welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. in the end, it wasn't about fire power or troop numbers. in afghanistan, the taliban had a vital asset, which the us and her allies lacked — strategic patience. two decades after they were expelled from kabul, the islamists are back in power. us and british troops are scrambling to complete a humiliating evacuation. my guest is british conservative mp and former soldier tobias ellwood. this looks like an historic defeat for western power. how damaging could the consequences be?

tobias ellwood, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. i am sure that you, like the rest of us, have been watching the scenes of chaos, of fear in kabul over the last few hours and days — fear particularly seen at kabul airport. when you watch those scenes, what are your feelings? well, personally, i had a journey of discovery with afghanistan. back in 2002, my brother was killed in the bali bombing — and i really couldn't understand what happened, that why somebody like my brother, who was a teacher out there, was targeted and killed, and i then tried to understand, go to afghanistan and see what we were doing,

following the invasion, to target the terrorists, to deal with those, and to rebuild the country. i must have visited afghanistan about a dozen times, and amazed to see the military engagement, very, very impressive indeed, but always slightly concerned that not enough effort was made to understand the people of afghanistan, understand the history, the tribal structures, the governance, as well. and to then learn that we are now departing because of a political judgment, a false judgment, in my view, by the united states is very, very disturbing indeed. seeing afghanis realising the dangers they put themselves in by hanging onto the sides of us aircraft, taking off from kabul international airport, some of them then falling off at high altitude — that shows you the demise of the country that we looked after for two years, and i think we are seeing huge scenes of desperation play out, but the west should hang

its head in shame. we're taking afghanistan to another civil war after two decades of effort. yeah — you speak as the chair of the parliamentary defence committee. you've been in parliament for 16 years on the conservative benches. the conservative party has been running uk foreign policy for more than half of the period in which uk troops have been in afghanistan. so, when you talk about shame, when you talk about failure, do you acknowledge that your own party must own that failure when it comes to uk policy? yeah, we need to put this in perspective as to what's just happened. we've not been discussing afghanistan in the international media for the last three years on the scale of which we were doing in the first decade. the afghan forces were managing, they were coping. we had a minimalist international presence there. there were more troops in britain than there were in afghanistan.

there were more british troops in cyprus than there were in afghanistan. we just had enough to give air superiority, intelligence gathering, istar capabilities to give the afghan forces the edge so they could contain the taliban — and that gave legitimacy to the afghan government. now, some schoolboy errors were made, and i touched on it before about the governance structure that's appropriate to afghanistan, but things were working out. sadly, it became a presidential election issue, and if you ask me what the failure is of my own government, it is not to stand up to our closest security ally and say this is the wrong call. and if americans want to pull out in this way, symbolically pull out, britain should then have the courage to step in to that vacuum, because if america doesn't lead, britain should. instead, everybody has followed suit, and now we see the demise of a country, a failed state develop — all because of the political judgment by firstly

president trump and then, very sadly, by president biden. i'll come back to the geopolitics of all of this very soon, because the points you just made are clearly very important — but right now, i think all of us are very much focused on what we're seeing happen in kabul and afghanistan hour by hour. there are many, many thousands of afghans who clearly fear for their lives. they believe if they stay in the country they may well be persecuted by, imprisoned by, maybe even worse, by the taliban, the new power in kabul. do we have a clear moral obligation, in your view, to take thousands of afghans who want to come to britain, partly because many of them worked for the uk forces and diplomatic effort over the last few years? yes, we should make it clear as to why there is danger there. it comes in two sections, i suppose. firstly is those afghans

who worked with coalition forces are now being persecuted and, if captured, punished by the taliban. women who have received any form of education are also being challenged. they have girls who have been in schooling that are going to now be pushed into forced marriages, and then, on top of that, there is the wider danger of where this civil war will go. if you've been to afghanistan, you understand that there is a sense of supporting whoever is the winning team, and if it looked like the afghan government supported by the international community, people would row in behind that, but if that situation changes and the taliban look like they're on the upper hand, people will quickly switch alliance because they simply want to stay alive. now, cities fell very, very rapidly. the uzbek—tajik tribal structures, you know, they melted into the ether, but they will be rearming right now. they'll be regrouping.

the northern alliance is something you may remember from the previous civil war, that will once again be reinvigorated. there are pashtun tribes that don't like the taliban either. that is the civil war... i understand civil war may be looming, i just want to know very specifically right now what your feeling is about, for example, rory stewart, a former conservative mp, indeed a former government minister, who says that right now britain does have to accept a clear moral duty to accept many, many afghans into the united kingdom and offer them political asylum. he says there are literally millions of people who the uk, us, and other nato forces must acknowledge they have a responsibility for — do you agree? absolutely. sorry, i was just painting the picture as to why there is such real danger that afghans face and we are the cause of that.

and we're already seeing nations such as canada and germany open their doors. there needs to be a coordinated approach to this. all those countries... why haven't we? as canada says, immediately, "we'll take 20,000." germany says, immediately, "we'll take 10,000." there's been no such declaration from the uk — why? because they're struggling with the bandwidth right now to deal with this in whitehall, if i'm frank. what we're seeing is that they are dealing with the immediate operational requirement of the evacuation, let alone looking ahead to the long—term consequences and our responsibilities and duties to those people who are left behind — but no doubt we will then have to come to this... with the greatest respect, your party colleague, the home secretary, priti patel, she had the bandwidth within the last 2a hours to say, "oh, my goodness, we may well face another surge of afghan refugees. this is all the more reason

to tell the french they have to beef up their resources on the channel to stop them getting to britain." it suggests to me that the british government's focus isn't on a moral duty to help these people, it's on trying to keep afghans out. and that isolationist approach will get us nowhere, and it's one of the reasons why, perhaps, our place on the international stage is somewhat diminished. we need to re—evaluate. we need to recognise our responsibility, our duty as to what we've done over the last two decades, and the way we've departed is having huge consequences, including a mass migration issue, displaced people, and also those seeking asylum. what i was trying to lead to is that what i would like to see britain do — whether they do it is another matter — but as a permanent member of the united nations security council, taking this up to a higher level to recognise that we should be as welcome as canada and germany, but that the burden should be shared amongst all those countries that

participated in isaf, but also to support the neighbouring countries, which no doubt will have to take a fair burden of this, as well. but, to be clear, again, you're an influential conservative mp. would it be your view that, for example, as a symbolic first step, the uk government should say to all of the afghans currently in the uk waiting for a decision on their asylum claim, and that is, we believe, around 3,000 at the moment, that they should be given a clear sign that their asylum applications will be approved simply because the situation in afghanistan is now changed, the taliban's in power, we regard them as an organisation that has conducted abuse over many years. do we need to say quite clearly, "if you're from afghanistan, you make it to the uk, you seek asylum, you will get it?" you certainly will need to

recognise that following this strategic defeat by the west, including the uk, that there needs to be a fundamental review of our asylum process to be able to co—ordinate and manage the influx of large numbers of afghanis that rightly will be seeking asylum in the uk. the numbers, i'm not close as to what that would actually look like. that's why i've said this needs to be coordinated at an international level — but, absolutely, your premise of having to review where we currently sit and this daft idea that we can somehow solve this problem off the coast of dover, that needs to be put to bed. do you think — again, i say "your government", you're a conservative mp, do you think your government's been asleep at the wheel over the last few days and weeks? dominic raab, the foreign secretary, was on holiday till yesterday. borisjohnson has said very little. the only person who appears to have been frank about the situation is the defence secretary, who has talked about

a failure of the international community and was actually almost in tears just hours ago, saying that he feared that all of the people britain owed an obligation to wouldn't be able to make it out of afghanistan to britain, as he believed they should be allowed to do. the british government overall looks like a terrible mess, doesn't it? well, ben wallace, the defence secretary, i think is in an invidious position, having to deal with this circumstance. i know that he is hugely concerned about the american decision itself, which i think the americans and indeed britons and other nations will live to regret. but you are right in what you say. i came into politics because i wanted to see britain play a more influential role on the international stage. i think we have a reach and understanding, an appreciation of the world around us, that we are trusted as well, and a desire to be a force for good. but i'm afraid of recent... we've been distracted by brexit, latterly by covid as well, and whitehall simply has not got the bandwidth

to step up to the plate. we had great statements made at the g7, if you recall, "global britain." this was all about britain returning to the international stage. joe biden was saying america is back to give greater resolve, purpose, to what the west stands for, what we believe in, what we're willing to defend. and yet, here we are on our own watch, the biggest, most mightiest international military alliance ever assembled, defeated by an insurgency armed simply with ak—47s and landmines. the uk parliament is sitting in just 48 hours�* time to discuss this, but there's going to be no sort of binding vote, as i understand it. you say that nothing short of a full inquiry as to what britain did in afghanistan over the past 20 years will be sufficient to match the gravity of this crisis. do you think you're going to get a full official inquiry? i asked for an inquiry at the liaison committee, where chairs of committees can

directly ask the prime minister questions, and he said "no". my first question to the prime minister on wednesday will be, "will you now reconsider?" we need a full inquiry as to what has happened over the last couple of months, but also the last 20 years. and on the recall of parliament itself, i actually requested that a couple of days ago. i was so pleased to hear that this was happening, an opportunity for mp5, colleagues, to make their comments about this retreat and ask the government to reconsider. but i now learn that it will only be a one—line whip, there will not even be a vote on what has happened. at least with the iraq war, mps�* views could be monitored and registered for history to show what they thought. not in this case. and i'm deeply, deeply saddened that we're not taking this opportunity to fill the vacuum, to suggest a fresh coalition is formed before we see

the demise of a country that we have been so engaged in for two decades. you're a former soldier, tobias ellwood. let me just read to you a comment from another former soldier, jack cummings. he was a soldier in the royal engineers. he lost both legs in afghanistan serving with the british army. he wrote this on twitter. "did i lose my legs for nothing? it looks like it. did my mates die in vain? yep. many emotions are going through my head right now — anger, betrayal, sadness." what would you say to him? yeah, it's completely disheartening, the fact that we've so quickly given up to follow the united states. i visited helmand province probably a dozen times over the last 10—12 years, and always amazed to see the bravery of our armed forces personnel and the work that they were doing to build

up local capabilities. every time i went there, i was very saddened to see that the good work that we were doing, the umbrella of security that we provided, was not being leveraged with proper development programmes to get the economy working, to build infrastructure and so forth, and that's absolutely critical to win over the hearts and minds of the local people. and the consequence of that is i rememberflying over the kajaki dam a few years ago, seeing the very turbine that the 16 air assault brigade had delivered a decade earlier, it was lying there next to the dam itself, still in its bubble wrap. it hadn't been put in position to provide electricity, which would have been game—changing for the people of helmand. and projects like that, or the absence of completion of projects, was right across the board in afghanistan. we didn't do enough in the time that we were there. it took us five years before we even started training an afghan force in 2005. that's when we began in earnest. we wasted four years. by that time, the taliban had

gone across the border, started to regroup and retrain themselves. and on the point about our relationship with the united states, you know, the west has had its reputation kicked sideways, as indeed nato has, and i'm sure russia and china will be watching this very, very carefully. how do we stand up and challenge the erosion of the international rules—based order as we promised to do? we signed an atlantic charter 2.0 to do exactly that. and yet we followed the united states. we followed donald trump. this is a man who actually considered taking the united states out of nato. so, we need to review the decision making at the very, very top and ask ourselves whether it's still 0k to be able to take on challenges, small, workable challenges, such as afghanistan. it's not a complicated solution that you require for the country, but you do need the right one, and it isn'tjust military means alone. we should have learned that from northern ireland. well, you raise an

important point about the geopolitical context. this is what the global times in beijing, which pretty reliably reflects the views of the chinese government, this is what it's got in an editorial today. "the us has suffered total humiliation in afghanistan. if it can suffer such catastrophic defeat there, who is going to trust its judgment in east asia or the south china sea?" it's quite clear what the chinese read into what has just happened, isn't it? and that's completely right. i mean, this is the bizarre change, which i don't understand in us foreign policy shift, focusing to address the longer—term great power rivalries with china and russia, and so forth. and ironically, trump, and indeed, joe biden, misses the bigger picture here. look where afghanistan sits between these three great competitors that we have — china, russia, and iran. would it not make sense to stay close to the afghan people, given the importance of this bit of the global real

estate as power shifts from the east and the west? instead, we're abandoning it, and now we leave that vacuum, and the countries all around, including pakistan and india, will now try to exploit and further their own challenging agendas. but the point is, tobias ellwood, you say all of this to me — i just wonder if you're saying it to your own party boss and prime minister, borisjohnson, because boris johnson is saying nothing of what you're saying, and we see no indication that the uk government perceives that its strategic interest right now is telling the americans that it's making a fundamental mistake. i'm honoured to think that you think i have a direct line to this government and they listen to me. i'm not saying that — i'm saying if you don't think the uk government listens to you at all, is there any point you sitting on the government benches? i don't sit on the government benches. i'm not a government minister. i provide oversight of what the government does. well, with respect, you sit on the government side of the house of commons.

to me, that means that you, in the broadest sense, remain very loyal to prime minister borisjohnson — and in the course of this interview, i'm wondering why. well, because there's a general trajectory, the general direction of where i want my country to go, and that fits in with the conservative principles that i stand up for. but we're dealing with particularforeign policy approach here, which i find myself in disagreement with my own government. i made it very, very clear i would like us to be far more energetic, far more engaging, far more proactive on the international stage, and i'm frustrated that we're not doing more. we lack the bandwidth in whitehall to be able to currently do this. there are too many plates spinning in number ten for those in power to be able to make thesejudgments, step forward, recognise the bigger picture, not only that, but to see what's coming over the horizon. and in this case, the first clarion alarm bells that were ringing was when donald trump allowed or gave permission

for thousands of taliban prisoners to be released, and then made the commitment to return troops home before the deal had been confirmed. that was the beginning of the end. do you think that the government, the borisjohnson government, has the bandwidth to understand that there now, in the very near future, could be a very real surge in the terror threat coming from afghanistan? we know that thousands of prisoners have been newly released from bagram, some of them very, as we understand it, very dangerous militants. we've got generaljohn allen, former commander of us forces in afghanistan, saying that al-qaeda could be operating openly from the hindu kush region with us forces gone. as you said at the beginning of this interview, you know all too well personally the dangers that come with islamist terrorism because you lost your brother in the bali bomb attack. do you think the british government has any clear idea

ofjust how dangerous the situation could become now? i think we're slowly waking up to that, and you're absolutely right, i totally agree with generaljohn allen, a close friend of mine. i worked with him in afghanistan. and what i believe will happen now, very sadly, is the terrorists will take full advantage of the vacuum that will be left to return to afghanistan to plot another attack on the scale of 9/11 in order to bookend, if you like, our time in the country, to make the very blunt point as to how futile the last two decades have been, and... you really believe that? what you believe will happen next is that the al-qaeda and other militant islamist groups will seek to launch new attacks on the west, as you say, to sort of bookend the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago?

yes, this is now... their ability to recruit is by proving that they have stood up to the mighty west, particularly the united states, and they will do so by celebrating with an attack on the west. now, what might check that is the ironic fact that the americans are not actually leaving afghanistan. the cia will remain, as will special forces as well, because they actually will be haunted by such an event taking place. and so you're left with this awkward situation of the americans trying to stay on top of the terrorist threat that will now grow in afghanistan against the west, particularly the united states, or united states interests around the world. tobias ellwood, i thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. we're looking at a pretty benign week of weather. we've got high—pressure fairly nearby, but a lot of cloud streaming in off the north atlantic, bringing us rather cool and cloudy conditions throughout the week. a little bit of sunshine here and there, but there will also be some patchy rain, too. these weather fronts bringing the patchy rain through this morning. generally, though, we've got this airflow coming in from the north atlantic, and it's moisture—laden air, hence all the cloud. so, rather grey skies this morning, that patchy rain eventually clearing away from the eastern side of england. there will be further patchy rain for northern and western hills, but many places will turn drier, and we could see some sunshine breaking through eastern scotland, eastern england, perhaps across south wales and the southwest.

a breezy day to come, those winds quite fresh from the northwest, and temperatures pretty disappointing for mid—august, generally 15—21 degrees in the sunnier spots further south. and we hold onto the cloud and the breeze through tuesday night, as well. most places will be dry, further spots of drizzle, though, across some western hills, especially, especially northern and western scotland. but with all the cloud cover and the breeze, temperatures no lower than around 11—15 degrees. so then, for wednesday, very little change — it looks similar, rather grey and breezy once again, further patchy drizzle across some northern and western hills. but again, with some shelter from the breeze, from the higher ground further west, we should see some sunny spells, again, eastern england, perhaps across the south of wales and southwest. again, that pushes temperatures up to 21 degrees — otherwise for most, mid—to—high teens. into thursday, some subtle changes. this weather front�*s a bit more active, it'll start to wriggle into parts of england and wales. the winds will be lighter

on thursday, too, coming in from a more west—southwest direction. again, a lot of cloud around, but we'll have these showers pushing into england and wales — thanks to that weather front, some of these could be on the heavy side. a bit of sunshine again towards the southwest, highs of 20—21 degrees, otherwise, again, mid—to—high teens. as we move out of thursday into friday, we start to see this more substantial area of low pressure sweeping up very slowly from the southwest. so, that'll change the wind direction to a south—westerly for many of us, it will be light with breeze. again, quite a bit of cloud around, a few sunny spells here and there, the more substantial rain pushing into northern ireland and later, western england and wales. and again, those temperatures range from 15—20 celsius.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines. biden defiant — the us president defends his decision to withdraw american troops from afghanistan following the swift taliban takeover. i stand squarely behind my decision. after 20 years, i've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw us forces. desperate scenes at kabul airport, with people clinging to moving planes trying to flee the country. taliban militants patrol the streets of the capital — there's widespread fear the regime will bring repression. an uncertain future

for afghanistan,