Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The Foreign Office isn’t fit for purpose

A flight prepares for take-off at Kabul airport (Getty images)

Now that the dust from the choppers has settled, we are left with two abiding images of the West’s adventure in Afghanistan. The first is an American Chinook hovering over its embassy, rescuing staff in a botched evacuation. This debacle unfolded just weeks after president Biden promised the world there would be no parallel with the fall of Saigon, and ‘no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy’. The second is a plane taking off from Kabul laden with 150 pets.

The general success of the war in Afghanistan never came down to British policy. It’s for Washington’s post-mortem to confront the difficult truths about the limits of military power in the pursuit of political objectives. The American state can take some comfort from the thought that British and Russian politicians past would recognise the quagmire they found themselves in. The question Britain has to answer is considerably simpler, but not necessarily less painful: do we still have a functioning Foreign Office?

The testimony of Raphael Marshall suggests we do not. It was obvious in August that something had gone badly awry with Britain’s evacuation, when government priorities lead to the juxtaposition of American soldiers lifting their dead for their final flight home while British soldiers loaded dogs onto a plane. That the evacuation was shambolic and subject to political interference was clear then. The degree to which the instruments of the British state simply collapsed under the strain was not.

The question Britain has to answer is considerably simpler, but not necessarily less painful: do we still have a functioning Foreign Office?

Appeals from Afghans desperate for help went unread. Those who risked their lives to work with the British state guarding our Embassy were deemed ineligible for help. Very little effort was made to distinguish the truthfulness of claims of risk made.

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