Escape from Kabul: Diplomats flee US Embassy in Chinook helicopters as Taliban fighters close in

ByGlen Owenand Mark Hookhamand Abul Taher for The Mail on Sunday

Dominic Raab last night ordered the dramatic rescue of the British ambassador in Kabul as Taliban forces closed in on the Afghan capital.

The Foreign Secretary sanctioned the SAS-led operation to airlift ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow and his embassy staff out by tomorrow night after he was warned that Kabul airport could be seized by the militants within days.

Sir Laurie took up his posting in June, and since the start of the Taliban offensive last month, he and most of his staff have been operating from the fortress-like Hamid Karzai international airport – three miles from the centre of the capital.

The Foreign Office has been surprised by the speed of the Taliban advance; until this weekend, diplomats were predicting the fighters would take two weeks to reach Kabul.

But by early yesterday, after a lightning offensive, the Taliban captured the city of Pul-e-Alam, capital of Logar province and just 43 miles from Kabul. The insurgents then continued their relentless advance, reaching the Char Asyab district just seven miles from the capital.

It means Kabul is well within range of the artillery guns seized by Taliban units after they were abandoned by the routed Afghan forces.

In a complex undertaking being directed from Britain’s Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, Special Forces units are joining 600 British troops from the 16 Air Assault Brigade, including 150 Paratroopers, to begin airlifting more than 500 British Government employees out of Kabul.

A further 7,000 interpreters, security staff, aid workers, intelligence agents and other personnel with links to Britain could also apply for safe passage out of the increasingly unstable country in an echo of the humiliating US exit from Saigon in Vietnam in 1975.

A total collapse of the Afghan government could lead to hundreds of thousands of refugees leaving the country and seeking asylum in nations including Britain.

A ‘ring of steel’ of fortified checkpoints surround the airport in a bid to prevent car bombs, while The Mail on Sunday also understands that an air defence system called C-RAM (counter rocket, artillery and mortar) has been deployed to protect the runway from being shelled. The airport’s huge perimeter is defended by a force of about 500 Turkish troops. They are being reinforced by 3,000 American soldiers, including 500 Marines, who began arriving yesterday.

Meanwhile, US Reaper drones and heavily armed AC-130 Spectre gunships – a fearsome ground attack version of a transport aircraft – will carry out air strikes on any Taliban units approaching the airport, senior military sources say. The air cover will be co-ordinated from the Combined Air Operations Centre at Al Udeid air base in Qatar.

As panic gripped Kabul, foreign embassies began burning sensitive documents. The US embassy informed staff that ‘burn bins’ and an incinerator were available to destroy material including papers and electronic devices to ‘reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property’, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The speed of the Taliban advance has stunned the MoD. Only eight days ago, General Sir Nick Carter, head of the UK’s Armed Forces, wrote that there were ‘increasing indications that moderate Afghans are determined to fight and their armed forces are holding their own’.

The Taliban yesterday launched a multi-pronged assault on Mazar-i-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan defended by powerful former warlords. The insurgents also captured Sharana, the capital of Paktika province, which borders Pakistan. Pictures emerged online of the Taliban tarring men accused of theft and parading them around the streets of the newly captured city Herat, in western Afghanistan.

The images raised fears of a repetition of the human rights abuses committed by the fanatics in the 1990s. They included the beating of women for walking on the street without a male chaperone.

It remains unclear how many Afghan interpreters and others who helped the British will be rescued from the country. Canada has said it will take in up to 20,000 Afghan refugees, including prominent women and government workers facing threats from the Taliban.

Johnny Mercer, a former Defence Minister who served three tours in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, said he was talking to former interpreters who were ‘petrified’ of Taliban reprisals.

‘Obviously the Taliban haven’t taken Kabul but their people are everywhere. They are starting to go door to door in Kabul. I dread to think what has happened to the ones in Lashkar Gah and Nad-e-Ali [areas of Helmand province that have already fallen to the Taliban]. We need to get a move on.’

Meanwhile, Lord Dannatt, a former head of the British Army, yesterday warned of a ‘tragedy in the making’ and urged the Government to consider launching a humanitarian aid operation to alleviate the refugee crisis in Kabul.

He said: ‘Let’s show the Afghan government we are not completely abandoning them and that we still stand side by side with them. It is quite possible to do that.’

Labour leader Keir Starmer also heaped pressure on Boris Johnson, declaring ‘we cannot just walk away’ from the war-torn country.

‘We have obligations to Afghanistan, we made promises to Afghanistan, and we cannot just walk away and let this turn into a humanitarian crisis, and probably a refugee crisis as well,’ he added.

‘There is a real risk now that international terrorism will take hold again in Afghanistan.’

Speculation is mounting that Afghanistan’s beleaguered President Ashraf Ghani could resign, heralding the collapse of the government. In a vague television address yesterday – his first public appearance in days – he said he was ‘holding consultations with local leaders and international partners’.

There were only seven commercial international flights out of Kabul yesterday. Those without tickets have been urged not to go to the airport, but that has not stopped them from turning up and desperately searching for flights.

Home Office staff are set to run a processing centre from a hangar at the airport which will check the passports and luggage of those due to be flown out, using biometric equipment to ensure that Taliban sympathisers do not try to infiltrate the evacuees.