 The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is likely to cause a refugee crisis in the region. We've already witnessed chaotic and tragic scenes at Kabul airport, as many people who fear Taliban rule have attempted to flee. You can see here people desperately trying to board one of the few commercial airlines that is obviously going to be just one small subsection of the people who are terrified of Taliban rule because of, I suppose, they may have supported politically in the past, their gender identity, whether or not they want to live in a regime where education and rights for women is at best incredibly vulnerable. These images will, of course, shock everyone for a long time to come. People trying to board a U.S. Air Force plane evacuating military and diplomatic personnel, people fell off the plane and tragically died. Really, really, really horrific stuff. For those who do manage to leave the country, the next challenge is getting accepted. So we're getting accepted in a safe country and getting refugee status. As in most refugee crises, the majority of those fleeing will move to neighboring countries, something which is not often spoken about in Europe when we say, why are they all coming here? They're not, by the way. However, clearly the West should play a role. It should be offering to take in lots of refugees from Afghanistan, especially as it is incredibly implicated on so many levels in what's going on there at the moment. Canada is the one Western country that I think has been the only one to commit to numbers. They're going to grant 20,000 Afghans asylum. For their part, the UK has committed to accept those Afghans which have worked for the British armed forces, particularly things like translators or local fixes. UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace spoke emotionally about that group today. Secretary of State, when do you imagine the time will be that will be the last man or woman standing? When do you hope to have full evacuation? Our time scales plan on August 31st for the evacuation of all the people that we would have said was in the hot place, those people that are passing or have passed security checks, those people that are effectively on a ticket to ride and indeed get out the three cohorts. I think I told you about last week which were entitled personnel, British passport holders, British officials and indeed then obviously all those Afghans. I think to be clear to your listeners, we are only now in Afghanistan and have been for the last two weeks to process those people. We're not doing other diplomatic functions. We are simply there to process all those British passport holders and all those people we have an obligation to. Our men and women of our armed forces are risking their lives in doing that, but that is the right thing to do. They've risked their lives the last 20 years and the very least our obligation has to be is many of these people through the pipeline as possible. But I think I also said it is a really deep part of regret for me. Some people won't get back. Some people won't get back and we will have to do our best in third countries to process people. Why do you feel it so personally Mr Wallace? Because it's sad and the West has done what it's done and we have to do our very best to get people out and stand by our obligations and 20 years of sacrifice is what it is. That clip was obviously widely shared because Ben Wallace became so emotional and it is novel to see Tories have genuine emotion. It's also obvious why Britain has a particular obligation to those who worked for the British armed forces. They will be in harm's way precisely because they worked for the British. There's also a practical question here. It's going to be very difficult for the British to get people to work for them in other war zones. Hopefully we won't do any expeditionary wars in a while, but if there were to be, won't it be very difficult to get people to work for the British army if the last lot who were employed by them then got slaughtered by whoever replaced them when they left. The commitment from the UK though does not deserve our praise. Last week the government said about 2,000 Afghan people we have an obligation to would also be transported to the UK. That's joining around 3,000 who have already been taken out of the country. For some perspective there are 38 million people that live in Afghanistan committing to rehoming 5,000 of them is a complete joke. The government do say that more information will be coming with regards to Afghans who don't work for the British. But here recent history shouldn't give us much cause for hope. The Syrian civil war was the biggest refugee crisis of the last decade. This map shows some of the top recipient countries. These numbers are as of 2017. You can see by then Canada had rehomed 54,000 Syrian refugees. The United States 33,000 actually that's a very pathetic figure. Germany 530,000, Sweden 110,000 and then those countries who accept the most as I say they are the ones which are in the region. The neighbours of Syria in this case. So it was Turkey with 3.4 million people. Lebanon with a million people as with a population of 7 million people. So you can see how much they contributed in that sense. Britain is not on that map. There's no arrow pointing to it and that's because the figure is so pathetic. The UK rehomed 23,000 people from the Syrian refugee crisis. Now compared to our population that's just completely pathetic. Some of the numbers have actually increased from from the ones shown on this map. So Sweden there are now 173,000 Syrians living there in Germany at 788,000. I will remind you the corresponding figure for the UK is 23,000. Ash do you hold out any hope that Britain will take its international responsibility more seriously this time than it did the last major refugee crisis which was in Eurasia? Look there are some really straightforward policy solutions to dealing with the backlog of applications to come to the UK and come to a place of safety. One would be rather than saying well we've got to process and make your applications while you are still either in Kabul or in a third country, a neighbouring country, you say come here we deal with the paperwork later. So that's why yes Ben Wallace was very emotional but unless you're going to back that up with policy and you are a member of this government and unless you're going to put the pressure on Priti Patel and Boris Johnson directly to expedite the evacuation of these Afghan nationals then who are your tears serving? Nobody but yourself. It's very very indulgent, very indulgent to cry like that when a very simple policy solution isn't being pursued. There was also something which I found really troubling about some of the discourse around those terrible images we saw at Kabul airport of desperate people clinging to the sides of a departing military aircraft only to fall tragically to their deaths and unfortunately this is something which I saw not just from random troll accounts on Twitter but also fairly well regarded journalists including someone who worked from the BBC saying well why are they all men? Why are all the men fleeing? Shouldn't they stay and fight? They're cowards, they're leaving behind the women and the children. Now what this fails to recognise is one there have been women and children caught up in the melee at Kabul airport but two it is most likely to be men who either worked assisting NATO or foreign organisations or who may be perceived to have done so. So of course there are conflicting reports emerging from Afghanistan at the moment. The Taliban are saying that there will be you know safety and no reprisals for those who worked either with the government or foreign organisations in Kabul but there are also reports from other cities of Taliban going door to door with lists so I imagine that there might not be a consistent edict which is being adhered to across the country. So men do have something to fear that either they will be killed or they will forced to kill. It is also very difficult for women to travel alone to abandon their caring obligations if they have them and that kind of accounts for this disparity and what I can't bear is that when we've been greeted with these images of a human crisis and it's a human crisis of our own creation we could have mitigated against this almost every step of the way that you have all these armchair hard men going well you know what I do I'd simply you know do a Rambo 4 and go pee with like you know a machine gun on a jeep or something it's beyond a joke and so I think that you've got these twin failures one in terms of the basic compassion and humanity and the way in which I think you know decades of anti-migrant sentiment is really curdled into this quite ugly and nasty view particularly when you see young men fleeing a conflict where they will either be forced to kill or be killed themselves and I think that is quite a common view amongst people in this country and then you also have the systematic policy failures of the UK government when it comes to fulfilling its obligations towards the Afghan people and one thing I would like to just finish on is that you have had two Afghan resettlement schemes under this government the new one only came in in April and it was better as a bit more generous than the one that came in before but still it assessed whether or not people could make an application to come to the UK based on individual circumstances and still up to that point you had with afghan asylum seekers in this country people being deported to Kabul because the home office policy was that it is a safe city to be deported to and those deportations have been taking place when it has been clear to anyone with eyes and ears that the situation in Afghanistan was destabilizing it was highly likely that the Taliban would either be represented in some kind of power sharing agreement with the afghan government or take it over entirely so the home office has pursued and prioritized the hostile environment every step of the way when it could have and it should have had a much more compassionate and humane policy as I say in terms of what the UK policy will be it is uncertain they say they will be releasing more documentation I don't think we have much hope that it's going to be particularly generous at the moment though if you are an afghan and you want to find out how you might claim asylum in the UK you're probably going to go to the government website this is the relevant page it says Afghanistan country policy and information notes from UK visas and immigration guidance issued by UK visas and immigration to make decision in asylum and human rights applications this is what you might look on will I be qualified for or will I qualify for asylum now there's not much on this page and when you look at the updates you can see why on the 16th of august so today the update to this page was the removal of all afghanistan country policy and information notes apart from medical and health care provision december 2020 so if you look at that you've got absolutely no idea whatsoever and as I say we await a policy from the government what about the opposition this was Keir Starmer speaking today I don't think comparisons are necessarily helpful but the situation in Afghanistan is shocking and it's tragic we're seeing before our very eyes the unraveling of 20 years of progress and of huge sacrifice and I appreciate that the decision to withdraw was not the government's decision alone but I want the premise to step up to the plate show some leadership and some urgency we've got a united nation security council meeting this afternoon it's absolutely clear what the priorities have to be that's the evacuation of uk nationals and eligible afghans it's ensuring a process for the safety of all of those that are remaining there and an assertion of the human rights of everybody in afghanistan including women and girls particularly women and girls and an agreement about safe and legal routes for refugees because it is inevitable there's going to be a refugee crisis coming out of this ash was that statement up to scratch for you talked about you know putting in place legal means for people to come to the uk was he hitting the right notes there look it is obviously really important to expand safe and legal means for people to come to this country but it's also really important to note that you don't have to come here through legal means in order to claim asylum so yes expand those means but also be realistic there will be flows of irregular migrants to europe not as many as there will be in neighboring countries and what the uk should do and what the opposition leaders should do is go actually the priority is give people a place of safety no ifs no buts that's that the one of the things that i think um i found perhaps most lacking in what he had to say was talking about protection of human rights particularly the rights of women and girls in afghanistan the key question there as well how are you going to do that because maybe you can't play it both ways maybe you can't have sanctions maybe you can't say we're going to have no aid going to afghanistan we're not going to have any kinds of diplomatic relations at all because then where is your leverage ultimately both the us and the uk abandoned afghanistan to the taliban that is what happened and now this state of stage of play to go oh well we really want you to protect human rights okay how how what's your leverage what are you offering here and i think that that is a conversation that people our politicians in this country aren't brave enough to have because it would mean admitting their own deep failures of leadership and strategy but also saying you cannot then maintain this illusion of implacable enmity whilst also saying we want to put pressure to protect human rights particularly the rights of women and girls