Afghanistan

That's a brilliant article Doug

Thanks

Makes me wonder if interferring in these places is ever anything more than counterproductive. Waht do you think?

Mistakes have been made, as Doug's link eloquently explains, but equally it was always going to be an enormous task to create lasting democracy and impose "western" values

The British and the Russians have been meddling in the region for ages... look up 'the great game'.

The British rubbed their hands with glee in anticipation of the spoils when the Ottoman Empire fell.

Much of the ongoing strife across the Middle East and Central Asia is a result of British policy.

Can't help feeling we are being subjected to some kind of mind game.

And gaslit to accept anything these people do as business as usual, no matter how corrupt hypocritical and plain wrong.

Stephen Bush, who knows his onions...

Taxi for Dominic Raab? The Foreign Secretary is under fire after revelations in today's Mail that, despite the advice of his officials that a call to his Afghan opposite number Hanif Atmar needed to come from him, not a junior minister, the call was passed down the food chain to Zac Goldsmith, the junior minister on duty, while Raab holidayed in Crete last week.

The Mail is calling on Raab to resign for his failure to intervene to help the Afghan interpreters, as are Labour and the Liberal Democrats. And while Conservative MPs aren't quite ready to join in, they aren't far off. Both Raab and Boris Johnson's appearance in Parliament yesterday disappointed and irritated Conservative MPs. That is particularly difficult for Raab, because while Johnson's political appeal among Tory MPs has never been based on the idea he was the best administrator or the best available candidate to be Prime Minister, but on his electability, Raab's stock among MPs has always relied upon the fact he is seen as a capable minister.

But the biggest problem for Raab is that he has become the scapegoat in the minds of many Conservative MPs for events in Afghanistan. While you can make any number of reasonable political arguments about why staying on holiday was a bad look on Raab's part, as I write in my column this week, the actual on-the-ground difference it made was zero.

The Afghanistan operation was always an American-dominated one, and the British military presence there essentially came to a close in 2014. There is no meaningful prospect from a logistical perspective of the United Kingdom being able to fill the gap left by the Americans, whether alone or with our European allies, not least because in addition to a decade of spending cuts, France and Italy are still heavily involved in Libya, and much of Europe, including the UK, has a committed and active presence in the Western Sahel.

And that's before you get into the question of whether there would be any realistic political prospect of voters in Europe being willing to support an indefinite commitment in Afghanistan.

But the problem for the British government is that Boris Johnson was unable to articulate any of that yesterday in the House of Commons, in part because none of that is really the product of a coherent strategy on the UK's part.

We are closely involved with European defence and foreign policy in Africa and in Eastern Europe because we've decided that our European interests is best served by heavy alignment with the nations of the EU. But our approach to the Northern Ireland protocol means that the EU-UK relationship will be heavily antagonistic, and that in public, ministers have to downplay the extent to which the UK co-operates with the EU on defence and foreign policy.

Our China policy is to be at loggerheads with China over Hong Kong but to further cede ground to their 'Belt and Road' initiative by cutting back foreign aid. Our American policy is based on ensuring proximity to the United States - other that is, on Northern Ireland.

The spin on this used to be that our policy is one of careful pragmatism and issue-by-issue diplomacy. The reality is that our policy lacks strategy and direction. Dominic Raab isn't the reason for that, but he may yet end up as the scapegoat.

The Scarborough Grand Hotel barely a minutes walk from my shop is housing just under a hundred Afghan refugees, half adults half children. There has been a fantastic rally round by the local community supplying them with clothes and other essentials.

Few right wing fuckheads crawled out of the woodwork to moan, groan and whataboutery of local homeless. Brave men that they are, it's just hot air on social media.