On September 15, 2021, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was dismissed.
The British press stated the reason directly: "Dominic Raab paid the price for the Afghan defeat" (Evening Standard).
What happened in Afghanistan so catastrophic that the entire head of the Foreign Office was publicly fired from his post under the clamor of the press?
This story is worth telling.
Well, firstly, Dominic Raab (47 years old) is a fairly young foreign minister, even in the context that he has headed the British Foreign Office since 2019, and he is the closest associate of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Looking ahead, I will say that Raab was not expelled from the government in disgrace.
No.
He simply moved to another cabinet, taking over as Minister of Justice, Lord Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister.
In short, Raab was simply made a lightning rod and the culprit of the British failure in Afghanistan.
The attacks on him began in August, when he went on vacation to the island of Crete, and the Taliban *, taking advantage of his vacation, decided to take over Kabul.
Some British media write that Raab was sunbathing in a sun lounger when he received a panic call from Kabul asking how to urgently evacuate the British and Afghans who worked for the British government.
Instead of answering the call, he “forwarded” it to his assistant.
Vacation, they say, is a sacred thing.
Other media write that he himself did not even call Afghan Foreign Minister Hanif Atmar during the Taliban's avalanche attack on Kabul.
And shocked by Mr. Raab's "vacation" and his refusal to answer phone calls from Kabul, the head of the Afghan Foreign Ministry responsible for the evacuation of foreign diplomatic missions did not speak with Raab's junior aide.
In general, it is clear that this is a dark matter.
Political opponents - mainly Labor - accused Raab and the Boris Johnson government in general of “sleeping at work during the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, and also showing indifference and disregard for the Afghans who served Britain faithfully and are now in mortal danger in Afghanistan ”.
“As the Taliban advanced into Kabul, when every hour, every minute mattered in maintaining the gains the British military have paid with huge personal sacrifices over these 20 years, he didn’t even pick up the phone,” Shadow Foreign Minister Liz Nandi said. ...
“That phone call didn't matter anyway, since the Afghan government was melting faster than ice,” Defense Minister Ben Wallace defended Raab.
On Tuesday, August 31, 2021, when Kabul fell and the Taliban effectively took over the country, the Foreign Minister returned to London and held an answer to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
In the same place, he vaguely stated that "he plans to go to the region" in the coming days.
Committee Chairman Tom Tugendhat asked Raab, "Is this your first trip to Pakistan?"
“I've been to Pakistan before, but not as foreign minister,” Raab replied.
That is, Raab is no stranger to Pakistani intricacies.
So what do we have?
The withdrawal of American troops went according to plan, and, of course, the government of Great Britain - the old, historically most influential player in the region - knew about the progress of the withdrawal of American troops and the statements and plans of the Taliban.
However, in mid-August, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is leaving on vacation in Crete, where he lies in a sun lounger in the sun and allegedly does not pick up the phone when he gets a call.
And the Taliban, as if trying to be in time, at this time take Kabul with lightning speed - amid the howling of the progressive Western, including the British, public.
Raab returns to London when the battle for Kabul (and for Afghanistan as a whole) has been won outright by the Taliban.
Someone should be extreme in the fact that England did not save the Ghani government, as quietly merged as the Americans, although the same The Guardian wrote all summer about how the commander of the British Army Sir Nick Carter uses all his top connections in Kabul and Islamabad in behind-the-scenes negotiations to prevent a civil war in Afghanistan and facilitate peace negotiations.
Like, Britain rules.
And yes, it contributes to the formation of that very "inclusive" government, where all peoples and races will happily rule the new Afghanistan.
In May 2021, the commander of the British army, General Sir Carter, flew to Kabul in a private jet along with the chief of staff of the Pakistani army, Qamar Javed Bajwa (the number 1 man in Pakistan, his real, not a fake ruler), and there, together with President Ashraf Ghani, they decided the future fate of Afghanistan.
You catch a bunch, right?
Britain and Pakistan are deciding the fate of post-American Afghanistan.
But what went wrong then?
Or was this the scenario?
Because in August, the name of Dominic Raab, who became almost the only one in Britain responsible for the Taliban seizure of Afghanistan and for the fact that London suddenly disappeared somewhere behind the scenes, while history was being made, was already in full swing on the front pages of British newspapers.
But note: Despite scandals, calls to parliament and demands for his resignation, Raab remained in office in August.
He was to take on another public blow.
The Pakistani newspaper Dawn on September 3, 2021 at 8 am publishes the news of the arrival of British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in Pakistan.
The purpose of the visit is to discuss with Pakistan on bilateral cooperation in resolving the situation in Afghanistan.
Raab arrived in Islamabad for a two-day visit, media reported.
On September 3, he meets with Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistani counterpart, Pakistani Foreign Minister Mahmoud Qureishi.
A souvenir photo, “Pakistan is a vital partner of Great Britain”, we smile and wave.
The UK government website on September 3 also announces Raab's later meeting with the commander of the Pakistani army, General Bajwa.
The highest level of political decision making.
And it looks like those very decisions were made.
For the next day the British Foreign Secretary is in Pakistan, while he is drinking tea there with Prime Minister Imran Khan, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Faiz Hamid flies from Islamabad to Kabul.
He, like Raab in Pakistan, will stay there for two days.
“What are you going to do in Afghanistan?
Are you going to meet with the Taliban leadership? "
- meets him upon arrival in the Afghan capital Lindsy Hislum, a correspondent for British Channel 4.
“Don't worry, everything will be okay,” Hamid smiles.
"We are working towards peace and stability in Afghanistan."
"Will you be meeting senior people in the Taliban?" @ Lindseyhilsum asks Pakistan's intelligence chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, about their hopes for Afghanistan as he arrives in Kabul.
pic.twitter.com/rp72c8Si9E
- Channel 4 News (@ Channel4News) September 4, 2021
On the same day, Fahim Dashty, a spokesman for the Resistance Front, tweets a photo of the site blown up by resistance forces at the entrance to the Panjshir Valley, and writes that "about 600 Taliban have been killed."
Dashti also comments on the arrival of the ISI head in Kabul, claiming that his goal is to reconcile the "Quetta Shura" with the "Haqqani Network" and help the Taliban in military planning.
They say, despite all the efforts, the Taliban militants trapped in Panjshir cannot advance further and suffer serious losses.
Late in the evening of September 4, the Telegram channel Sputnik Afghanistan and many other media and social networks publish videos of missile attacks on Panjshir - in the dark, like discharges of electric lightning, fire arcs hit the ground and explode.
On September 5, it is reported that the same speaker of the Front of the Resistance, Fahim Dashti, was killed as a result of nighttime rocket attacks.
Like many other resistance fighters and commanders in Panjshir.
Ziya Arianejad, a deputy from Samangan province, said the attacks on Panjshir were carried out by guided missiles from Pakistani UAVs (Aamaj News, Sputnik Afghanistan, WION).
On September 6, 2021, Iranian Foreign Minister Said Khatibzade said that Tehran "seriously condemns the attacks on Panjshir, committed last night, and is studying reports of Taliban cooperation with Pakistan."
Afghanistan took to the streets with anti-Pakistani slogans, an angry crowd tried to break through to the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, virtually all world media condemned Pakistan, which did not officially recognize the participation of its air force and drones in the attack on Panjshir.
(Well, this is a classic scheme: even in 1998, the Taliban did not take responsibility for the killed Iranian diplomats at the consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif for a long time, publicly declaring that they were alive and in a safe place, and Pakistan itself denies direct contacts to this day with the Taliban and what has some influence on him).
In general, at one point Pakistan, which was the most influential state in the region in the Afghan settlement, almost became a world aggressor with the prospect of finding itself in international isolation.
(You can just sell tickets for the master class "How to kill all your successes in two days").
So, what does British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have to do with it, you ask?
This is the main question.
After all, the visit of Her Majesty's envoy to Pakistan coincided with the visit of the head of Pakistani intelligence to Kabul, where a lot happened in two days: the Panjshir attack by the Pakistani Air Force, the assassinations of many Resistance leaders, the collapsed inauguration and the failure of the international recognition of the Taliban government.
The question remains: did Mr. Raab supervise this failure or overslept?
The BBC quotes the chairman of the special Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, who interrogated Raab before his resignation: "There are big questions about the UK's withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the true extent of the damage will become clear only in the coming months and years."
* "Taliban" - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.