The last remaining UK troops began landing back from Kabul in Britain on Sunday, ending the country’s 20-year campaign in Afghanistan where the Taliban have seized power.
The Taliban insurgents stormed across the country on Assumption , capturing all major cities during a matter of days, fortnight before the US was set to finish its troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war.
A Royal Air Force (RAF) plane left Kabul airport on Saturday night and received RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, including with British ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Laurie Bristow who had been assisting the evacuation process.
Vice-Admiral Sir Ben Key, who ran the UK’s evacuation dubbed Operation Pitting, said there was a “sense of sadness that we’ve not done all we might have wished”.
In a video posted on Twitter on Sunday morning, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the top of Operation Pitting was the “culmination of a mission unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes”, which British troops and officials had “worked round the clock to a remorseless deadline in harrowing conditions”.
“They have expended all the patience and care and thought they possess to assist people in fear for his or her lives,” said Johnson. “They’ve seen initially hand barbaric terrorist attacks on the queues of individuals they were trying to comfort, also as on our American friends. They didn’t flinch. They kept calm. They got on with the work ,” he said.
In a letter to the soldiers community, Johnson acknowledged the autumn of Kabul to the Taliban would are hard for them to observe and “an especially difficult time for the buddies and loved ones of the 457 service personnel who laid down their lives” during the war.
He noted that the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan “kept Al Qaeda from our door for 2 decades and that we are all safer as a result”.
Paying tribute to the efforts of UK forces since 2001, he added: “Though we might not have wished to go away during this way, we’ve to recognise that we came in with the us , in defence and support of the US and therefore the US military did the overwhelming bulk of the fighting.”
“Together with our allies in America and Europe and round the world, we’ll engage with the Taliban not on the idea of what they assert but what they are doing ,” Johnson said.
Describing the conclusion of the campaign launched by former British prime minister Blair as a time for reflection, Johnson reiterated a previous statement that if the new regime in Kabul wanted diplomatic recognition, or to unlock the billions that are currently frozen, they’re going to need to ensure “safe passage” for those that wish to go away the country, to respect the rights of girls and girls and to stop Afghanistan from becoming “an incubator for global terror”.
Writing in ‘The Sunday Telegraph’, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the united kingdom was able to consider sanctions against the militants – but this is able to “depend on the alternatives the Taliban make on key issues” – including on enabling safe passage out of the country.
The UK government has said it intends to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul “as soon because the security and political situation within the country allows”.
Downing Street said the amount of individuals evacuated from Afghanistan included about 2,200 children, with the youngest born to an Afghan refugee on one among the evacuation flights.
About 5,000 British nationals and their families were airlifted, alongside quite 8,000 Afghan former UK staff and their families and people considered in danger from the Taliban.
It has been the UK’s largest military evacuation since war II.
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said he thought between 800 and 1,100 eligible Afghans would be left behind, along side around 100 to 150 Britons – although he said a number of those were staying willingly.
