Like Dunkirk, the evacuation of Kabul is a miracle. Has a new Boris emerged?

Whisper it who dares, but the evacuation of Kabul Airport has not been an unmitigated catastrophe. Indeed, it has been marked by remarkable feats of organisation, a spirit of co-operation among allies — and conspicuous heroism. By Tuesday the United States alone had airlifted almost 60,000 people out of Afghanistan in little more than a week. With fewer resources, the British have saved nearly 10,000. By August 31, the US expects to have evacuated some 100,000 Americans, Afghans and others, while the British hope to get another 4,000 people out. To have mounted an airborne rescue mission on this scale within a fortnight is entirely unprecedented in history.

Not since Dunkirk has the world witnessed such inspired improvisation. In Operation Dynamo, some 800 “little ships” were able to transport about 340,000 British and French troops from the beaches, under constant attack from the Luftwaffe, in just over a week. The Army lost more than 1,000 men on the beaches, the RAF lost 145 aircraft and the Royal Navy six destroyers defending the evacuation. Thousands more Allied soldiers were killed in the Siege of Calais and other battles to divert the Germans from Dunkirk.

By comparison, the Taliban have surrounded Kabul International Airport and have threatened to prevent any flights after the deadline, but so far they have not interfered. Despite the conditions around the perimeter, since the initial stampede, there has been little violence and remarkably few casualties.

Yet Dunkirk is only about 45 miles from Dover. Kabul is more than a thousand miles from the nearest US bases and nearly 5,000 miles from London. Churchill was right to call Dunkirk “a miracle of deliverance”, but when Operation Pitting (the British part of the Afghan evacuation) is completed, Boris Johnson would not be wrong to speak of “the miracle of Kabul”.

It’s not over till it’s over. The US forces number 5,800, the British nearly 1,000; we have to allow time to get them all out by next Tuesday. President Biden’s refusal to unilaterally extend the deadline has been severely criticised, but it is not in his gift: the Taliban won’t allow any extension. We cannot fly huge passenger aircraft in and out of an airport under mortar fire. And the Anglo-American forces of some 7,000 troops still in Kabul are sitting ducks for terrorist attacks by groups such as al-Qaeda or ISIS.

Indeed, it is already tempting fate to continue evacuating Afghans at all. In spite of personal pleas from William Burns, the Director of the CIA, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has warned against Allied attempts to evacuate anyone except their own nationals: “We are not in favour of allowing Afghans to leave.” Yet the majority of those who have been saved by British and US forces, at great risk to themselves, are in fact Afghans.

Here in Britain, the Opposition parties have naturally directed their main verbal attacks, not at the Taliban, but at the Prime Minister. After the Zoom meeting of the G7 he chaired on Tuesday, a chorus of criticism was heard from Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy, the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davis and the SNP’s Ian Blackford. Not one of them gave the PM credit for achieving a provisional consensus among the G7 on Afghanistan, nor for having organised the summit in the first place.

Yet in an understated way, Britain has handled the Afghan crisis with distinction, both on the diplomatic stage and on the ground: as the main interlocutor between Joe Biden and the rest of Nato, as the second most important nation after the US in the task of saving lives in Kabul, and as one of the main architects of Western plans to deal the fallout from the Taliban triumph. No other European country has played a comparably positive role.

A great deal could yet go wrong in Kabul, but by next week the world may have noticed that a new Boris Johnson has emerged from this, the most serious international crisis of his career so far. The Prime Minister who chaired the G7 yesterday was calm, constructive and statesmanlike. Faced with a disaster that was not of his making, the man who during his brief tenure as Foreign Secretary was dismissed by diplomats as lightweight has proved himself sure-footed and competent. The politicians and pundits who were writing him off a few weeks ago would be wise to think again. Unlike Churchill, who was battle-hardened long before he entered Downing Street, this Prime Minister (like Margaret Thatcher) has had to learn on the job. It’s too soon to say yet, but he has the makings of a true leader, in the mould of his hero and heroine. Boris Johnson has turned out to be good in a crisis.

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