As Afghanistan descends into turmoil, the UK is in a race against time to remove its citizens and Afghan staff from the Taliban’s firing line.
Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab have both (eventually) cut short their holidays while the Prime Minister is calling for a meeting of G7 leaders.
Parliament will also be recalled tomorrow. But the PM will be able to slip off without taking detailed questions or holding a vote.
And there is fury at the UK for not acting fast enough as Taliban fighters raced across the land earlier in the weekend.
Keir Starmer said today: "It was completely wrong to be on holiday. Speak to anybody who has any experience of Afghanistan and they will tell you it was obvious last week that we were heading to a very serious situation.
"For the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to be missing in action at this vital time is something that everybody thinks is wrong.”
So what does the UK actually have to do now - and when will it get round to it? Once we’ve acted, how bad a threat to the UK will be posed by Taliban rule?
Here’s Dominic Raab’s immediate to-do list to avert further global catastrophe.
Evacuate Brits and Afghans from Kabul
The UK’s first priority is to evacuate British citizens and Afghans who helped the West out of Kabul, where they will fly via nearby countries to Britain.
Despite hopes the UK would extract more than 1,000 people per day, numbers have so far fallen short. Around 150 British nationals came out on Sunday, along with 289 Afghan nationals over the last week.
Mr Raab said on Tuesday a further 350 British and Afghan nationals were set to be evacuated “over the next 24 hours”.
Britain plans to let in some Afghans without passports, as long as they were are already selected for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
But it could still take until the end of the month to complete the evacuation - and only if the airport holds out against the Taliban.
While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg demanded the Taliban allow Afghans’ exit, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace admitted ‘some people won’t get back’.
UK ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Laurie Bristow has been personally signing off visas at Kabul Airport but a Foreign Office rapid team had still not arrived by Tuesday morning.
Mr Raab claimed: “No one saw this coming. Of course we’d have taken action if we had.”
But Labour ’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “The Foreign Secretary has serious questions to answer about his department’s lack of preparedness for the tragic situation now unfolding in front of our eyes.
“Instead of prolonging his summer holiday, Dominic Raab should have been back in Westminster coordinating efforts to ensure thousands of British and Afghan staff were brought safely back to the UK.
“This failure of leadership has put lives at risk.”
Announce a scheme for refugees to come to the UK
Pressure is mounting on the PM to announce a generous welcome for Afghan refugees who aren’t evacuated in the first wave.
Boris Johnson is preparing to announce a resettlement scheme, like the one for Syria, as soon as tomorrow.
But all eyes will be on whether it offers sanctuary for a concrete number of refugees, and whether that number is high enough. Canada for example is taking 20,000.
Reports - denied by the Home Office - have suggested it is reluctant to throw its arms too wide because of the message it would send to other asylum seekers.
Tory former Immigration Minister Damian Green warned: “There are times and places where we should be strict with asylum applications.
“Afghanistan today is the exact opposite. We should take anyone who can make a case.”
Raise foreign aid - months after slashing it
Dominic Raab has revealed he could increase foreign aid spending to Afghanistan - months after he cruelly slashed it in the face of a Tory rebellion.
Admitting the U-turn, the Foreign Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I expect that we will increase our aid budget for development and humanitarian purposes, probably by 10% is what I have in mind on last year.
“We want to try and make sure it won't go through the Taliban, but make sure that we can alleviate the humanitarian suffering."
Reports suggest direct, bilateral aid to Afghanistan was due to be slashed by 78% from 2020/21 to 2021/22 as part of a wider cut.
Multilateral aid is separate, and it’s not clear exactly which figure Mr Raab referred to.
Only hours earlier, Downing Street had insisted there were no plans to reverse foreign aid cuts to Afghanistan. The PM’s spokesman said on Monday: “We have a significant aid budget as we’ve talked about before - there’s no plans to change that at the moment.”
Recall Parliament
Parliament is being recalled tomorrow, and Boris Johnson will open a debate about what went wrong and what to do now.
Expect desperate calls from MPs to give a proper generous offer to Afghan refugees - and a tirade from Tories, some of them Army veterans, who say the UK’s 20-year campaign was for naught.
Labour is also likely to savage the slow reaction of the PM and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who only returned from a five-star beach holiday in Crete on Sunday night.
Yet it appears the session may not achieve very much.
Mr Johnson will be able to slip away after his opening statement without taking hours of detailed questions. That’s because he is planning a “general debate”, rather than a more formalised ministerial statement where he can be held to account.
As of Tuesday the planned title was: “That this House has considered the situation in Afghanistan". Which isn’t very exact.
No10 have also not ruled out the PM returning to his West Country holiday, which he abandoned after one day on Sunday.
Face international humiliation
Along with Joe Biden and NATO, Boris Johnson now faces an international inquest into how the West got it so disastrously wrong.
Mr Johnson had claimed last month there was “no military path to victory” for the Taliban, while his Foreign Secretary has claimed “no one saw this coming”.
Joe Biden has defended the US record - blaming Afghan troops for not fighting harder and claiming he was just following Donald Trump ’s withdrawal plan. But he, too, had insisted just last month that there would be no swift Taliban takeover.
Mr Biden and the UK, who followed US troops out, will now come under intense international pressure about what to do next - and whether their intelligence can be relied on.
John Bolton, former national security adviser to Donald Trump, said: "I think in Beijing, in Moscow, they're laughing about this… It makes us look like we're suckers.”
The Lib Dems have demanded the UK publish its full national security assessment it conducted before pulling troops out.
Jamie Stone, Lib Dem Defence spokesperson, said: “Terrorists who were once locked up are now freely roaming the streets of Afghanistan, and will begin plotting their revenge on countries such as Britain.”
Start dealing with a Taliban government
The UK accepts the Taliban is now in control of Afghanistan - but should it be formally recognised as the country’s government?
That crucial decision is likely to be made by international bodies including at the United Nations. Recognising the Taliban would be seen to legitimise brutal oppression of women and minorities - and Keir Starmer has urged it not to happen.
Then there’s the question of how to actually deal with the Taliban practically in international relations.
Whatever assurances they have given, Mr Raab agreed they are a “ragtag bunch of thugs” and “we need to use every other lever that we've got, sanctions, economic measures, the diplomacy."
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg added: “A government that doesn’t respect the human rights of all Afghans, and reinstates the rein of fear, risks international isolation.”
But will the threat of “isolation” be enough to deter the brutal Taliban, especially when the UK and US have made clear they have no desire to re-invade Afghanistan?
Fend off the threat of terror
Last but not least is how much the Taliban’s new stronghold will threaten the West in the form of future terror attacks.
In the Doha agreement signed last year, the Taliban agreed not to let Afghanistan become a breeding ground for terror groups like it was before the 9/11 attacks.
But critics fear some of the group’s violent supporters will be able to gain a foothold in the country even if the Taliban says it’s sticking to the agreement.
And will they even stick to their commitments? Mr Raab said bluntly: “Frankly I can't tell you that I trust them to follow through on them, but having done so I think it is important to test, and then to work with all the remaining levers we have."
There is no one agreed position on how far the UK will be at risk.
Tobias Ellwood, Tory chair of the commons Defence Committee, told Times Radio: “We will see further terrorist attacks. I would not be surprised if we see another attack on the scale of 9/11, almost to bookend what happened 20 years ago, as a poke in the face to the Western Alliance to show how fruitless our efforts have been over the last two decades.”
But Lord Ricketts, the former National Security Adviser, told the BBC’s Westminster Hour: “I don’t think that the Taliban are going to make the mistake of allowing al-Qaeda to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan.
“They know then that they’d be immediately under drone attack from the Americans.”
