Barking mad in Afghanistan

We have still not had a proper reckoning of the extraordinary failure of British foreign policy over the past two decades in sending so many men to die, or come home crippled, after the interventions in majority Muslim countries in the Middle East.

The response to the 9/11 attacks in the US was not to deal with the paymasters and string pullers of militant Islamist ideology in the Gulf states, Iran or Pakistan, but to send a latter-day crusaders’ army to punish the Falangist – i.e. not Islamist – dictator of Iraq, Sadam Hussein, and try and persuade Afghanistan to follow western values.

The British Army lost two wars in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. A century later the mighty Soviet Red Army that had done the heavy lifting to defeat Hitler’s Wehrmacht was humiliated in Afghanistan, precipitating the end of European communism.

But in 2001, in the higher echelons of the White House and Whitehall, there was no-one who had studied this history. Robin Cook, Blair’s first Foreign Secretary, opposed the war, was ignored and resigned. Five years later in 2006 Labour’s then Defence Secretary, John Reid, visiting Afghanistan, said Britain would “leave again in three years without firing one shot”. In fact, 454 British soldiers died as target practice for the Taliban.

The Tory-LibDem government after 2010 kept on sending men to pointless deaths. David Cameron then forged an alliance with France’s headline-grabbing President, Nicolas Sarkozy. The two leaders intervened to create failed states in Libya and Syria to add to the failed states of Iraq and Afghanistan, installed by George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

Britain’s intervention in the SAIL (Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya) states led to enduring Islamist terror groups, seeking to conquer or create failed states. It also opened the gates to mass immigration from the region, including sub-Saharan Africa, as people fled from Islamist and warlord terror, as well as searching for an economic future and safety for their families.

In the midst, however, of this dismal tale of failed statecraft there is one cheering story of an British eccentric animal-lover who at least tried to save dogs and other animals from the Taliban and took on the self-important Whitehall establishment and their mouthpieces in the press to do so.

Paul “Pen” Farthing was a sergeant in the Royal Marine Commandos who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 and in due course left the army to create a sanctuary in Afghanistan for lost and stray dogs. He is in a long, noble tradition of British animal lovers. 17.2 million Brits own a pet, two-thirds of them owning some 13.5 million dogs.

Finally, after wasting two decades of lost lives against the Taliban, the US and UK decided — as the Russians had done in 1989 or British generals in 1842 and 1880 — that their presence made no difference and brought the troops home.

The nations of the region are not always kind to dogs. So Farthing, in the age-old tradition of the romantic British dog-lover, decided that if British soldiers were leaving Afghanistan, so should the dogs his British-funded charity looked after. They should not, he felt, be left to the cruel mercies of Taliban pooch-phobic killers.

But he then found a new enemy: the Ministry of Defence. The Defence Secretary of the day, Ben Wallace, was a self-important Tory politician, who was then being touted as a future Prime Minister or Nato Secretary General.

In his new book Operation Ark (Claret Press, £12.99) Pen Farthing — who is a fluent, entertaining writer — describes his battle with Whitehall to rescue a total of 171 dogs and cats, as well as 67 local staff, and give them asylum in England. Farthing had raised hundreds of thousands of pounds from a huge army of animal lovers in Britain, who were gripped by this heroic effort to save the dogs and cats.

When the evacuation of all British personnel began in August 2021 and British soldiers were flown into Kabul to help the evacuation, the then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab – remember him? – stayed on holiday. The British Army had closed its main bases in Afghanistan in 2014. The Doha agreement, supposedly ending the formal conflict and with it the US-UK presence in Afghanistan, was signed early in 2020.

But still London had no effective plan to evacuate British personnel plus interpreters, Special Forces and anyone who had worked for Britain and would face revenge execution at the hands of the Taliban.

Farthing got his animal and staff onto his chartered plane and offered scores of spare seats to the Government for use to evacuate Afghans who had worked for Britain.

​Wallace snootily refused. Tom Tugendhat MP, now touting himself as a future Tory leader, sneered on air, “We have just used a lot of troops to bring in 200 animals, meanwhile my interpreter’s family (from the time when he served in Afghanistan) are likely to be killed.’

Anonymous briefing from Whitehall found their way into The Times and other papers, rubbishing Farthing’s efforts to save the dogs. In the end, though, public opinion was on his side and money and support to bring to England the Afghan pooches overwhelmed the jaded indifference of Ministers. Farthing’s book is a pacey read about a loyal military man badly let down by Whitehall-knows-best officialdom.

Britain is the Number One pet and dog loving nation in Europe. The invasion, occupation and badly organised evacuation from Afghanistan are on a par with 19 th century failed expeditions there.

Britain, the US and other European allies would have been well advised to stay out of the Muslim world. But at least these dogs had a better life.

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