. With virtual parliament rules now gone, MPs on both sides crammed into the Commons Chamber to take part in the debate. But the large audience didn’t actually help the Prime Minister. In fact, it served to highlight the criticism the government is facing both from opposition politicians and its own MPs. Within minutes there had been critical interventions from Labour and Tory members.  Johnson began his statement by looking back on the 9/11 terror attacks, which saw the UK – along with other allies – join forces with the United States to enter Afghanistan. The Prime

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why is Britain refusing to save Afghans who helped us?

Screams for help are coming from Afghanistan, and echoing around the world. Mine comes from British consultancies and charities the UK government funded to run state-building projects in Afghanistan. As a fair number of Conservative politicians and activists read The Spectator, I am publishing them here in the hope that you will alert your leaders to the desperate need for sanctuary for people who have every right to expect help, but are being abandoned. I am not writing it in the polemical ‘this is the worst government in modern British history’ spirit. (There will be more than enough time for that.) Nor is it the moment to say that the

Simon Diggins

Why didn’t the UK rescue Afghan interpreters sooner?

We lost. Whatever hope we had that we could help Afghanistan crawl out of its misery has been shattered. The dreams of the 14 million women in Afghanistan or the tens of thousands of Kabul university graduates, who had grown-up after the expulsion of the Taliban, are now in ruins. Afghanistan has been broken again, by the Afghans’ inability to bury their personal or ethnic differences; by the perfidy of the Pakistanis, who have harboured and nurtured the Taliban; and by the actions of a foolish old man who happens to be US President. Caught in this web of misery are those who supported the Allied forces and those who

Fionn Shiner

For Afghan Christians, the Taliban takeover is a nightmare

Christians in Afghanistan have been paralyzed with fear at the news that the Taliban has taken control of the country. Nadine Maenza, chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said the Taliban takeover ‘is the worst possible development for religious minorities. While most from these communities left Afghanistan in recent years, those that remain, and women in particular, are now in imminent danger.’ News received by Aid to the Church in Need echoed reports that leaders of underground house churches in Afghanistan had received letters from the Taliban warning them that they ‘know where they are and what they are doing’. According to Pew, around 90 per cent of

Mary Dejevsky

How did US intelligence get Afghanistan so wrong?

It may well go down as the understatement of the year. In a quite extraordinary address to the nation after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the US President made this admission: ‘The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened? Afghanistan’s political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.’ If this were the only intelligence failing of recent years, then maybe a little indulgence could be shown More quickly? Than we had anticipated? As recently as 10 August, US intelligence said that it would take the Taliban up to 90 days to take

Tuesday

Angus Colwell

The hitch with Hitchens

It hasn’t taken 20 years to work out that Christopher Hitchens was a dud, but this week’s collapse of Kabul obliges us to reexamine the Hitchens back catalog — because Hitchens had an outsized influence on debates about the supersised errors of post-9/11 foreign policy. The briefest of looks exposes the deficits of the neoconservative mind. An even clearer picture emerges of the hubris that led American policymakers, and the West in general, to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the spread of liberal enlightenment, rather than subjecting them to the tests of Realpolitik. Never trust a man whose favorite sport is politics. For Hitchens and the neocons who adopted

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The Taliban’s win will unleash the next wave of global jihad

The Taliban retaking Kabul has been inevitable for almost the entirety of the 20 year war, and certainly since Barack Obama announced the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. And yet the manner in which Kabul has fallen, with images of despair and the Taliban’s unopposed march to the presidential palace, heralds a global tectonic shift. For Islamist militia, regardless of their orientation, it signifies jihad’s biggest win of the decade. Jihadist outfits from Africa to the Middle East and South Asia, including groups that have been facing off against the Taliban in Afghanistan, will bask in the ‘triumph of Islam’. The Taliban’s win will also be widely interpreted as

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

Pakistan is the true winner from the Afghan debacle

‘Everyone is getting out – and fast’, the man tells me over a crackling line. He is tired, clearly subdued. A UN staff member, he was in Afghanistan until very recently and is still trying to process what happened. ‘We knew this was going to happen,’ he continues, ‘but everyone was caught by surprise at the speed of the Taliban advance.’ UN staff are now being evacuated to Almaty in Kazakhstan, from where they will make their way to their respective countries. But what about the local Afghans that worked with them? ‘Our Afghan colleagues were given letters of support for country visas in the region: Iran, Pakistan, and India. Some

Limor Simhony Philpott

Western deterrence now looks hollow

The efforts of a 20 year war took only a few weeks to overturn: the Taliban has completed its takeover of Afghanistan. As parliamentarians return to Westminster on Wednesday to discuss the situation, the focal point of the debate should be damage control. One of the major challenges will be restoring deterrence. The withdrawal of troops, which was done hastily and without an organised exit strategy, gave the Taliban the opportunity to make quick advances, often even without the need to use violence. The last few days also saw images of western nations rushing to evacuate remaining personnel. The way these events have unfolded depicts the US and its European

Dalibor Rohac

The EU shares in Biden’s shame over Afghanistan

Among America’s self-described foreign policy ‘realists,’ there is a common trope according to which the best way for the United States to get its allies to do more is to show them some tough love – particularly by doing less. That theory has just been put to a test in Afghanistan. It has failed spectacularly. Contrary to the caricature of the protracted conflict in Afghanistan as a distinctly American endeavour, both the combat operations and the efforts at reconstruction were supported by an extraordinarily diverse coalition of countries, from New Zealand, through much of Europe, to Turkey. Of some 150,000 British troops who served in Afghanistan during the past two

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

A new world order will emerge from America’s humiliation

When America decided to save Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Taliban, it acted on two major beliefs. The first was that the US had the might, the tech and the ability to reshape Afghanistan — what could a superpower have to fear from a ragtag bunch of insurgents? — the second was a belief that this Kabul project was not about colonialism. History was moving America’s way and all it needed was a nudge. Both theories have now been tested to destruction. The humiliation that America has just inflicted upon herself (and her western allies) will reverberate globally and in a way that emboldens all the wrong people. To

Monday

Kate Andrews

Biden risks undermining America’s moral authority

Joe Biden is facing what will likely be the defining event of his presidency. The gains made in Afghanistan are evaporating in record time under his watch. But Biden doesn’t want to be a foreign policy president. He wants to be the man who ended wars, taking credit for America’s Covid recovery, funnelling trillions of dollars into infrastructure and education while the Federal Reserve’s printing presses are warmed up and there’s still appetite to spend. But like his Democrat predecessor — and the man whom he served as vice president — he has been dealt a different hand. President Obama was loath to see the atrocities taking place in Syria