{"id":35574,"date":"2021-08-21T00:14:27","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T15:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/20\/afghanistan-panic-stations-whitehall-kabul-fell-political-crisis-uk-government"},"modified":"2021-08-21T00:14:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T15:14:27","slug":"too-little-too-late-why-it-was-panic-stations-in-whitehall-as-kabul-fell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=35574","title":{"rendered":"Too little, too late: why it was panic stations in Whitehall as Kabul fell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan precipitated a political one at the heart of UK government<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday last week, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, had tried to sound composed as he announced a small number of British troops were heading out to Afghanistan. Six hundred were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/12\/taliban-claim-capture-kandahar-grip-on-afghanistan-grows\">being sent to Kabul<\/a>, he explained, to help Britons and their support staff return to the UK in an orderly manner.<\/p>\n<p>His calmness belied a panic that was already sweeping Whitehall, as ministers and officials watched in horror at the Taliban\u2019s capture of provincial capitals. Wallace, at least, gave the impression of wanting to take charge when other, more senior members of the cabinet were less visible \u2013 and in Dominic Raab\u2019s case, invisible.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/20\/afghanistan-panic-stations-whitehall-kabul-fell-political-crisis-uk-government\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan precipitated a political one at the heart of UK governmentOn Thursday last week, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, had tried to sound composed as he announced a small number of British troops were heading ou&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,1808,531,904,950,319,1879,939,938,2290,4,61,44,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-ben-wallace","category-boris-johnson","category-conservatives","category-dominic-raab","category-foreign-policy","category-foreign-commonwealth-and-development-office","category-joe-biden","category-military","category-ministry-of-defence","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35575,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35574\/revisions\/35575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}