It is reported that the beleaguered foreign secretary was told by a senior Downing Street official to return to London immediately on Friday 13 August as the Taliban advanced on Kabul. But it is claimed he “nobbled” Boris Johnson and was assured by the prime minister that he could remain at his five-star beach holiday until Sunday and eventually returned in the early hours of Monday morning. Less than a week after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has released a propaganda video of its fighters in full US tactical gear – as Humvees and other American equipment continue to be spotted on the streets of Afghanistan. At a packed mosque on Friday, a senior member of a Taliban splinter group also preached to those assembled while holding a US-made M4 rifle and flanked by fighters clad in US military uniforms. The US provided an estimated $28billion in weaponry to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2017. The overall cost of its 20-year efforts in the country – before cities fell like dominoes this month – was $83billion. * In a briefing on Saturday, the US Department of Defense said 17,000 people have been flown out of the airport, including some 2,500 US citizens. An official said a “small number” of Americans and Afghans the US wanted to evacuate had faced harassment. In some cases, they had been beaten on their way to the airport.
