Evening Standard Comment: Raab’s naive approach to Taliban suggests he should have stayed on holiday

Andy Davey
WEST END FINAL

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Where were you when Kabul fell? Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab can answer that — he spent Sunday on the beach in Crete.

Leaving aside this deeply insensitive decision to sun his body as the Afghan government evaporated, his latest statements of how the UK will now seek to “moderate” the Taliban through use of diplomacy and foreign aid — the budget of which has been cut by this Government — appear naively hopeful at best.

The detail is thin on how exactly the Foreign Secretary proposes to operate any control whatsoever over a maniacal, murderous regime that has made a home for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, consistently ignored every provision of the US agreement with the Taliban from February 2020 and set about ruthlessly organising terror attacks to weaken opposition before they began their march through the country to Kabul (car bombs, atrocities and targeted assassinations) before freeing thousands of terrorists and murderers in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

Amid these chaotic and terrifying scenes, Parliament sits tomorrow to discuss the crisis. For this recall to be more than a going through of the motions, the Government must answer serious questions to the future.

First, and most urgently, what will be its approach towards resettlement of those Afghans who helped UK forces? We must hope that this Brexit Government, which came to power on populist, anti-immigrant sentiment, does not abandon its moral duty or break its promises to our friends and partners.

Second, what will be the serious Government approach to the Taliban, an organisation Raab today also agreed was a “ragtag bunch of thugs”? Hope through diplomacy and aid is unlikely.

Third, what are the Government’s new red lines when it comes to their behaviour? Raab’s message today is that Afghanistan “must never be used to launch terrorist attacks against the West”. How will he monitor this? The chief of MI5 has noted unsurprisingly that the agency was wary of terrorist group again using the country as a base.

Most observers see Afghanistan quickly reverting to its pre-2001 state, as an exporter of chaos, extremism and opium.

We cannot expect much help from President Biden. His tin-eared speech last night, in which he blamed Afghan leaders, security forces and his predecessor while simultaneously proclaiming “the buck stops with me”, suggests Western leaders are yet to fully grapple with the enormity of defeat in Afghanistan, the consequences of which will be with us for years to come.

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