Thursday, 19 August 2021

Afghanistan, the incompetence and betrayal

The events in Kabul this week have been shocking and shaming in equal measure. That people would scramble to board overloaded planes and even cling to the outside during take off, plunging to certain death on the tarmac rather than remain in their own country says it all. If anybody knows what life under the Taliban is like, it is those who experienced it before. Death or the risk of it, was preferable to some.

The whole mess was debated in parliament yesterday. Johnson and Rabb both being dragged back from holidays to face the music. Johnson looked deeply unhappy in the House, the picture on the front of the Metro says it all. He and his ever glistening Foreign Secretary Raab, looked like what they were, men out of their depths, lazy, useless and thoroughly incompetent.

Johnson seems to have finally realised that the job he coveted since childhood involves more than a few photo opportunities, cutting ribbons, meeting and greeting and making meaningless speeches while accepting kudos for the work of others. As mayor of London this was possible, in No 10 during a crisis it is not. The buck truly stops with him and he doesn’t like it.

He was attacked from all sides. Suggestions have been made that even previously supportive Tory MPs are beginning to see through Johnson and his days in Downing Street may be numbered. The Tory party, unlike Labour, is ruthless at winning elections and events are rapidly spiralling out of his control.

As for Raab, I seem to remember when the Falklands were invaded Lord Carrington, the then foreign secretary, resigned within hours but no sign of anything remotely honourable from the present incumbent of Carlton Terrace.

Even The Daily Mail is calling for Raab's head after it emerged he was too busy enjoying his £5,000-a-night hotel in Crete even to make a telephone call to the Afghan foreign minister to help get British translators out.

Last Monday is a day that will live in infamy, to borrow a phrase that will be familiar to many Americans. There are suggestions that Joe Biden had little choice following the disastrous DOHA agreement signed by Trump in February 2020 but the president has staunchly defended his decision and marshalled powerful arguments in his favour. Why should American blood be spilled to defend people apparently unwilling to defend themselves? Withdrawal from an unwinnable conflict was probably inevitable and if not now, when? The great majority of Americans support withdrawal.

The problem is that Afghanistan is riddled with corruption. The size and quality of the Afghan army was always an illusion. Local commanders enriched themselves by taking millions of dollars to pay non-existent soldiers. The country is ungovernable in any sense recognisable to western eyes. 

All of this may be true.  But it is not the point.

Millions of Afghans, those who don't want to live under harsh Sharia law, perhaps a sizeable majority, were given commitments that a coalition of forces would remain to defend a fragile democracy and at least a semblance of human rights. Those solemn promises, including ones by Johnson himself were worthless. Afghanistan has been betrayed.

That America could retake Afghanistan again at any time is not really at issue but the enormous sunk cost in blood and treasure will have to be paid again, and probably without allies since many will baulk at being involved in another debacle like this one.

The cost of maintaining peace is relatively small compared to bringing it about in the first place. America still has troops in Japan (55,000) and Germany (40,000) seventy-five yeasts after the Second World War so cost is not an excuse.

I am afraid the flame of democracy is burning a little less bright today as Afghanistan is abandoned to join a growing list of nations, Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Belarussia, Myanmar and others where leaders don’t bother with anything as troublesome as free and fair elections. One wonders how anybody in the future will ever be able to shake off the yoke of oppression. This might have been possible in years gone by, in ages less technologically advanced, but now?  I can't see any velvet revolutions again, can you?  These countries have been permanently abandoned to their fate.

Yesterday’s events must also surely have brought the prospect of an EU army one step closer. If, when push comes to shove, against domestic pressures, America’s word cannot be relied on, Europe may feel it needs to be able to defend itself.

The immediate issue is to allow as many refugees as possible from Afghanistan to come here but even at that, something easily within our power, we are failing. Patel has offered a pitifully small 5,000 places this year and another 15,000 over the next four years.  Many will not survive till Christmas. If there is a purge of administrators, officials, judges and so on by the Taliban, Johnson and Patel will be swept away in the tide of revulsion that will follow.

There must be a rapid change of policy with far more generous numbers being allowed in. We owe them that at least.

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