The government is refusing to carry out a “no-holds barred” inquiry into British involvement in Afghanistan after the Taliban retook power.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the MP-demanded review would have “limited” value and would consume “considerable resource.”
Defence Committee Chairman Tobias Ellwood said the “frustrating” refusal would prevent lessons being learned, as he argued delays had been seen in the ongoing Sudan evacuation.
The cross-party group of MPs he leads called for an inquiry to be carried out into the 20-year deployment of troops in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
They wanted this to include the airlifts that rescued 15,000 people at risk from the Taliban storming back to power but which left many behind in jeopardy.
However, the government responded to the committee saying: “The MoD assesses that the value of a further wide-ranging review of the totality of the Afghanistan campaign is limited, would absorb considerable resource and does not coincide with the now-published Integrated Review.”
Ellwood said it was clear that both Parliament and the government are “equally dismayed and disheartened by the tragic outcome in Afghanistan.”
“However, it is frustrating that the government has not agreed to a no-holds barred review of the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan, as was recommended by the Defence Committee,” he said.
The Tory MP said that without a public inquiry the country will not learn from the “dark chapter in UK military history.”
“While there are significant differences between the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the current crisis in Sudan, it is disappointing that it appears to have taken the UK longer than our allies to get vulnerable citizens to safety,” he added.
Lessons Learnt
Published on Friday, the government response (pdf) to the committee’s fifth report on the British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan revealed that more than 3,000 people eligible to come to the UK are still trapped.In 2021, the UK organised a hurried evacuation to get vulnerable Afghans and British citizens out of the country after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
The report states that the UK had resettled over 12,200 vulnerable Afghans including some 5,000 since the end of Operation Pitting, Britain’s military response to evacuate UK nationals and eligible Afghans following the 2021 Taliban offensive.
The government said it was continuing with relocation efforts, stating: “Due to operational security considerations, we are unable to provide specific details on our ongoing relocation efforts inside Afghanistan and with our third country partners.
“However, a finite number of Afghans are eligible for ARAP and we estimate from HMG records that fewer than 620 Afghans eligible for relocation to the UK under ARAP remain inside Afghanistan. We are committed to finding and relocating them and their family members—approximately 3,075 people in total.”
The report concedes that “numerous lessons” from “tactical to strategic” had been learnt.
“Lessons learnt from Afghanistan have contributed to the revised thinking present in the Integrated Review (Refresh) work,” it states.
“The MOD assesses that the value of a further wide-ranging review of the totality of the Afghanistan Campaign is limited, would absorb considerable resource and does not coincide with the now-published Integrated Review (Refresh).”
‘Time Running Out’
The response comes as another evacuation is taking place in Sudan.The UK government has faced questions over removing diplomats and their families from the country before helping other British nationals and was further criticised for taking longer than some other European nations to put a plan in place.
The Foreign Office said 897 people had now been evacuated over eight flights as of 4 p.m. on Thursday, and there were “further flights to come.”
On Monday, defence minister James Heappey said it is “too dangerous” to send British troops to rescue UK citizens from fighting in Sudan.
Heappey claimed the situation in Khartoum is “very different” from the 2021 Afghanistan evacuation, and a plan to deploy armed forces would be “unhelpful and unrealistic.”
MPs have warned the government “time is running out” and swift action must be taken to help UK nationals trapped in Sudan.
A team of British troops were understood to have been flown into Port Sudan to scope out the options for any rescue mission of civilians.
But Heappey told LBC’s Andrew Marr on Monday night: “I think people will have the evacuation from Kabul very firmly in mind. That’s the last time we saw this sort of event. But Kabul was very different.”
Asked whether it was simply too dangerous to try to use British forces to extract people, he replied: “Yes. The danger is that other than the very tight and controlled mission that we did Saturday into Sunday to extract the diplomats over which we had a very tight degree of control.
“Beyond that, we would effectively be inserting foreign troops, not just us there’ll be other countries that would want to do it, into the parts of Khartoum that has been the most hotly fought over.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chaired an emergency Cobra meeting earlier on Monday, but there remain no plans to evacuate British citizens.
RFA Cardigan Bay and HMS Lancaster were being lined up as options to help people out of the war-torn country, where at least 2,000 UK citizens remain after UK diplomats were removed.
