Ben Wallace says he warned in July the ‘game is up’ in Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has claimed he warned in July that the ‘game is up’ in Afghanistan amid a worsening row with Dominic Raab.  

The Foreign Secretary yesterday pointed the finger at intelligence failings after he said the UK’s central assessment was it was ‘unlikely’ Kabul would fall to the Taliban this year. 

Mr Raab said the main planning scenario of a slow deterioration in the country had remained in place ‘until late’. 

But Mr Wallace has hit back at the suggestion that intelligence had failed as he said he had argued in July that ‘whatever we think, the game is up’ and the UK should ‘accelerate whatever we’re doing’.

His comments came after Mr Raab was confronted with his own department’s ‘principal risk report’, dated July 22, three weeks before Kabul fell, which had warned ‘rapid Taliban advances… could lead to fall of cities’ and the group’s swift return to power.  

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, ambushed Mr Raab with the document, piling pressure on the Cabinet minister because it suggested he had been warned about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan two weeks before he went on a family holiday to Crete. 

But the Foreign Office later claimed the document simply set out ‘potential risks’ and it was ‘simply wrong and misleading’ to suggest it was at odds with the Government’s central assessment. 

It came as Mr Raab arrived in Qatar in the early hours of this morning for talks with the country’s emir and foreign minister about what can be done to secure safe passage out of Afghanistan for British allies who were left behind in the country following the US and UK withdrawal. 

Mr Wallace told The Spectator magazine that it was clear by July that the Afghan forces trained by the West would melt away once US troops withdrew.

He said: ‘It was a bit of a shock when Herat fell. Some of these big places had historically been resistant to the Taliban. 

‘When they fell, literally without a fight… I remember back in July arguing that whatever we think, the game is up and we have to do what we can to accelerate whatever we’re doing.’

In comments which appeared to be directed at Mr Raab, he said: ‘I’ve already seen some lines about the failure of intelligence.

‘History shows us that it’s not about failure of intelligence, it’s about the limits of intelligence.

‘When the Soviet Union crumbled, when Libya collapsed, when the actual moment came in Afghanistan, intelligence hadn’t failed. It was just limited, as it always is at the very end.’

His remarks were in contrast to the picture painted by Mr Raab when he gave evidence to MPs yesterday. 

Mr Tugendhat confronted Mr Raab with the Foreign Office report and said: ‘(It) read on Afghanistan ‘peace talks have stalled and US/NATO withdrawal is resulting in rapid Taliban advances, this could lead to fall of cities, collapse of security forces, Taliban return to power, mass displacement and significant humanitarian need, the embassy may need to close if security deteriorates’.

‘This was on the 22nd of July. How did your actions change after that report?’

Mr Raab said he was ‘very mindful of that’ and added: ‘The central assessment remained until late that the deterioration would be incremental and the planning for military withdrawal obviously began in April. 

‘But the contingency planning was also there for a more rapid deterioration.’  

The Foreign Secretary said the UK’s central assessment was that Kabul was ‘unlikely’ to fall to the Taliban in 2021. 

He told MPs: ‘The central assessment that we were operating to, and it was certainly backed up by the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) 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.’

The Principal Risk Register is classed as an ‘official-sensitive’ document and is not publicly available. 

The Foreign Office said the document ‘does not contain intelligence assessments’. 

A spokeswoman said: ‘It is an internal document which sets out potential risks to the organisation for planning purposes including around duty of care to staff.

‘It is simply wrong and misleading to suggest this document is in any way at odds with our detailed assessments of the situation in Afghanistan or our public position throughout the crisis.’ 

Labour has called for an end to the ‘unseemly infighting at the top of Government’. 

Shadow security minister Conor McGinn said: ‘While British nationals and Afghans who helped us are fighting for their lives, the Cabinet are more interested in fighting for their jobs.’

The row over why the UK was caught out by the speed of the Taliban takeover came as Mr Wallace said he does not believe Britain is a ‘superpower’. 

He also risked a diplomatic spat with Washington after he also appeared to question the status of the US.   

He told The Spectator: ‘It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower. But a superpower that is also not prepared to stick at something isn’t probably a superpower either. It is certainly not a global force, it’s just a big power.’

His comments will be seen as a swipe at the US after its decision to abandon its military effort in Afghanistan.

But defence sources denied this, saying he was making a wider point about the need for the West to stand up to adversaries prepared to stick to ‘100-year plans’.

A source said Mr Wallace was clear that the US ‘is a superpower’.