UK is working ‘full speed’ to rescue 4,000 Brits and Afghans STILL stuck in Kabul

272

View
comments

UK troops could ‘sneak out’ people from Afghanistan up to the very last moment despite warnings there are just 36 hours to get another 4,000 to safety – after Joe Biden sparked fury by refusing to extend the deadline for forces leaving. 

Dominic Raab admitted the evacuation mission is in its final desperate stages after the US president ‘point blank’ rejected G7 calls for a delay, arguing the risks of attack from the Taliban and ISIS were too high.

The decision means the airlift will have to stop tomorrow or Friday at the latest, to give Western forces time to wrap up their deployment. 

Former chief of the defence staff Lord Richards said he believes even after that the British military will ‘sneak others in who arrive late along with their own people’.  

But there are already claims that the Taliban is stopping fleeing Afghans from getting into the airport, and the coming days will see the ‘maximum danger’ for troops with fears the regime will want to create a ‘Saigon’ moment and threats of a terrorist ‘spectacular’. 

In a round of interviews this morning, Mr Raab said the UK is working ‘as fast as we can’ to maximise the number of people who can flee, saying 2,000 were taken to safety in the last 24 hours and almost all single-nationality Britons are now out.

‘We will use every hour and day we’ve got to maximise that throughput to get as many of those residual cases out,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programe.

‘We’re going to keep going for every day and every hour that we’ve got left.’

Mr Raab declined to say when the last UK flight will be leaving.  

Overnight the US President insisted his troops were ‘on pace’ to leave Afghanistan by August 31, after rebuffing pleas by Boris Johnson and other G7 leaders for America to extend its evacuation timetable.

However, in a live TV broadcast, he warned the Taliban must ‘continue to co-operate’ with the US’ evacuation mission in order for his troops to be out of Kabul by the end of this month.

It comes amid claims from people on the ground in Kabul that people are being blocked by Taliban fighters from accessing the city’s airport for evacuation. 

Yesterday the extremist Islamist group issued an edict banning Afghans from leaving the country. They also blocked roads and set up check-points around Kabul airport. 

It comes as:

Former military chiefs and Tory MPs have urged Boris Johnson to reverse military cuts saying the Afghanistan crisis shows they were a mistake; Dominic Raab has angrily denied that he was cavorting on a Crete beach while Afghanistan descended into chaos, saying the sea had been closed at his luxury holiday resort due to a ‘red notice’;Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said former Royal Marine Paul ‘Pen’ Farthing will be allowed to fly his staff and rescue animals out of Kabul after initially refusing the request; Mr Johnson has pleaded with Taliban to continue to let people out of Afghanistan after August 31 and announced a ‘roadmap’ for dealing with new Islamist government;Reports on the ground in Kabul suggested that Taliban fighters were stopping Westerners getting to Kabul airport after the extremist group announced a ban on Afghans leaving the country;President Joe Biden told the Taliban he will stick to Aug 31 withdrawal deadline if they allow free access to Kabul airport.

With an American pull-out now likely to be complete by the end of the month, other countries, such as the UK, which are reliant on the air support from US troops, now face a race against time to complete their own evacuations.

Last night the Pentagon confirmed that several hundred US troops had already started leaving Afghanistan – and allies including the UK will want to have their troops out well before the US leaves. 

The UK could now wrap up its mission within ’24 to 36 hours’, defence sources said.

Mr Raab said he was unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Secretary said the figure depends on ‘the window’ left in terms of timing and how many people they manage to process over the next few days.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘It’s also how many want to come, as there are some finely balanced cases.’

Mr Raab also declined to comment on whether British troops would return to Afghanistan in the future.

‘I’m not going to speculate on that while we’re in the middle of withdrawals,’ he said.

‘The United Kingdom retains the right to exercise self-defence in relation to our nationals in our country. We’re not getting into speculating about that.’

After the setback for the alliance with the US, Mr Raab suggested the UK is looking to ‘broaden the group of like-minded countries’ trying to rein in Taliban extremism in future. 

He told Times Radio: ‘I’ve been speaking to China, Pakistan, India and we’ll be trying to convene meetings of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree the contours for the way forward.

‘In terms of the leaders, we will use all the leaders at our disposal. Sanctions potentially, access to the international financial institutions… If they (the Taliban) want aid going into Afghanistan, it won’t go through the Taliban, they’ll have to provide a permissive environment for NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and the UN.’

It comes after Mr Johnson yesterday faced humiliation with Mr Biden shrugging off his pleas to extend the Kabul evacuation.

The Prime Minister, along with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, had used a G7 meeting to urge the US President to keep the operation going longer.

But Mr Biden reportedly rejected the request ‘point blank’. ‘Mr Biden made clear that it wasn’t a runner,’ a senior government source reportedly told The Telegraph last night. 

White House sources said Mr Biden had agreed with the Pentagon that there would be no change to the timeline of the mission. Press secretary Jen Psaki said the Pentagon was ‘on pace’ to withdraw by the deadline.

And Mr Biden later confirmed this in a TV address at the White House last night, saying the US was now ‘on pace to finish by August 31’. 

Mr Biden yesterday said more than 70,000 people been evacuated since August 14. And he said 12,000 people had been evacuated by western forces in the last 12 hours alone.

However the President turned the spotlight on the Taliban, who last night reiterated their insistence that western troops to leave by the end of this month, saying it was down to militants to allow the evacuation process to go smoothly.

He said the completion of operations in Kabul ‘depends upon the Taliban continuing to cooperate’, adding there will be contingency plans to ‘adjust the timetable should that become necessary’. 

Speaking during the conference, which he left without answering questions from reporters, President Biden said: ‘We (the G7) agreed we would continue our close co-operation to get people out as efficiently and safely as possible.

‘We are currently on pace to finish by August 31. The sooner we can finish the better. Each added day brings a risk to our troops. 

But the completion by August 31 depends on the Taliban’s continued co-operation and allow access to the airport – no disruption to our operations.’ 

He said the added risk came from a ‘very real’ threat from terrorist group ISIS K – a self-proclaimed branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant active in parts of Afghanistan.

It comes as a humiliated Mr Johnson said after the G7 summit that the UK will continue to conduct airlifts from the country ‘right up until the last moment’ as he pleaded with the Taliban to let people leave after the deadline.

He said the leaders had agreed that the ‘number one condition’ that the Taliban must meet moving forward is to ‘guarantee right the way through August 31 and beyond safe passage for those who want to come out’. 

But last night UK defence sources reportedly told the Guardian that the UK operation could be closed down within ’24-36 hours’.

It is understood that the US military needs between two and three days to close down its operations at Kabul airport.

And UK troops will have to be 24 hours ahead of that, in order to get Afghans and then themselves out safely before US troops depart. 

Meanwhile, Conservative MPs said the US’s decision to turn their back on the UK’s pleas mean the ‘special relationship’ was now over.  One Tory MP reportedly told the Guardian that US-UK relations were ‘about to enter their lowest point since Suez’.  

Despite the setback, Mr Johnson insisted the G7 nations have ‘huge leverage’ over the Taliban because of the threat of sanctions as he said funding for the country would only be made available in the future if it meets the West’s expectations. 

‘If those huge funds are going to be unfrozen eventually for use by the government and people of Afghanistan then what we are saying is Afghanistan can’t lurch back into becoming a breeding ground of terror, Afghanistan can’t become a narco state,’ he said.  

The comments came after the Taliban repeating blood-curdling warnings of consequences if there was an attempt to cling on, saying no-one will be permitted to leave. ‘All people should be removed prior to that date,’ a spokesman told a press conference in the capital. ‘After that we do not allow them. We will take a different stance.’