Dominic Raab said he is unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan once British troops withdraw by 31 August.
The UK foreign secretary said the figure depends on “the window” left in terms of timing and how many people they manage to process over the next few days.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
It’s also how many want to come, as there are some finely balanced cases.
Raab also declined to comment on whether British troops would return to Afghanistan in the future.
I’m not going to speculate on that while we’re in the middle of withdrawals.
The United Kingdom retains the right to exercise self-defence in relation to our nationals in our country. We’re not getting into speculating about that.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said the Government is working with former marine Paul Farthing and his animal charity to try to get him and his staff out of Afghanistan.
Farthing, known as Pen, has campaigned to have both his employees and the animals in their care evacuated in a plan he has dubbed Operation Ark.
On Monday, he announced that the UK Government had granted visas for all his staff and their dependants – totalling 68 people – but the evacuation of the shelter’s animals has remained a sticking point.
In an update today, Mr Raab told LBC:
We’re trying to do all we can for the staff, but in terms of the animals, and the question of whether they can be prioritised ahead of the other people that are trying to get out, I don’t have anything more to add to what the Defence Secretary, I think, rightly said in the last 24 hours.
The UK foreign secretary said “with hindsight” he would not have gone on holiday to Crete with the Taliban advancing on Kabul.
Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast he was “caught unawares” by the speed of the Taliban’s advancement, but he said it was “nonsense” to say he was “lounging around on the beach all day”.
The cabinet minister was heavily criticised for the timing of his five-star holiday and that he did not return to the UK when the situation in Afghanistan became clearer.
However, Raab said he was working while in Crete and that he did not go paddleboarding, as reported, because “the sea was actually closed”.
He told Sky News:
The stuff about me being lounging around on the beach all day is just nonsense. The stuff about me paddleboarding, nonsense, the sea was actually closed, it was a red notice.
I was focused on the Cobra meetings, the Foreign Office team, the director and the director general, and the international engagement.
Here’s the video of Joe Biden saying the US is “on pace” to finish its Afghanistan evacuation efforts by 31 August, despite pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops on the ground.
The US president cited a growing terrorist threat as a reason to continue its mass evacuation.
‘The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops,’ he said
Joe Biden says US ‘on pace’ to leave Afghanistan on 31 August – video
Uganda’s government says 51 people evacuated from Afghanistan have arrived in the East African country at the request of the United States.
Authorities said in a statement that the group, transported to Uganda in a chartered flight, arrived early today. That statement said they included men, women and children. No more details were given on the identities of the evacuees.
Ugandan officials said last week the country will shelter up to 2,000 people fleeing the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. They said the Afghans would be brought to Uganda in small groups in a temporary arrangement before they are relocated elsewhere.
Uganda has long been a security ally of the U.S., especially on security matters in the region.
Russia is preparing to evacuate more than 500 people on four military planes from Afghanistan — its first airlift operation since evacuations from Kabul began.
The Defence Ministry has said that it will airlift the nationals of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine from Kabul.
Teams of medical workers will be present on each plane, the ministry said, should any of the evacuees require medical attention.
The evacuations will be carried out upon orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ministry noted.
The UK Foreign Secretary has said Britain wants to “exercise the maximum moderating influence that it can” to prevent the Taliban from turning Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terror.
Dominic Raab said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to hold the G7 meeting on Tuesday was “incredibly important” but also the Government needed to “broaden that group of like-minded countries as well”.
He told Times Radio:
I’ve been speaking to China, Pakistan, India and we’ll be trying to convene meetings of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree the contours for the way forward.
In terms of the leaders, we will use all the leaders at our disposal. Sanctions potentially, access to the international financial institutions… If they (the Taliban) want aid going into Afghanistan, it won’t go through the Taliban, they’ll have to provide a permissive environment for NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and the UN.
The Taliban’s return to power threatens Afghan women’s hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants’ takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers said.
The Taliban imposed a strict Islamic law that largely denied women property rights during its 1996-2001 rule, but since then local authorities have been granting property titles to widows, divorced women and other female-led households.
Taliban leaders have sought to present a more moderate face since seizing power, saying women’s rights will be protected under the framework of Islam, but campaigners fear the fragile progress on property titles will be set back, Reuters reports.
Heather Barr, interim co-director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said:
Women already faced many challenges in exercising their property rights, but with the return of the Taliban they have become even more vulnerable.
It’s very difficult to imagine the Taliban respecting women’s property rights, and this will have devastating impacts on women who are struggling to protect themselves and their families.
Control of land and natural resources has long been a contentious issue in Afghanistan, where only about 12% of land is arable, according to the World Bank, and 40 years of conflict have left warlords and powerful landlords in control.
Dysfunctional legal systems, corruption, a lack of transparency and accountability, and the loss of records and legal documents made it hard to resolve land disputes even during recent years of relatively better governance.
Now, there will likely be an increase in land disputes as families abandon their homes, and the Taliban seeks to settle scores and restrict women’s rights, said Jon Unruh, an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal.
There will almost certainly be significant confiscations of lands and properties by the Taliban as they seek to punish some, reward others and make money by trafficking in confiscated housing.
While Afghanistan’s civil laws give women equal rights to own land and property, security of tenure is usually tied to men, and cultural norms and customary practices often deny women these rights, particularly those who are widowed or divorced.
There are an estimated 2 million widows in Afghanistan.
Women and girls made up a large proportion of the evacuees landing in Madrid yesterday. Photograph: Diego Radames/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Less than 5% of land ownership documents in the country include the name of a female owner, according to some estimates.
Under a new legal framework of the previous government, co-titling of state land was made mandatory, with men required to add their wives’ names on certificates.
Thousands of such certificates have been issued, according to the World Bank.
The fate of these titles “will be an issue, with probably a robust effort on the part of the Taliban to destroy, falsify or sell them to others”, said Unruh, who studies land rights in conflict situations.
Properties of women “will be a particular problem. This is likely to be an area where the Taliban feel especially justified in confiscating them”, he added, citing the group’s strict view on girls and women being educated or working.
The Taliban has said it was “not interested in anyone’s private property, rather it considers protection of lives and properties its primary responsibility”.
More than half a million people have already been displaced by the violence in Afghanistan so far this year, according to the United Nations, with women and children making up some 80% of those forced to flee since the end of May.
For these women – and for those trying to save their homes by staying behind – it would be very difficult to insist on their property rights, said Bilquees Daud, a lecturer at the Jindal School of International Affairs in India.
Daud, who is Afghan, said:
Particularly for widows and female-headed households who need a male companion to even step outside now, it will be very difficult to exercise their property rights.
Under the Taliban’s fundamentalist view of Sharia law, the denial of property rights to women will mean they’re left destitute, or forced into marriage simply to put a roof over their heads.
Dominic Raab has said “almost all” single-nationality UK citizens who want to leave Afghanistan have been brought home.
Asked on Sky News if all British nationals are out of the country, the UK foreign secretary said:
Mono-nationals, so single-nationality UK who have got documentation, the lion’s share, almost all of them that want to come out have been brought home.
The ones that are remaining, and we have done an amazing job, two-and-a-half thousand UK nationals if you go back to April… what remains are rather complex cases, large family units where one or other may be documented or may be clearly a national, but it’s not clear whether the rest of them are.
It is “very probable” that France’s operations to evacuate its citizens and partners from Afghanistan will end on Thursday, French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told C News TV.
Beaune also told C News that a new agreement regarding migration was needed between the European Union and Britain, Reuters reports.
Dominic Raab has said “it’s clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month” from Afghanistan.
Asked about Tuesday’s G7 meeting, the 31 August deadline, and President Biden’s comment that the sooner the the evacuation in Afghanistan is finished the better, the UK foreign secretary told BBC Breakfast:
Well look, it’s clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month.
More from UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s Sky News interview this morning:
He said the UK evacuation effort in Afghanistan is working towards the end of August, but time will also be taken to withdraw the military operation.
Asked about suggestions the withdrawal could begin within 24 to 48 hours, Raab said:
I’m not going to give the precise timeline. What we do know is that we are working towards the end of the month.
The military planners will work out how much time they need to withdraw their equipment, their staff, and what’s really important is we will make the maximum use of all the time we have left.
He said in the last 24 hours:
We have secured 2,000 back to the UK, so the system is operating at full speed, at full capacity and we will use every last remaining hour and day to get everyone we can back, the British nationals, the Afghans who worked so loyally for us, we are getting the Chevening scholars back, also women’s rights defenders and journalists.
We will work to the end of August, but we will take back from that, you step back from that, the time that we need to withdraw our military operation.
I can’t give you the precise details because we want to make sure we use every last hour and day to keep this rate up.
The Taliban has put an exit date of 31 August for all foreign evacuations.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said 9,000 British nationals, Afghans who worked for British forces and those at risk, journalists and Chevening scholars have been evacuated from Afghanistan since 15 August.
Discussing the Taliban’s press conference on Tuesday where they said the US should not be “encouraging” highly skilled people to leave Afghanistan, Raab said the group needs to be more “inclusive” and “moderate” compared to the previous Taliban.
He told Times Radio:
If the Taliban leadership, as they were saying overnight, want to avoid the brain drain, they’re not going to be able to do that by coercively blocking the border.
You’ll just see a larger flow of refugees going out and they’ll have to be processed.
They’re not going to be able to avoid the refugee crisis by just a few roadblocks, they’re not going to be able to hermetically seal the Afghan border, which is rugged and wide-ranging.
If they’re really serious about avoiding the brain drain, which was the language that the Taliban spokesperson said, they’re going to have to find a way to bring in other factions to be more inclusive and to be more moderate compared with the previous Taliban.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK “would like to see Kabul airport go back to being functional”.
Asked on Sky News about reports the airport could switch back to allowing people to leave on civilian aircraft rather than military flights, and asked if the UK has had conversations with the Taliban about that possibility, Raab said:
We do engage with the Taliban militarily on the ground, and in Doha with the political representation.
We would like to see Kabul airport go back to being functional. That will require the security on the ground, it will require it to be done safely, and of course it will require the Taliban to live up to their assurances about allowing safe passage out.
They’ve actually so far tried to be constructive, as we have seen with the numbers we have got, and tried to be constructive in their own way, and what we have then got to do is test them beyond the withdrawal date, will they still allow safe passage, as they have undertaken, will they allow humanitarian groups the permissive environment to be able to operate?
So, there is a next stage of engagement, not recognition, engagement with the Taliban, and we will hold them very clearly to the assurances that they are already stating.
Robyn Vinter here.
For years the Taliban’s top spokesman shunned the public eye, even as he amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online where he live-tweeted the insurgency.
But days after the Taliban captured Kabul following the collapse of the US-backed government, Zabihullah Mujahid presented himself to the public for the first time in a surprise press conference in the Afghan capital, AFP reports.
At first glance, there was little that distinguished the Taliban spokesman from its other leaders – the middle-aged jihadist sported a black turban and full black beard framing a stony demeanour carved from decades of war.
“We have expelled the foreigners,” he proclaimed in his opening remarks.
Just days earlier, Mujahid announced via social media the assassination of leading government spokesman Dawa Khan Menapal, boasting that the killing had been orchestrated “in a special attack” carried out by the Taliban.
The spokesman is now sitting in Menapal’s old seat, seeking to allay concern about how the Taliban will rule.
“All those on the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z,” said Mujahid as he fielded questions from the remnants of the Afghan press corps.
“We will not seek revenge.”
For years, there was a debate as to whether Mujahid was even a single person – his moniker serving as cover for the Taliban’s sprawling information wing.
But Mujahid was real and relaxed in his public debut, delivering assurances in a live broadcast on behalf of a group that once banned television.
When asked if the Taliban expected to be forgiven following their brutal campaign of violence that brought death and destruction to Afghan cities, Mujahid did not sidestep.
The losses, however devastating, were worth it, he argued.
“A huge occupying force was defeated,” he explained.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid held a press conference yesterday. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Notorious for banning TV and radio under their iron-fisted rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have adapted to the ever-changing nature of modern media and deftly used it to their advantage.
Richard Stengel – a former under secretary of state for the Obama administration – wrote in a New York Times editorial:
The Taliban understand that the information war is modern warfare.
They are not trying to build a new platform; they’re trying to integrate into and dominate the existing landscape.
Mujahid is believed to oversee a vast public relations operation that has coordinated countless press releases, interview requests and questions from journalists in recent years.
Outside of his social media presence, Mujahid and his team also managed an impressive network of WhatsApp groups, where they delivered real time updates directly to journalists.
Little is known about the spokesman’s past roles in the movement, but his impact on their string of victories has been monumental even as other spokesmen emerged and took on more public roles from the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
Under Mujahid’s leadership, the Taliban effectively owned the battlefield narrative during the group’s final offensive this summer, providing detailed sketches of its fighters’ movements as the Afghan government stayed largely silent.
The Taliban’s victory appeared all but inevitable, according to the narrative presented by the Taliban press office, as government forces surrendered en masse often without a shot fired.
During the last 10 days of the war, Mujahid would announce the fall of every new city to the Taliban with a tweet, becoming the de-facto minister of information of the conflict that his group was winning rapidly.
Now in power, Mujahid will be faced with a new task – convincing Afghans and the international community that the Taliban are able to transition from fighting to governing.
“All issues can be resolved with talks,” Mujahid told reporters Tuesday.
“We give our brothers reassurances. We have the same country and the same goals.”
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Robyn Vinter. Thanks for following along – and stay tuned for the latest.
Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people.
But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame is attached to those who began this open-ended war without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: the then US president, George W Bush, the British prime minister Tony Blair and their entourages:
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