The Taliban are in control of Afghanistan - but Britain will not go back there to fight, the UK Defence Secretary declared today.
After a 20-year campaign that killed 457 British troops, Ben Wallace catastrophically admitted: “At the end of the day, symbolically, it’s not what any of us wanted.”
And he confessed not all Afghans who helped the UK Armed Forces will get out in time, saying: "There will be some people left behind." He said some may end up in refugee camps in Greece.
Alarmingly he hinted it could take two weeks to get those necessary out of the country. He told the BBC: "If we can manage to keep the airport running in the way we are putting our people in place to deliver, then I’m confident that by the end of the month we could get everyone out, and actually hopefully sooner.”
Taliban fighters swept into the capital Kabul last night as the Western-backed President fled, two decades after the hardline Islamist group was ousted from power in the ‘war on terror’.
Scenes of chaos have erupted at Kabul Airport with Afghans scrambling to catch flights, and the few remaining British diplomats trying to process visas to get interpreters and UK nationals back to the UK.
Mr Wallace told Sky News there was a “real sense of sadness” that Afghan forces had “melted away” in a few days, adding: “I acknowledge the Taliban are in control of the country.
“You don’t have to be a political scientist to spot that’s where we are at.”
But asked if the UK and Nato allies could go back into Afghanistan, he replied: “That’s not on the cards, that we’re going to go back.”
And he refused to rule out the UK formally recognising the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government in future.
Mr Wallace replied: “I think there’s a lot more to come before those decisions are made. I think the Taliban have to match their words with what they say.
“I think the time is not right yet. The proof of the pudding will be in their actions rather than their rhetoric.”
He said British troops are in the country, including soldiers who have just arrived, but they are there to co-ordinate an evacuation.
Some 370 staff, British citizens and eligible personnel were flown out by the British on Saturday and Sunday.
Mr Wallace said a group of 782 Afghans will follow “in the next 24 to 36 hours” but are still having their visas processed.
He said the UK has a target to get 1,200 to 1,500 people out of the country per day.
“We are processing as fast as we can. Where there are rules we need to change we are changing those rules,” he said.
He suggested Afghans who are being barred from leaving because they don’t yet have passports could be offered a waiver by the UK.
“Today I’ll be speaking to [Home Secretary] Priti Patel about how we can deal with Afghan passports,” he said.
“If they’ve already been through our checks and we know who they are, we need to see if we can make sure we adapt the rules to get those people out as soon as we can.”
Mr Wallace admitted the UK embassy in Kabul is “not the embassy any more. We have left that location, we’ve drawn down within the airport.”
Asked about the collapse of the Afghan Army he said: “The river flows fastest towards the end and that’s what we saw yesterday.”
Dominic Raab flew back to Britain from his summer holiday last night as MPs are recalled to Parliament this week to discuss the escalating Afghanistan crisis.
The Foreign Secretary faced questions over why he chose to travel abroad as British foreign policy unravelled and millions of Afghan lives were put at risk.
Mr Raab, criticised for his silence on the march of the Taliban, said the world must "tell the Taliban that the violence must end and human rights must be protected".
Boris Johnson called an emergency Cobra meeting yesterday to discuss the worsening crisis as he comes under pressure to cut short his own domestic break.
But the PM and Mr Raab were criticised by their own Tory MPs for their handling of the situation, which has left around 6,000 British nationals on the ground in Afghanistan.
Ex-officer Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, described it as "the biggest single foreign policy disaster" since Suez.
Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood said it was a humiliation for the West, warning: "It is only a matter of time before we endure another 9/11 style attack."
Johnny Mercer, a former Army officer who did three tours in Afghanistan, said: "We will be dealing with the consequences of this for years and years and years.
"It is truly devastating for lots of people."
Labour MP Dan Jarvis, an ex-para who served in the country, called for international leaders to step up, adding: "It feels as if it's all been for nothing."
MPs will return to Parliament on Wednesday for an emergency debate on the ongoing situation with pressure on the Government to open the UK's doors to refugees.
In a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, her Labour counterpart Nick Thomas-Symonds said: “We must now live up to our obligations, especially to those Afghan people who worked so bravely with British representatives in Afghanistan.
“Our resettlement scheme must - urgently - be expanded to ensure people to whom we owe a huge debt are not abandoned.
"The UK Government must put in place specific safe and legal asylum routes to help provide support.”
But senior military sources have said the Home Office is reluctant to give many Afghans asylum because of the message it will send to other refugees.
