{"id":36377,"date":"2021-09-03T21:23:34","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T12:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/03\/dominic-raab-taliban-takeover-surprise-apparent-contradiction-pm"},"modified":"2021-09-03T21:23:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T12:23:34","slug":"dominic-raab-seems-to-contradict-pm-by-saying-taliban-takeover-was-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36377","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Raab seems to contradict PM by saying Taliban takeover was surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Foreign secretary says Afghanistan\u2019s fall came \u2018faster than anyone anticipated\u2019 during Islamabad visit<\/p>\n<p>Dominic Raab has said there was widespread surprise including among the Taliban at the speed with which the group swept to military victory in Afghanistan, but the UK now wanted direct communication with the militants.<\/p>\n<p>Raab was speaking after holding talks with officials in Pakistan, the country with the greatest sway over the Taliban. It was his first visit to Islamabad as foreign secretary, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2021\/sep\/02\/raab-hits-back-defence-minister-afghanistan-remarks\">follows criticism<\/a> that he had not engaged with the Pakistan foreign policy elite in the six months prior to the crisis erupting.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/03\/dominic-raab-taliban-takeover-surprise-apparent-contradiction-pm\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foreign secretary says Afghanistan\u2019s fall came \u2018faster than anyone anticipated\u2019 during Islamabad visitDominic Raab has said there was widespread surprise including among the Taliban at the speed with which the group swept to military victory in Afghani&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":493,"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":[46,531,904,997,950,319,1879,359,60,4,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-boris-johnson","category-conservatives","category-defence-policy","category-dominic-raab","category-foreign-policy","category-foreign-commonwealth-and-development-office","category-imran-khan","category-pakistan","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","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\/36377","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\/493"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36378,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377\/revisions\/36378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}