After 20 years, 456 UK military deaths and £22 billion spent, Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan is over. With the last American forces leaving within a month, news out of the war-torn nation has been predictably grim, with the Taliban sweeping the country amid reports of executions, evacuations and troops switching sides.
The situation is now so dire that Boris Johnson has been forced to chair an emergency Cobra meeting this afternoon. British troops went into the country in October 2001 – four months after Johnson was first elected as an MP for Henley – with the subsequent two decades of fighting attracting much comment from the future Prime Minister during his rise from a backbencher and commentator to a minister climbing the greasy pole.
Here Steerpike provides you with some of Johnson’s past musings on Britain’s role in Afghanistan and what withdrawal would mean…
‘To abandon Afghanistan now would be a betrayal of the fallen’ – the Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2009:
‘But what is the alternative? The answer is that the alternative is even grimmer.
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