Frank Gardner
BBC Security Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

The question on so many governments’ minds right now is how to stop Afghanistan slipping back into the same haven for terrorist bases that it was 20 years ago.

Sir Alex Younger, who ran Counter Terrorism at MI6 and was then its chief until last year, told the BBC he was not optimistic the Taliban could prevent this, even if they intended to. He said it was important to persuade neighbouring states to co-operate in this effort, despite Britain’s differences with them.

It’s being reported that Richard Moore, the current MI6 chief, has held talks with Pakistan’s army chief, while unnamed MI6 officers have met Taliban officials.

The foreign secretary is to head to the region for talks that will include how to help those trying to flee Afghanistan.

Despite being wrongfooted by the speed of the Taliban takeover, British officials are keen to impress on the Taliban that if they want international recognition and normal relations then they must do all they can to stop al-Qaeda, the IS-K group and any other designated terrorist organisations from making Afghanistan their home.

Read more here.

Raab bristled as he faced questions from MPspublished at 17:16 British Summer Time 1 September 2021

17:16 BST 1 September 2021

Ione Wells
Westminster Correspondent, BBC News

The UK's foreign secretary appeared visibly bristled by some of the questions thrown at him by MPs today.

MPs were visibly frustrated by a lack of detail from Dominic Raab on key questions like the specific number of people eligible for evacuation who had been left behind.

Mr Raab appeared equally irritated by questions on when exactly he went on holiday - refusing to provide any precise dates.

He had a heated exchange too with Labour's Neil Coyle, who accused him of refusing to answer questions as they proceeded to speak over one another.

The MPs are unlikely to leave the session satisfied with the answers they got, with the bchairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, wrapping up by accusing Mr Raab of firefighting.

Certainly, as Parliament returns next week, questions for Mr Raab on key issues like how many people are left behind, how the government plans to get them out, and why ministers were taken by surprise by the speed of the Taliban's takeover will not go away until concrete answers are provided.

Image source, Getty Images

A US congressman who tried to travel to Afghanistan on a mission to extract vulnerable civilians has broken his silence after reports he had gone missing.

Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin had apparently ignored pleas from US defence officials, diplomats and congressional leaders not to travel.

According to the Washington Post, Mullin called the US ambassador to Tajikistan to ask for help in transporting a large amount of cash to the country from Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. He said the money would be used to rent a helicopter to extract trapped American citizens.

After he was denied help from the embassy, he threatened the ambassador and his staff, the paper reported, external.

Officials told the Post on Tuesday that they were unaware of the location of Mullin, who was making his second attempt to enter the country after an earlier request to fly from Greece was denied by US military officials.

But in an Instagram post on Wednesday, he wrote: “Am I missing, no. Did I go dark for a little, yes, because it wasn’t safe to be communicating.” He did not provide his location.

Last week, two other members of Congress were widely chastised for an unauthorised flight to Kabul, which they said was to conduct "oversight" of the airlift operation.

Senior Pentagon and congressional leaders condemned their trip, saying it hampered evacuation efforts.

The UK foreign secretary has again been questioned about the timing of his holiday to Crete during the Afghanistan crisis.

Speaking to MPs at the Foreign Affairs Committee, Dominic Raab said he would not get into a "fishing expedition" over the trip.

Reality Check

Joe Biden said in his televised speech on Tuesday that Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban had authorised “the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan".

It is true that the Trump administration reached a deal last year with the Taliban to release 5,000 Taliban members in exchange for 1,000 prisoners from the Afghan security forces.

This swap was finally completed in September 2020, when more than 400 Taliban prisoners who had committed “major crimes", external according to the Afghan government, were eventually given their freedom following pressure from the United States.

So were there Taliban “top war commanders” among those released?

Afghan government officials certainly believe there were and have told the Americans of their concerns.

Reported to have been among them was Mawlavi Talib, a senior Taliban commander, external who oversaw the attack on the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah.

It’s also important to note that other Taliban commanders were released long before the Trump administration’s agreement.

For example, several senior Taliban members were released from Guantanamo Bay during the Obama administration in 2014 as part of a prisoner exchange.

This is the second full day after the final US forces left Afghanistan, and talks are under way to reopen Kabul airport, according to France's foreign minister.

The Taliban are in talks with Qatar and Turkey about how to operate the airport, Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.

Following the international withdrawal, the US Federal Aviation Administration said that US civilian flights were banned from flying over much of Afghanistan unless they received prior authorisation "due to both the lack of air traffic services and a functional civil aviation authority in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing security concerns".

Taliban fighters entered Kabul airport within hours of the last US soldier leaving the country.

Image source, Getty Images

Britain's financial watchdog has warned banks about the risk of being used for criminal operations including terrorist financing or money laundering in Afghanistan now the Taliban are back in power.

Financial firms "should be aware of the possible impact" of recent events "when they assess risks related to particular customers and flows of funds", the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a statement.

Banks should "appropriately monitor and assess transactions to Afghanistan to mitigate the risks if their firm being exploited to launder money or finance terrorism", it added.

Any suspicious activity should be reported, the regulator said.

The City of London is often accused by anti-corruption NGOs of doing too little to stamp out money laundering, but banks say they adhere to the law and spend huge sums on fighting economic crime.

Twenty-four students from a California school district remain stranded in Afghanistan following the US withdrawal, according to school officials in the city of Sacramento.

According to the San Juan Unified School District, six families have been able to get out this week.

The schools first noticed their absence when they did not return for the beginning of the 2021-2022 academic year, which started last month, only days after the fall of Kabul.

The Sacramento Bee newspaper reports that the school district is home to 1,400 refugee students from Afghanistan.

More than 6,500 Afghans live in the area, according to the Institute for Immigration Research.

It is unclear whether the students are American or Afghan citizens.

On Tuesday, US Representative Ami Bera, a Democrat from California, told Fox News that her office had reached out to the departments of defence and state, but received no update.

Here are the key points we learned from Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab:

• Dominic Raab says he will be "leaving to go to the region" (surrounding Afghanistan) but gives no details
• He says the central intelligence assessment in the run-up to Nato troops pulling out was that there would be a "steady deterioration" in the security situation in August, but it was "unlikely Kabul would fall this year"
• He admits ministers are "not confident with any precision at all" about the number of British citizens left behind in Afghanistan but estimates it is in the "hundreds, possibly the mid to low hundreds"
• He says ministers have "huge compassion" for the plight of people in Afghanistan but it would be "wrong to just open the door" for them to come to the UK
• Afghan guards who were based at the British embassy in Kabul did not make it out of the country because buses transporting them "were not given permission to enter the airport"
• Asked whether a portrait of the Queen was left behind in the embassy in Kabul, he says orders were given for everything to be destroyed
• He did not consider offering to resign because his focus was "getting on with the job" and "helping to get people out"

Image source, AFP

The Taliban have reportedly given permission for Afghanistan's men's cricket team to play their first international match since the militants took control of the country.

"We have got approval to send the team to Australia," chief executive of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, Hamid Shinwari, told the AFP news agency.

Earlier, Australia's cricket board said it still planned to host the Test match, which was originally due to take place in Australia last year but was postponed due to the pandemic. It will now happen in late November.

During the Taliban rule of the 1990s, most forms of entertainment were banned - although cricket was allowed to continue.

MPs are pressing UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on what happens next in Afghanistan - here's the latest:

• The UK wants to get humanitarian aid to those who need it most and there are questions about what support can be given in neighbouring countries, he says
• The UK does need to "talk seriously with the Taliban", Raab says, as it is "one of the early tests" whether they will allow humanitarian organisations to do their jobs
• The Taliban must be judged by their ability to behave "in a reasonable and constructive way", he says
• Britain can't deal with the refugee crisis alone, Mr Raab argues - it should "lead by example" but the key regional players, Western countries and Gulf nations need to get involved to exercise an influence on the Taliban
• Raab says the UK will not recognise the Taliban but will test and judge them by how they respond and will work very closely with the US

The US will assist in building a new facility for border guards in Tajikistan along the frontier with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to better respond to security threats, says the US embassy in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

In a tweet,, external the embassy says the move will allow troops to deploy to the border areas "as soon as possible in response to threats".

The new facility will replace an outdated detachment in Tajikistan's south-western tip.

Tajikistan - an impoverished but strategically positioned Central Asian country - has a 1,357km (843 miles) border with Afghanistan.

Tajikistan hosts a Russian military base, and is a member of a Moscow-led post-Soviet security bloc.

In July, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled to Tajikistan after clashing with Taliban militants, Tajik officials said.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is still answering questions from MPs - here's the latest:

• Asked if he even considered offering to resign, Raab says his focus was "getting on with the job" and "helping to get people out"
• He says he has appeared before the committee "readily" because he takes "the scrutiny very seriously"
• But there has been a "breezing over" some of the operational challenges that were faced on the ground he says, when the reality is staff have pulled together a "quite remarkable" evacuation of thousands of people
• He hasn't had a lot of time to "sit back and muse and mull" but he is always ready to learn lessons, he says
• He is asked about the Foreign Office rota and says there was a three-shift, 24/7 operation to keep across what was happening on the ground.
• He says he was constantly thinking if there was anything more he could do but the priority was the security of Kabul airport

Difficult moments for Raabpublished at 15:30 British Summer Time 1 September 2021

15:30 BST 1 September 2021

Ione Wells
Westminster Correspondent, BBC News

UK MPs have been pushing Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for clarity and precision on certain key questions.

When, specifically, did a foreign minister last visit key neighbouring countries like Uzbekistan or Tajikistan? How many Brits and Afghans eligible for evacuation are still in Afghanistan?

Their frustration that the foreign secretary says he isn't able to provide some of the precise figures and dates they are after is apparent.

Equally evident is the tense dynamic between committee chair Tom Tugendhat MP and Dominic Raab.

A particularly difficult moment for Mr Raab came when asked by Mr Tugendhat about a key risk report from late July that spoke of a rapid Taliban advance that could lead to a return to power.

When Mr Raab asked for the source of this, he was met with a short response: "It's your principle risk report."

The Netherlands will move its Kabul diplomatic mission to Qatar now the Taliban are back in power, Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag has said.

"I've asked His Excellency very kindly agree to the relocation of the Netherlands embassy from Kabul to Doha," Kaag told journalists after meeting her Qatari counterpart in Doha, the AFP news agency reports.

This follows similar moves by the United States and the UK.

From 2011, Qatar hosted Taliban leaders who moved there to discuss peace in Afghanistan.

It was also where the US and the Taliban signed an "agreement for bringing peace" last year, during Donald Trump's presidency, which paved the way for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been answering questions from MPs for just over an hour - here are the latest developments:

• He praises the efforts of the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, saying there was "no-one more courageous" other than troops on the ground
• Afghan guards who were based at the British embassy in Kabul did not make it out of the country because buses transporting them "were not given permission to enter the airport"
• Raab says he has asked for a "full review of what happened" so lessons can be learned
• Asked whether a portrait of the Queen was left behind in the embassy in Kabul, he says orders were given for everything to be destroyed

BBC Radio 5 Live

Former British soldier Ben Slater is stranded in Afghanistan while helping 400 Afghans to escape across one of the country’s many borders.

Speaking to the BBC, Ben said their situation was “not great”.

“We’ve been in the same location now, moving around a little bit for the last 48 hours… We’ve got families here with me who have one change of clothes and a couple of spare pairs of underwear and a shower gel.”

The people he’s helping are mainly educated women who worked for Ben’s company. He is the chairman of the Nomad Concepts Group, a business which he says has now collapsed.

Ben says he’s determined to get everybody across the border, but needs the UK to “say yes” to processing their visas.

MPs are continuing to press UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for answers about what went wrong in Afghanistan - here are the latest lines:

• Raab says he is "reticent about giving a firm figure" for the number of eligible people left behind and says "any number" left stranded is "too many"
• He insists the UK was right to prioritise who it evacuated, starting with British nationals then Afghans who worked for the UK government and finally those at risk of persecution
• He says ministers have "huge compassion" for the plight of people in Afghanistan but it would be "wrong to just open the door" for people to come to the UK
• The UK has sent a Rapid Deployment Team out to service those areas and third countries where it expects people to head to

Image source, Getty Images

After the 9/11 attacks, the US will have spent $5.8tn waging war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria by the end of 2022, according to updated figures, external from the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

The figure - which includes interest on debt used to finance the wars - will continue to increase in the decades ahead, with healthcare for veterans projected to hit $2.2tn by 2050.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq differ from previous wars as they were mostly funded by borrowing, rather than through taxes and war bonds.

"It's critical we properly account for the vast and varied consequences of the many US wars and counterterror operations since 9/11, as we pause and reflect on all of the lives lost," Neta Crawford, a co-director of the Costs of War Project and chair of the political science department at Boston University, told CBS News., external

What have we learned so far from the British Foreign Secretary's grilling by MPs?

• Raab says he will be "leaving to go to the region" after his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee but provides no more details of where he will visit
• He says the central intelligence assessment in the run up to Nato troops pulling out was that there would be a "steady deterioration" in the security situation in August but it was "unlikely Kabul would fall this year"
• He admits UK government ministers were "not confident with any precision at all" about the number of British citizens left behind in Afghanistan but estimates it is in the "hundreds, possibly the mid to low hundreds"
• There were a range of assumptions and "optimism bias" with the British government about what the US would do and how the Taliban would behave which he says he "always cautioned against"