UK Minister's tears for Afghanistan: Defence Secretary Ben Wallace BREAKS DOWN as he admits 'some people won't get back' but vows to fly hundreds of Afghans out in the next 36 hours

Ben Wallace: From Sandhurst to Defence Secretary

Ben Wallace had a proud military career before going into politics, having seen service in Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus and Central America.

He attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before being commissioned as an Officer into the Scots Guards, and was mentioned in dispatches in 1992 for helping to foil an IRA bomb plot.

Mr Wallace then first entered politics as a Member of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, before moving to Lancashire and being elected to the UK House of Parliament in 2005.

He worked as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ken Clarke QC, as Justice Secretary, and has served as a whip, the Northern Ireland Minister and more recent as the UK’s longest serving Security Minister.

In July 2019 he was appointed Defence Secretary, and his responsibilities include strategic operations and operational strategy, including as a member of the National Security Council.

He is also responsible for strategic international partnerships with the US, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and NATO.

Ben Wallace choked up today as he vowed to fly hundreds of desperate Afghans out of the country within the next 36 hours - but insisted sending UK troops back in is not 'on the cards'.

The Defence Secretary was overcome with emotion as he talked about the consequences of the collapse of the Western-trained Afghan army, after the Taliban walked into Kabul and took charge of the presidential palace.

He said the crisis had become inevitable after a deal was struck with the extremists and the US pulled out, and the focus was now on evacuating British nationals, interpreters and others who might be subject to reprisals.

But he conceded that 'some people won't get back'. 'It is sad the West has done what it has done,' he said. 'Twenty years of sacrifice.. is what it is.'

Mr Wallace - who himself served in the military before entering politics - said he felt the issue so deeply because he was a soldier.

The comments came amid rising fury about the dramatic developments in Afghanistan, after Joe Biden stepped up the timetable for withdrawing US troops.

Around 4,000 British nationals and eligible Afghans are thought to be in Kabul and in need of evacuation.

Some 700 UK personnel are deployed at the airport, with Mr Wallace insisting the key areas are still secure despite chaotic scenes and reports of several people being killed when they fell from aircraft. The US has 5,000 troops in place.

In a sign of the desperation, the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow is believed to be helping the small team of diplomats still in the country to process the applications of those hoping to leave.

There is particular concern for the safety of Afghans who worked with British forces when they were in the country as interpreters and in other roles amid fears of reprisals if they fall into the hands of the insurgents.

Tories have accused ministers of displaying 'boredom' in their attitude towards the long-running military campaign, branding the defeat the worst foreign policy setback since Suez.

As the drama intensified today:

Scramble to evacuate as UK pledges visas

Afghans whose lives are at risk from the Taliban will be able to come to Britain.

Government sources said the Home Office will set up a specific new visa route for those fleeing turmoil in the country.

'We will make sure there is a bespoke route for Afghans in need,' said a Home Office source. 'We'll ensure that we are leading the world on that.'

Exact details of the resettlement scheme had not been finalised last night but the source insisted it would be 'generous'.

It is understood that the visa scheme will be closely based on an existing project run from 2014 to March this year that brought 20,000 Syrians to the UK with refugee status.

Former national security adviser Lord Sedwill said it was an 'humiliating' moment for the West and warned terror groups would be 'emboldened'.

The peer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'This is a humiliating moment for the West.

'Afghan citizens are fearful, extremists everywhere will be emboldened, they've been quieter since the end of Islamic State - they will be emboldened.'

The Taliban insist they are seeking a peaceful takeover of power and will not persecute those who had worked with the Afghan government or with foreign forces.

However those assurances were being treated with deep scepticism by many British MPs amid reports of threats to those who remain and their families.

Labour has called on the Government to urgently expand the resettlement scheme for Afghans to ensure that none were left behind.

Boris Johnson has agreed to recall Parliament this week as he faces the fury of Tory backbenchers over Britain's 'humiliation' in Afghanistan.

MPs will hold a five-hour debate on Wednesday – the first time that they have been called back from their summer recess since 2013.

But the move was dismissed as too little, too late now that the Taliban has already seized control – with one senior Tory calling Afghanistan's collapse 'the biggest single policy disaster' since the Suez Crisis in 1956.

The Prime Minister appeared to blame the US. He said it was 'fair to say the US decision to pull out has accelerated things, but this has in many ways been a chronicle of an event foretold ... we've known for a long time that this was the way things were going.'

Pressed on whether there was any prospect of troops returning to Kabul, Mr Wallace told Sky News: 'No, look that's not on the cards that we're going to go back.'

He added: 'The US have made itself clear that they're not intending to stay and as the framework nation that leaves us with difficult choices and I've been pretty much honest about that all the way through this process.'

On the airlift of British nationals, he added: 'The military flights are coming in and out, they've just brought in more UK soldiers.

Ex-Nato chief says Raab's holiday amid Afghan crisis 'staggering'

A former Nato chief has said they are 'staggered' Dominic Raab was on holiday as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

Lord Robertson, a Labour minister before becoming secretary-general of the military alliance said the situation had not been taken 'seriously'.

'You've got to be on duty during that sort of period where we are so deeply and intimately involved in it,' he told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme.

Looking at the British handling of the war in Afghanistan in the past 20 years, the former Nato secretary-general said: 'We bear a big responsibility ourselves.

'We never really took Afghanistan and the conflict there with the seriousness that it demanded.

'We sent people into danger, troops into danger and people died and yet we were not fully, it would appear, committed to the campaign that was going on there.

'I've been critical all along about our country not taking this situation seriously and now the chickens have come home to roost and we're facing a humiliation and a disaster for all of our people.'

'Border Force is joining us to make sure that we accelerate the process to get more Afghans out, which is our obligation. We flew out 370 staff and British citizens, eligible personnel yesterday and the day before and we'll continue to engage those flights.

'The next group of Afghans to come out will be 782 and we'll make sure we get them in the next 24 to 36 hours out of the country and are continuing to process those people.'

He went on: 'My job as as defence secretary is to make sure that we protect not only the UK nationals, but those Afghans we have an obligation to, that is actually why we're in the country. For the last few weeks we've been in the country solely to process those people and to make sure we protect our officials doing that job and we'll continue to do so.'

Mr Wallace - who was a captain in the Scots Guards and saw service in Northern Ireland - told BBC Breakfast it will not be possible to get everyone out of Afghanistan, with the previous August 31 evacuation timetable now in tatters.

'With the US' removal of the framework, the military might and the speed of the Afghan government collapse, it's simply not possible for us to send small bands of troops miles into Afghanistan to find people if they're not able to be found,' he said.

'It is a deep regret that we have gone to a position we have, I haven't hidden that over the last few weeks. We are doing everything we can to get those people out.'

Asked if translators who have helped British citizens are eligible to come to the UK, he said: 'Yes, they are. People who are eligible are people who have worked for us in what we call public-facing roles, people who've worked for us but are not in public-facing roles, contractors and third parties … and any other special cases.'

Outlining the process of checking people who are being flown to the UK from Afghanistan, he added: 'We do have to make sure that some of the people we're bringing back aren't affiliated to either a terrorist organisation or the Taliban, which, I'm afraid, a very, very small number have been.

'They might not have worked for us for 10, 12, 15 years, so we have to see that they are right. We're doing our very best to make sure we do not discriminate against those people who are fully legitimate to come here.'

Challenged that the Taliban had 'won', Mr Wallace said: 'I don't know about a win, I think, I acknowledge that the Taliban are in control of the country. You don't have to be a political scientist to spot that's where we're at.'

Last night Mr Johnson vowed to work with allies to prevent Afghanistan again becoming a 'breeding ground for terrorism'.

After chairing a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee, he admitted the situation in the country was 'extremely difficult' and was 'getting more difficult'.

In an apparent admission that the West is now powerless to resist the Taliban takeover, the Prime Minister said he wanted a co-ordinated response to the coup 'in the coming months'.

He called on the international community to not 'prematurely' recognise any new government without agreement amid fears that Russian or China could unilaterally move to endorse the regime.

'We want a united position among all the like-minded, as far as we can get one, so that we do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into a breeding ground for terror,' he said after meeting Team GB's Olympic heroes at an event in Wembley.

Taliban commander 'spent eight years in Guantanamo Bay'

A Taliban commander claimed he spent eight years in Guantanamo Bay in a triumphant speech from inside the Presidential Palace in Kabul as the militants declared an Islamic state of Afghanistan after the country's president joined thousands of Afghan nationals in a mass exodus.

Taliban fighters marched into the ancient palace on Sunday and demanded a 'peaceful transfer of power' as the capital city descended into chaos, with US helicopters evacuating diplomats from the embassy in scenes echoing the 1975 Fall of Saigon which followed the Vietnam War.

There were chaotic scenes at Kabul airport where thousands of desperate Afghans are gathering in an attempt to flee the country. Fighting and stampedes broke out between passengers before commercial flights were stopped and only military planes departed the terminals which are now guarded by US troops.

The Al-Jazeera news channel livestreamed the press conference from inside the palace, which showed a group of Taliban fighters sitting at the President's desk before a fighter claimed he was a former inmate of the US-controlled Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.

Established by George W Bush in 2002, suspected terrorists have been detained without trial and tortured at the facility. Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the centre open indefinitely in 2018, while in February the Biden administration vowed to shut Guantanamo down.

A spokesman for the Taliban's political office told Al-Jazeera TV on Sunday that the war is over in Afghanistan and that the type of rule and the form of regime will be clear soon.

'What we're dealing with now is the very likely advent of a new regime in Kabul. We don't know exactly what kind of a regime that will be. What we want to do is make sure that we as the UK pull together our international partners, our like-minded partners, so that we deal with that regime in a concerted way.'

The Prime Minister, who yesterday held calls with Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, said there should be meetings of Nato's North Atlantic Council and the UN Security Council as soon as possible.

But senior Tories have voiced anger at the way Afghanistan has been abandoned to its fate, 20 years after international forces entered the country.

Former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox said: 'The situation in Afghanistan has all the elements of a strategic disaster.

'A democratic government removed by military force, a Taliban-enforced brutal Islamic State and the door opening again for Al Qaeda and similar groups who will threaten our safety and security.'

Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said that the country's collapse was 'the biggest single policy disaster since' the Suez Crisis in 1956. The Tory MP, who served as an Army officer in Afghanistan, said the priority had to be to get as many people out of Kabul as possible.

'The real danger is that we are going to see every female MP murdered, we are going to see ministers strung up on street lamps,' he told BBC News.

Tobias Ellwood, a former captain in the British Army and chairman of the defence select committee, criticised the West for pulling out of Afghanistan.

Appearing on Sky News, he said: 'The world is now a little bit more dangerous because they've now taken control of the country, and the West should really hang its head in shame after abruptly abandoning Afghanistan to a civil war after two decades of effort.'

He added: 'This is not a good day for the West at all, and China will be observing things very, very closely indeed. They are already making alliances with the Taliban and glossing over the human rights atrocities that are likely to unfold.'

MPs who want to speak at the debate will have to be in the chamber as virtual arrangements are no longer in place. Peers will also hold an emergency sitting in the Lords.

The last time MPs were recalled during summer recess was in 2013 following the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

By Mark Almond for the Daily Mail

As the West's orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan yesterday degenerated into a panic-stricken race for the exits, the question is: How on earth did the Taliban succeed in defeating a much larger army, with far superior weaponry, in such a short space of time?

After all, the Afghan security services had 180,000 combat troops to call upon, while even the most generous estimates of the Taliban's strength put it at 85,000 fighters.

The answer lies to a great degree in a matter as prosaic as hard cash. Many Afghan soldiers had not been paid for months.

There have been widespread reports that ever since President Biden announced the withdrawal of US troops, corrupt officials at the Ministry of Defence in Kabul have been stashing funds earmarked for soldiers' pay into their own offshore bank accounts in Zurich and Doha .

The Afghan security services had 180,000 combat troops to call upon, while even the most generous estimates of the Taliban's strength put it at 85,000 fighters. Taliban fighters are pictured above

Faced with bloodthirsty Taliban fighters on the one hand and no support from the US Marines on the other, it's hardly surprising that so many unpaid government troops surrendered and handed over their weapons, often with the added incentive of a $500 handout from the enemy to fund their journey home.

Some were even prepared to take off their uniforms, grow a beard and join the winning side.

The Taliban is certainly well-placed to display such largesse. Thanks to its stranglehold on Afghanistan's multi-billion-dollar opium trade and revenue from a growing number of customs points, its income has shot up in recent weeks.

The great Prussian Field Marshal Moltke used to tell students in the military academy that 'the greatest good deed in war is the speedy ending of the war'. He meant that a drawn-out battle for supremacy would only add to the death toll on both sides. You could argue that the Taliban's lightning takeover of Afghanistan in a few weeks shows that they have taken on board the Moltke doctrine.

They took city after city without a fight and without bloodshed on the scale that many had feared. In the short term, at least, they will be focused on consolidating power rather than seeking retribution.

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick. Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o

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