Afghanistan live news UK MPs debate crisis as former Afghan president meets Taliban commander

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan had created an “impossible situation” for the UK but criticised the lack of preparation in the last 18 months.

During the emergency Commons debate on Afghanistan, she also accused the government of making “desperate” attacks on the opposition, adding:

They have been warned and warned and warned about the consequences by members on all sides of this house, and they have ignored us, they have ignored their own backbenchers and they have abandoned the people of Afghanistan.

It’s a moment of shame and they should apologise.

The British public is split on whether withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, a survey suggests.

The polling comes as the prime minister, Boris Johnson, faced fierce criticism from senior members of this own party and defended the final pull-out of British troops, saying it was an “illusion” to think the international military mission could have continued without US forces.

A survey of 1,970 British adults by Ipsos MORI found:

• 39% said it was the right decision to completely withdraw British troops from Afghanistan this year, while 40% said it was the wrong decision.

• 31% said it was the right decision for US troops to withdraw, while 47% said it was the wrong decision.

• 19% said Britain should not intervene at all over the next few months if the Taliban regime commits widespread human rights abuses or allows extremist groups to operate.

• 34% said Britain should step in with diplomatic and economic interventions against the regime, while 32% said Britain should step in with humanitarian interventions such as increasing support for Afghan refugees.

• 22% of those polled said they would support military interventions such as targeted air strikes.

The head of the Afghan Service at Germany’s DW News has this tweet, which will fuel concerns about the future of a free media in Afghanistan and one in which women can play a role:

Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi (@WasHasNaz)

Afghan state TV anchor Shabnam Dawran was kept from attending work today. https://t.co/YlblizoUvc

August 18, 2021

Afghanistan may be governed by a ruling council now that the Taliban has taken over, while the Islamist militant movement’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, was likely to remain in overall charge, a senior member of the group told Reuters.

The Taliban would also reach out to former pilots and soldiers from the Afghan armed forces to join its ranks, Waheedullah Hashimi, who has access to the group’s decision-making, added in an interview.

The power structure that Hashimi outlined would bear similarities to how Afghanistan was run the last time the Taliban were in power from 1996 to 2001.

Then, supreme leader Mullah Omar remained in the shadows and left the day-to-day running of the country to a council.
Akhundzada would probably play a role above the head of the council, who would be akin to the country’s president, Hashimi added.

“Maybe his [Akhundzada’s] deputy will play the role of ‘president’,” Hashimi said, speaking in English.

A plea for a “compassionate and urgent response” from international governments to the situation in Afghanistan has been issued by Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER).

“We have a particular concern for women and girls given the Taliban’s deplorable record of the suppression of human rights and equality,” he said.

“We must not let the Afghan people become subjected to the cruel repression of this barbaric regime and we call for the immediate restoration of security and civil order. The Afghan people â€" like all peoples of the world â€" deserve to live in safety, security and dignity. We continue to pray for the protection of innocent civilians.”

The Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, has told other MPs during the emergency Commons debate on Afghanistan that some in parliament do not want to acknowledge a “hard but clear truth” that the 20-year war in the country was a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

“This house must never again send British military personnel to die in futile wars,” she said.

“Rather than repeating the mistake, we must learn this lesson for the future. The west cannot build liberal democracies with bombs and bullets. That dangerous fantastic cooked up by neoconservative fanatics in Washington and championed by their faithful followers in misery has brought misery.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against interrupting humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, saying the country’s fragile health system is vulnerable.

“Sustained access to humanitarian assistance, including essential health services and medical supplies, is a critical lifeline for millions of Afghans, and must not be interrupted,” a statement said.

“Months of violence have taken a heavy toll on Afghanistan’s fragile health system, which had already been facing shortages in essential supplies amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” it added.

The WHO called on “all parties to respect and protect civilians, health workers, patients and health facilities”.

It said that between January and July this year, 26 health facilities were attacked and 12 health care workers were killed, making security at such facilities a “major challenge”.

WHO Afghanistan (@WHOAfghanistan)

Despite the insecurity, yesterday @WHO delivered 33 units of different modules of trauma kits & 10 basic medical kits to Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital - the biggest referral hospital for trauma in Kabul. The supplies will cover urgent medical needs of 11,750 people#StayandDeliver pic.twitter.com/4nXmvKzDa0

August 18, 2021

The chairman of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee has said that the US military should stay in Afghanistan beyond the planned 31 August withdrawal date if needed to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.

“We need to make sure that every one of those individuals that we know put their lives on their lives are out,” Democratic party representative Gregory Meek told MSNBC.

“If that means we should stay longer, in my estimation, we should do that. If that means, that even if we have to bring more troops in to make sure we can get them out safely, we need to do that.”

The meeting on Wednesday between a former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai and the Taliban involved Anas Haqqani, senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, an important faction.

The previous government’s main peace envoy, Abdullah Abdullah, was also present.

The US has classed the Haqqani Network of the Taliban, based in the border regions with Pakistan, as a terrorist network, holding it responsible for some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

The group’s involvement in a future Taliban government is likely to be problematic for the international community.

A spokesperson for Karzai said the meeting’s aim was to facilitate negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the influential Taliban political leader who led the agreement for the withdrawal of US troops and is believed will hold an important role in the government.

Baradar returned to Afghanistan on Tuesday for the first time in 20 years.

Karzai, president from December 2001 to September 2014, has been leading efforts to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power after Kabul fell on Sunday and the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled while the Taliban declared themselves the victorious rulers of Afghanistan. (read on..)

As Kabul fell to Taliban forces over the weekend, social networks struggled to cope with the renewed attention brought to the organisation â€" and its presence on their platforms.

In the US, Republicans expressed outrage that Twitter, which had permanently banned Donald Trump from its platform in January, seemed content to allow named Taliban members access to the social network to promote their narrative.

WhatsApp faced criticism for its role in enabling the Taliban to threaten, cajole and bribe local leaders into laying down their arms as they marched across the country. At Google, YouTube’s seeming lack of any substantial policy allowed it to avoid much of the attention, until it became the last network not to have rebuked the organisation.

At the core of the issue was an awkward bind for the social networks.

The Taliban are not on the US state department’s list of foreign terrorist organisations, which most major platforms defer to when deciding which groups should be flatly banned, although they are on the US treasury’s list of “specially designated global terrorists”, which subjects them to Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions. (Read on...)

Jack Lopresti, a Conservative MP who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 as a member of the British army reserves, has told the Commons that he believes the time will come when UK troops will have to deploy again in future in Afghanistan.

For those who say it wasn’t worth it or it was not a success, and thankfully it’s a tiny number in this house today, may I gently remind people that the original objective which was to destroy al-Qaida on the ground, deprive them of a base to help terrorist attacks through out the world, try and keep our own streets safe was achieved,” he said.

There’s footage here meanwhile of that speech earlier from another military veteran of Afghanistan, Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP who is chairman of the influential foreign affairs committee.

Theres’s a widely shared view that his contribution will have made the government’s frontbench distinctly uncomfortable.

Afghanistan “damn well feels like” defeat, as he urged a fresh “vision” must be developed to help.

Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, was applauded following his emotive Commons speech in which he recalled his experiences in the country.

He was also among several MPs to criticise the US president, Joe Biden, and his predecessor Donald Trump for their decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan.

Addressing a silent Commons, he said said he had struggled through “anger, grief and rage” over the past week and noted he had previously watched “good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us”.

The United Arab Emirates has said it is hosting former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani “on humanitarian grounds”, after he fled his country amid a Taliban takeover.

“The UAE ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” it said in a brief statement.

Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, before the insurgents walked into the Afghan capital unopposed.

In a Facebook post, Ghani said the “Taliban have won” and that he fled to avoid a “flood of bloodshed”.

His whereabouts were unknown until Wednesday, with speculation that he had fled to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Oman, reports the Associated Press.

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