In the wake of the American withdrawal followed from the return of the Taliban to power in August, the United Kingdom had evacuated 15,000 people from the country. The attitude of London is severely criticized by the report.
Le Monde with AFP
Between “betrayal of our allies” and “disaster”: a parliamentary report published Tuesday, May 24, flaws and “systemic failures” of British diplomacy during the Western withdrawal and the evacuation of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 . “The conduct of our withdrawal from Afghanistan has proven to be a disaster and a betrayal of our allies who will damage the interests of the United Kingdom for the coming years”, criticizes the document.
He denounces in particular “the total absence of plan to evacuate the Afghans who supported the British mission in the country” without being directly employed by London. “The British part in this tragedy reveals a lack of seriousness in coordination, a lack of clear decision -making, a lack of leadership and a lack of responsibility,” said the President of the Foreign Affairs Committee in a statement, the Conservative deputy Tom Togendhat.
In the current context, “our diplomacy and our security cannot be so confused and so unstructured”, he continues, denouncing “serious systemic failures at the heart of foreign policy of the United Kingdom”, in particular Absence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Dominic Raab, and the highest official of the ministry, Philip Barton.
RENOUR the link with Kabul
Among other things, the report clearly criticizes the “lack of solid prioritization system” in evacuations, which allowed an association for the protection of animals to pass before an intervention whose origin did not could be determined, and to leave the country with dogs and cats when many potentially threatened Afghans failed to do so.
This case is part of “a broader problem of transparency and responsibility within the ministry”, according to the report, which judges that the responses which were provided to the Commission “to the best intentionally evasive, and often deliberately deceptive “.
“Parliament can only put the government before its responsibilities if it can be confident that it receives honest answers to its questions”, underlines the report.
As for the future, the report calls on the government to restore diplomatic ties to the Taliban in power in Kabul as soon as possible, stressing that “attempts to completely isolate the new regime can only harm the Afghan people and Leave a vacuum that will be filled by China “.