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The UK’s evacuation from Afghanistan has been branded a “humiliation” by a senior Tory MP and ex-soldier, who told Sky News there were a “litany of concerns” in the government’s handling of it that need to be addressed.

Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defence Select Committee, said the Foreign Office no longer had the capability to deal with challenges like the ones faced over the last two weeks.

Speaking hours before the last UK military plane arrived at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Mr Ellwood said: “There’s been a litany of concerns that absolutely need to be addressed and errors that have been made as well.

“We need to recognise that this is a wake-up call, that the world is getting more dangerous, not less.”

While the UK’s 20-year military presence in Afghanistan officially ended on Saturday, there were some troops on board the plane that landed at Brize Norton on Sunday night.

Mr Ellwood said that British soldiers had “performed valiantly” over the last two decades, “but were let down by their political masters”.

“As soon as we’ve departed, there have been terrorist attacks,” he said. “And there will be further terrorist attacks because we’ve departed.”

More on Afghanistan

Thursday’s suicide bombing at Kabul airport killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans. The US has launched retaliatory strikes against ISIS-K targets – including a vehicle said to be carrying explosives on Sunday.

Mr Ellwood continued: “After 20 years, we are now out, and we have very little to show for it.

“We lacked the strategy, the statecraft, the patience to see it through. This manner of our departure is a humiliation.”

The last planeload of soldiers has arrived in the UK from Afghanistan
Image:
The last planeload of soldiers has arrived in the UK from Afghanistan

Tom Tugendhat, another Conservative former soldier, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has already indicated his intention to hold an inquiry.

He tweeted last week: “How [the Foreign Office] handled this crisis will be the subject of a coming [Foreign Affairs Committee] inquiry. The evidence is already coming in.”

Mr Ellwood spoke as Labour wrote to Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, raising concerns about allegations that thousands of emails relating to Afghan refugees went unopened by officials dealing with the operation.

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said her office was tracking cases relating to 5,000 people including “British nationals, high profile public figures, people with serious disabilities and children separated from their families”.

The government previously estimated up to 1,100 Afghans eligible to come to the UK were likely to be left behind.

“It just beggars belief that ministers have presided over such utter chaos when they had eighteen months to plan, with appalling consequences for many, many people who helped us over two decades,” Ms Nandy told Sky News.

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‘There will be many people who won’t get out’

The Foreign Office has not directly denied that the emails were not opened, but said other phone lines and inboxes were used to process applications.

A spokesperson said “we deployed a 24/7 cross-Whitehall team based in our crisis hub to triage incoming emails and calls from British Nationals, ARAP applicants, and other vulnerable Afghans”.

The accusations come after Mr Raab was criticised for remaining abroad on holiday as Kabul fell to the Taliban earlier this month.

More than 5,000 people have been evacuated by Germany
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Thousands of refugees have been evacuated from Afghanistan

Government officials have stressed they will now be ramping up efforts to help people trapped in Afghanistan escape to third countries.

Former senior army commander General Sir Richard Barrons said the UK now needed to start speaking to the Taliban and other countries in the region to get people out.

“We have broken faith with them if we now don’t move – as the prime minister said – heaven and earth to get them out,” Sir Richard told Sky News.

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“We have made a commitment, and we now need, in discussion with the Taliban and Pakistan and other neighbours, to get them out.”

Boris Johnson has said that any recognition of the Taliban in Afghanistan will only come if the new regime guarantees safe passage for all those wanting to leave.

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SEC ends Biden-era probe into tokenized equity platform Ondo Finance

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SEC ends Biden-era probe into tokenized equity platform Ondo Finance

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has officially dropped its investigation into the New York-based tokenization platform Ondo Finance, which it initiated in 2023.

Ondo Finance has received formal notice that a confidential, multi-year SEC investigation into the platform has been closed without any charges, the company announced on Monday.

“The probe examined whether Ondo’s tokenization of certain real-world assets complied with federal securities laws as well as whether the ONDO token was a security,” the statement said.

The SEC’s decision to end the investigation reflects a broader shift in the US policy regarding real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, bringing it on the authority’s formal agenda, Ondo noted.

A new chapter of tokenization in the US

According to a report by Crypto in America, the SEC initially opened the probe in October 2023 under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who was known for his stringent stance toward the crypto industry.

However, since Paul Atkins took over as SEC chair, the agency has closed a number of crypto-related cases involving major companies, including Coinbase, Ripple and Kraken.

“When the inquiry began in 2024, the US regulatory environment for digital assets was defined by caution, confusion, and occasionally overbroad enforcement actions,” Ondo Finance said in its blog post.

Source: Ondo Finance

Against that backdrop, Ondo was “one of the only firms focused on tokenizing publicly listed equities at scale,” it said, adding: “Being early, and being successful, came with scrutiny.”

According to Ondo, the resolution of the SEC inquiry marks the end of one chapter for Ondo and the beginning of another, where tokenized securities become a “core part of the US capital markets.”

“The future of global finance, including U.S. capital markets, will be onchain and Ondo will help lead that transition,” Ondo said.

Most US tokenization platforms serve overseas markets

The news comes as most tokenization platforms offer tokenized equity products primarily to customers outside the US, including firms such as Kraken-owned Backed, the issuer of xStocks.

While these platforms tokenize major US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), many of the offerings are aimed at clients located overseas, particularly in Europe.