Yes, the Taliban have humiliated the west – but more importantly, did our soldiers die in vain?

The narrative that the USA and its allies are in terminal decline will have been reinforced by the crisis in Afghanistan, says Vince Cable. The world will become a more dangerous place now

Taliban fighters on patrol inside the city of Kandahar (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

One of the most significant and testing duties in my years as MP in Twickenham was to speak at the British Legion on Remembrance Sunday. My task, as someone who had never served in the forces but as a politician who had voted for several military actions, was to honour the casualties of war. I was there to reassure the survivors and descendants that their losses were not in vain.

After the UK commitment to a continuing Nato-led force in Afghanistan in 2006, every year mention was made of Britain’s dead soldiers in Afghanistan and the many thousands wounded, some of whom also brought their physical injuries and mental scars to my advice surgeries.

My rather glib words were along the lines that, unlike the earlier intervention in Iraq, this war was legal, jointly undertaken with many allies and also just, prompted by the hospitality the Taliban had given to Al-Qaeda terrorists and its brutally literal interpretation of Islam, especially in relation to women.

On reflection, I should perhaps have added my private thoughts that our involvement was unwise. I remembered studying the First Afghan War and the events of 1841 when a British column of 16,000, including 4,500 soldiers, was wiped out by a 19th-century version of the Taliban. We, and the Americans and Russians, should have learned from the past.

I don’t claim to know Afghanistan. I travelled around the country as a student over 50 years ago when it enjoyed a period of relative peace under a monarchy, while the Americans and Russians jostled for influence, building roads at opposite ends of the country. I had two abiding memories. One was of being moved by the beauty of the mosque in Herat, and the hypnotic effect of the regular calls to prayer, as I sat reading and contemplating in its welcome shade, while my friends recovered, in a nearby hotel, from a bout of dysentery.

The other recollection was of the eyes of the men (the women were hidden behind burqas). Elsewhere in the region, people engaged with you in expressions of friendship, hostility, deference or curiosity; the Afghans looked straight through you. We were no more relevant, or welcome, than the buzzing flies. I saw the same expression – indifference? Contempt? – in the eyes of the fighters interviewed this week as they showed off their guns in captured towns.

There is little doubt of the scale of the humiliation inflicted on the USA – and us – by the swift collapse of both the Afghan armed forces we had armed and trained for this eventuality and of the regime which was the product of two decades of democratic institution building. Nothing symbolises the hollowness of the structures we had created than the swift exodus of the president, his ministers and MPs as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.

One sobering thought is that the Soviet Union’s similar defeat in Afghanistan contributed to the collapse of the USSR. The hated communist regime of Najibullah, which the Soviets supported, survived for a couple of years after the Red Army left, through cruelty and cunning. Western “liberal democracy”, by contrast, has collapsed within days.

Is there even the tiniest flicker of light? We are told that there is a “new” Taliban who are more modern: not exactly westernised men in suits but fighters capable of issuing reassuring press releases and sitting down for talks. Early reports are that girls will be allowed to go to school until puberty, which sounds reassuring until you think of the thousands of young women already being evicted from universities and secondary schools to concentrate on (forced) marriage and domestic duties.

The fall-out from this disaster is, as yet, unknown, but can be dimly discerned through the panic and confusion. There are those in Afghanistan who put their faith in western values and institutions and have now been left to their fate: “betrayed” as Rory Stewart put it (he being one of the very few westerners with any real feel for the country).

Then there is the impact on US politics. There is little doubt that Trump paved the way for US withdrawal but, like his innumerable other acts of omission and commission, his role will be forgotten or forgiven by his voters. Joe Biden will carry the can.

Pollsters say that American voters have no interest in this far-away country of which they know little other than as a graveyard for American troops. But I suspect this shameful episode will have a broader effect on voters’ views of the president. The administration’s credibility has been shredded. Legislation will become more difficult to pass. The ascendent, Trump-inspired, right wing of the Republicans will be energised by the first big failure of the Democrats in office. That cannot be good news in America or the world at large.

Meanwhile, the narrative heard in Beijing and elsewhere that the USA and the west in general are in terminal decline will have been reinforced: the financial crisis; Trump; Brexit; now, this military and political failure and abandonment of allies. Unfriendly governments may be tempted to try their luck with some foray which will further highlight American weakness: in the Gulf or the Baltics or Ukraine or the South China Sea. And the Americans will then be tempted to overreact to prove that they haven’t lost their mojo. The world will become a more dangerous place.

Then there are the terrorist groups. The men who planned the demolition of the Twin Towers on 9/11 are back, or at least those who survived two decades hiding in Afghan caves or in the sanctuary of the Pakistan Northwest Frontier. Having seen their influence – and that of the rival Islamic State – boosted in the Sahel region of Africa and in Syria, they are now back to establish a secure base in a country where they are almost invulnerable. That isn’t good news for us, or for countries in the region – India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines – which have been battling Islamic terrorism with varying degrees of success and ruthlessness.

There will certainly be refugees. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? The present trickle could soon become a flood, potentially destabilising Pakistan, Iran and the adjacent “Stans”. They will spill over into Turkey which has made it clear it doesn’t want them and will in turn pass them on to Western Europe wherever they can get through the fences.

When they reach Calais, there will be families in small boats trying to beat the Patel blockade to reach the UK to unite with families and friends who have refugee status.

There is an intriguing moral dilemma looming: are we going to allow people to come and live here to save their lives, just as we were willing to send our troops to die to protect them at home? Judging by the government decision to refuse visas to highly vulnerable British Council staff, the government’s moral compass is firmly set in the direction of Conservative voters who – YouGov tells us – regard “immigration” as the country’s biggest challenge.

Whether it is due to political considerations of this kind or the sheer embarrassment of having sent hundreds of British soldiers to die, only to have the “enemy” return comprehensively within days of troops leaving, there are rumours of ministers’ determination to hang on in Afghanistan even after the Americans pull out. With our French friends, possibly? Maybe they have forgotten Suez. Or even forgotten Brexit?

The ugly truth is that “global Britain” does what the Americans tell us to do: no more, no less. With this week’s instructions – “run!” – comes a tragic, unforgivable sense that those who served and died over two decades did so in vain.