Leaked Foreign Office report warned of ‘rapid Taliban advances’ in July

Published

3 years ago

September 1, 2021

admin

A leaked Foreign Office report warned government ministers on 22 July that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would lead to ‘rapid Taliban advances’, a senior Conservative MP has claimed.

Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, told Sky News that the department’s own principle risk report on Afghanistan suggested the country’s cities were in danger of being taken over more than three weeks before the UK government launched Operation Pitting in the middle of August.

Reading the alleged document to MPs during an almost two-hour questioning on the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr Tugendhat said the report stressed the move could lead to “the fall of cities”, the “collapse of security forces” and that the embassy may need to close.

It came as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told MPs that the “central assessment” of ministers had been that Kabul was “unlikely” to fall this year.

Mr Raab said: “The central assessment that we were operating to – and it was certainly backed up by the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) and the military – is that the most likely, the central proposition, was that given the troop withdrawal by the end of August, you’d see a steady deterioration from that point, and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year.”

He noted that this line of thinking remained “until late”, but stressed that work to develop an evacuation plan was ongoing from June.

But Mr Tugendhat, who chaired the gruelling interrogation of Mr Raab over the situation in Afghanistan and served in the region himself, claimed the leaked document stressed the volatile nature of the country much sooner and said there is “an issue with intelligence”.

“The Foreign Office’s own principle risk report highlighted in July, on 22 July, the risk of complete failure in Afghanistan – and now we are seeing, even now, people who didn’t make it out in time,” Mr Tugendhat told Sky News.

“So there is a lesson to be learned there.”

He added: “I’ve spoken to a lot of people in the last few weeks who are very keen that I should understand exactly what has been going on inside the Foreign Office, inside other elements of government.

“And I have been extremely careful in which bits of information I use and which bits I don’t in order to protect absolutely the security of our nation and those areas where we do need to be cautious.

“But I think in a warning like this, which clearly has now been well-overtaken by events, revealing that it was made on 22 July is a matter of public interest.”

Asked if the leaked report was provided by a whistleblower, Mr Tugendhat continued: “It is a report given to me by somebody who was in a position to know.

“Well it is quite clear that there are two kinds of intelligence failures: there are those failures where the intelligence agency failed to provide the intelligence – and that is the traditional meaning of the word.

“And there is a second kind of intelligence failure where whoever is the principle didn’t read it.

“I am afraid you can’t blame the spies if the officers don’t read the report.”

Mr Tugendhat referenced the report, which is not publicly available, during Mr Raab’s committee hearing questioning highlighting that there was a risk Afghanistan could collapse.

The committee chairman read out an extract of the document which stated clearly that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan would result in rapid Taliban advances which could lead to the fall of cities and the collapse of security forces.

Mr Raab asked for the source of the information before flicking through his folder and responding with details about the central assessment – the intelligence picture the Foreign Office was working from when it made decisions about Afghanistan.

This, he said, stated that it was unlikely Kabul would fall before the end of the year.

This assessment, which was backed by the independent Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and military chiefs, remained the driving force behind government policy until “late”, despite other sources which stated more action might need to be taken.

But Mr Tugendhat suggested the JIC assessment appears to be at odds with the department’s own risk report.

The foreign secretary has faced criticism after it emerged he was on holiday in Crete while the Taliban was advancing on Kabul.

The leaked document suggests Mr Raab travelled abroad on holiday after his own department advised Kabul was at imminent risk of falling.

It also poses more questions as to why more was not done sooner to extract British nationals from Afghanistan.

During the committee hearing, Labour MP Chris Bryant asked Mr Raab if he was already on holiday on 11 August – when the US assessed the Taliban were likely to capture the whole of Afghanistan.

He also noted that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Mr Raab and the top civil servant at the Foreign Office were all on holiday at the same time.

The foreign secretary repeatedly refused to answer questions about his trip and said he would not participate in a “fishing exercise”.

Meanwhile, Conservative Bob Seely pressed Mr Raab on why the UK’s intelligence was “clearly wrong” about how quickly the Taliban would take over Afghanistan.

The foreign secretary replied that there was some “optimism” from the US but admits that “clearly” the assessment they could not advance at the speed they did was “not correct”.

Politics

Trump makes big promises about crypto in US — But can he deliver?

Published

8 hours ago

November 2, 2024

admin

Trump makes big promises about crypto in US — But can he deliver?

Trump is making bold promises to capture the attention of the digital asset industry and investors.

Politics

Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

Published

14 hours ago

November 2, 2024

admin

Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

An analyst warns that “volatility” could emerge if the US election results are close, but traders will be relieved once it’s over, giving the market “firmer ground.”

Politics

Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today – but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

Published

16 hours ago

November 2, 2024

admin

Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today - but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

The next leader of the Conservative party will be announced today, following a run-off between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

The winner will replace Rishi Sunak as the leader of the opposition, after he led the party to a crushing election defeat in July, losing almost two thirds of its MPs.

His successor faces the daunting task of rebuilding the Tory party after years of division, scandal and economic turbulence, which saw Labour eject them from power by a landslide.

Politics latest: Budget given ‘clean bill of health’

Voting by tens of thousands of party members, who need to have joined at least 90 days ago, closed on Thursday. Both candidates have claimed the result will be close.

The Conservatives do not disclose how many members the party has, but the figure was about 172,000 in 2022, and research suggests they are disproportionately affluent, older white men.

Both candidates are seen as on the party’s right wing. Kemi Badenoch, 44, is the former trade secretary, who was born in London to middle-class Nigerian parents but spent most of her childhood in Lagos.

After moving back to the UK aged 16, she stayed with a family friend while taking her A-levels, and has spoken of her time working at McDonald’s as a teenager.

Having studied computer science at Sussex University, she then worked as a software engineer before entering London politics and becoming MP for Saffron Walden in Essex in 2017.

Ms Badenoch prides herself on being outspoken and has said the Conservatives lost because they “talked right and governed left”. But her critics paint her as abrasive and prone to misspeaking.

At the Conservative Party conference, a crucial staging post in the contest, she began her speech which followed three other male candidates by saying: “Nice speeches, boys, but I think you all know I’m the one everyone’s been waiting for.”

Her rival Robert Jenrick, 42, has been on a political journey. Elected as a Cameroon Conservative in 2014, he was one of the rising star ministers who swung behind Boris Johnson as prime minister and was later a vocal supporter of Rishi Sunak.

But he resigned as immigration minister in December 2023, claiming Sunak’s government was breaking its promises to cut immigration.

The MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire says he had a “working-class” upbringing in Wolverhampton. He read history at Cambridge University and worked at Christie’s auctioneers before winning a by-election.

After a long ministerial career where he was seen as mild-mannered, he is said to have been “radicalised” by his time at the Home Office and has focused his campaign on a promise to slash immigration and leave the European Convention on Human Rights to “stand for our nation and our culture, our identity and our way of life”.

He has put forward more policies than his rival, but attracted criticism for some of his claims – including that Britain’s former colonies owe the Empire a “debt of gratitude”.

A survey of party members by the website Conservative Home last week put Kemi Badenoch in the lead by 55 points to Mr Jenrick’s 31 with polls still open.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary and seen as a more centrist candidate was knocked out of the race last month. One of his supporters, the Conservative peer and former Scotland leader Ruth Davidson, has predicted neither Mr Jenrick nor Ms Badenoch will stay as leader until the next general election.

She told the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “I’ve now voted for Robert Jenrick, who I don’t think will win. I struggle to believe that the person that’s the next leader of the Tory party is going to take us into the next election in five years’ time and I struggle to believe that they’re going to leave the leadership at a time of their own choosing.”

Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConHome, said the contest which Tory officials decided would take almost three months, has not led to enough scrutiny – because the MP rounds of voting took so long.

“We know much less [about them] than I think we should”, he said. “The problem with this contest is the party decided to go really long, but at the same time, they confined the membership vote – with just the final two – to just three weeks, and ballots dropped halfway through that process.

“We had months and months with loads of candidates in the race, but also that was the MP rounds and you’d think the MPs will have a chance to get to know these people already. For the actual choice the members are going to be making, there has been barely any time to scrutinise that.

He added: “I think the party remembers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak taking weeks to take lumps out of each other in 2022 and wanted to avoid that. But it means the two campaigns haven’t really been attacking each other and that tends to be how you expose people’s weaknesses.”

After 14 years in government under five prime ministers, it is not since David Cameron in 2005 that the party has elected a leader to go into opposition – with a long road until the next general election.

Veteran ex-MP Graham Brady, who served as chair of the backbench 1922 committee, told Sky News that the position was more hopeful than after the 1997 landslide.

He said: “The biggest challenge for a leader of the opposition in these circumstances is just to be heard, to be noticed. I came into the House of Commons in 1997 at the time of that huge Blair landslide.

“We worked very, very hard in opposition during that parliament, and at the next general election [in 2001], we made a net gain of one seat.

“Now, there is a huge difference between now and 1997. The Blair government remained very popular and Tony Blair personally remained very popular through that whole parliament and beyond. And in 100 days or so, Keir Starmer has already fallen way behind.

“So I think we’ve got a great opportunity. I don’t think we’re up against an insuperable challenge, but it’s a big challenge.”

Kate Fall, now Baroness Fall, worked with Lord Cameron in opposition and later in Downing Street when he was prime minister in the coalition government. She said the next leader needed to keep the party “united and disciplined”.

“The first thing is to think about why we lost. The second thing is what do we have to say? Then they need to be agile, they need to be reactive, but pick their fight, not fight over everything. They also need to get out and about,” she said.

Lord Cameron travelled around the country holding question and answer sessions called Cameron Direct. “When you’re prime minister, you can’t do that as much as you like. But as leader of the opposition you can get out, talk to people, we thought it was very trendy to have a podcast and so on.”

She says this week’s budget gives the next leader “an ideological divide” to get into, but warns that the next leader must not risk alienating former Tories who switched to Labour and the Lib Dems.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

The leader of the opposition will cut their teeth at weekly Prime Minister’s Questions sessions opposite Sir Keir Starmer and respond to set piece events such as the budget.

They will need to get the party’s campaign machine ready for the local elections in England in May 2025, Scottish elections in 2026 and the next general election expected in 2029.