Afghanistan Anecdotes

 

This picture will introduce my American friends to a character who may not be familiar to them. The earnest, determined-looking, businesslike man, gripping the arm of his chair, his face intent, as if giving somebody a good piece of his mind, is none other than our Secretary of State for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs. He is patriotically posed in front of the Union flag, but also, rather curiously, what appears to be the flag of the People’s Republic of China. His name is Dominic Raab. He does not usually strike such a fierce pose. Rather, he tends to give one the impression of a well-programmed, rather humourless robot. Why then this carefully posed forceful photo?

 

As provincial capitals in Afghanistan began to fall Raab was on holiday in Crete, while his boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was relaxing on holiday in the UK. As the débacle in Afghanistan moved closer to its disastrous outcome, Raab remained at his “luxury beach hotel”, although, as he later reassured voters, he remained in touch with his team. He finally returned to his desk after the fall of Kabul. It transpired that, while in Crete, his officials had advised him to call the Afghan Foreign Minister to request assistance in evacuating former Afghan interpreters who had worked for the British army. Raab refused to make the call – he explained later that he was busily making other phone calls – so the call to the Afghan minister was delegated to a junior minister, who, it turned out, did not manage to place the call.

 

Like Raab, never one to be hurried by a strategic disaster, our Prime Minister remained on holiday until after Kabul had fallen. Apparently, he has been to Afghanistan just once, when he was Foreign Secretary in the government of Theresa May. His motivation for making the trip was not to conduct any serious diplomatic business. Rather, he needed to avoid an awkward vote in the House of Commons. When Boris Johnson stood for election to the House of Commons, he promised his constituents, who live near Heathrow airport, that he would oppose a proposed new runway by lying down in front of the bulldozers. However, when he became Foreign Secretary the government’s policy was to approve the new runway, and a vote was scheduled in the House of Commons. As a member of the government, Johnson would be obliged to vote for approval. It seems that he was courageous enough to lay down in front of a bulldozer, but not in front of Theresa May

 

In the 2000s, I visited an anthropologist at a Boston university. He specialized in the study of Afghan tribal societies and told me he had been appointed as an adviser to the US army after the invasion of Afghanistan. One of his first pieces of advice was to explain that Afghans are not Arabs, so the Arab linguists the army had sent as interpreters would not be very useful. Apparently, the assumption was that, since the invasion was part of the War on Terror, and since are terrorists are Muslims, and since Muslims speak Arabic … He also gave a lecture to British officers at Sandhurst. According to the professor, the British officers had a greater awareness of Afghan society than their American counterparts, probably because they had been taught the history of the defeat of British occupying forces in our imperial heyday.

 

However, their political masters seem not to have taken the same history classes. But, as Mr Raab’s photo pointedly demonstrates, they do know how to make a phone call.