Exclusive: Britain working to keep airport open in Afghanistan after troop withdrawal Aug 31 | world News

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Sky News understands that Britain is actively working to keep an airport open in Afghanistan after the final withdrawal of forces.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said after the Group of Seven summit on Tuesday that the first priority for the West in the coming months is to ensure the safe passage of people who want to leave Afghanistan after August 31 when Western forces withdraw.

More details about this effort were revealed when the Secretary of State briefed MPs.

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PM insists on safe passage for Afghans left behind

Dominic Raab told MPs that the government wanted to see an airport in operation after the troops left, apparently indicating that commercial flights might be able to get people out of the country in the future.

“If we want to do it in a more managed way and take a very steep angle from the edge of the cliff, what we can really do is for the Taliban to be able to run an efficient airport in Kabul,” he said.

He added that neighboring countries could help adhere to international aviation standards at the airport to keep it open.

“I’m sure there will be many neighboring countries that will want to see if they can help them keep this airport open or in fact whether they want to involve members of the previous government, or officials, to do the job.”

This appears to be part of an effort to ensure a more enlightened Taliban, rather than the return of what Raab called “Taliban 1.0” – the type of regime that ruled Afghanistan until 2001.

“We will use every means possible to try to secure a transitional government in which the Taliban take in a broader range of Afghan political figures and leaders, and then also try to make sure that they can live up to a better human being. Broader governmental rights and standards than we’ve seen with — if I may express,” said Mr. Raab. About it – Taliban 1.0″.

The British government is also looking with allies to establish overland routes within Afghanistan to help people reach neighboring countries from where they can fly to the UK, something the Taliban are already making clear they oppose.

“I think the important question for (the Taliban) now, in the same way you mentioned ‘Do they really want humanitarian assistance given the potential collapse?’” Mr. Raab said. “Are they going to continue?

“And I think when we think about the range of levers that we have, we can use those levers to tell the Taliban, as we expect – and they’re really committed to allowing safe passage.”

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In full: The Taliban on the future of Afghanistan

Western countries believe they will have strong economic leverage in the coming months.

Raab said they believe the Taliban’s top priority is to avoid economic collapse after Western powers leave the country. This may give the West some leverage in Afghanistan, as it means that the Taliban may seek funding and access to development spending and fear the impact of sanctions.

“We will use every lever at our disposal to achieve this, from access to the international financing system, to the conditions we have put in place around readiness to provide official development assistance (ODA) to sanctions,” he said.

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Afghan translators urge UK to ‘leave no one behind’

Raab said they hope to get help from other major countries not in the G7, such as China, India and Pakistan.

However, this observation acknowledges that a coordinated response from the international community may prove difficult if countries such as Russia and China seek an advantage by deciding to engage bilaterally with the new Afghan government.

Raab said that the best way to deal with the Taliban government in the future would mirror that used in the Balkans.

He said he wanted an “international contact group” that Western powers could use to coordinate with the new Taliban government, based on the model of the former Yugoslavia.

They “are likely to have a greater impact on (the Taliban) with a broader group of countries that can really try to modify what is happening on the ground,” he said.

Raab told MPs that all “mono-nationals (British people without dual citizenship) had been evacuated”, but declined to base their numbers on what would be left behind.

He stressed that the last few days would make a “big difference” and insisted that the UK was still working on ways out of the country using airports in and out of Afghanistan.

“We may by now have gone through – not all – but the lion’s share – the vast majority of documented single citizens in the UK.”

Following the evacuation of British nationals, Mr Raab said the next priorities for the Afghanistan Resettlement and Assistance Policy (ARAP) would be human rights activists, female judges, members of the LBGT+ community and children of British passport holders where they lack documentation. For children whose parents are eligible to go to the UK, they keep the whole family in the country.

Raab told the 100 MPs during the call that 11,000 people had been evacuated from April to August.

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