A former chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee has urged it to launch an investigation into the withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan that led to the country’s takeover by the Taliban.
Dominic Grieve, a former Tory MP and attorney general, backed calls for the committee to use its unique position as the watchdog responsible for scrutinising the UK’s intelligence services to summon key evidence and witnesses.
The speed of Kabul’s capture over the weekend took some by surprise, including Boris Johnson. The prime minister told the Commons on Wednesday that events in Afghanistan had “unfolded faster, and the collapse has been faster, than I think even the Taliban themselves predicted”.
Introspection is now under way about how the government was so blindsided by the Taliban, so much so that the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, remained on holiday until a change of regime appeared all but inevitable.
Grieve said it was up to the ISC whether to launch an investigation, but he believed it would be a “useful exercise”.
He said: “The prime minister is on record as saying there has been no intelligence failure. He says we knew this was a possibility, even if the rapidity of collapse was quicker than anticipated. Therefore for the ISC to independently confirm the prime minister is correct about this and how this was factored into the decision-making of government would be very interesting to know about.”
Grieve continued: “The ISC’s ability to look at matters in the round is very considerable. What it can then publish … is a completely separate issue. So the ISC can do its work. Whether it will ever be able to put that into the public domain is another matter.
“But that doesn’t mean the work isn’t worth doing, because even if it can’t publish its findings, it may well be able to publish enough – or it might be in a position to say that the intelligence was correct and the government took a decision to act based on that, or there were serious failings.
“Clearly, defence, intelligence and the work of MI6 is within its remit. Therefore when the Afghanistan operation is over, we can review if there were serious failings of intelligence, or whether these were known but the government simply had to accept them because the US had shifted and gone.”
A Labour member of the ISC, Kevan Jones, told the Commons on Wednesday: “A huge, spectacular failure in intelligence needs to be examined.”
Tory MPs have also pressed the need for an inquiry, despite Johnson’s insistence that “most of the key questions have already been extensively gone into”. The backbencher Mark Harper said it was vital to get to the bottom of why the Taliban’s advance was so successful, so the UK could “make good calls about any emerging threats ... and deal with them before they happen, not afterwards”.
He added: “The ISC could certainly look at the intelligence assessments from our agencies and judge if they supported the political assessment. I think that would be useful.”
Stewart McDonald, the SNP’s defence spokesperson, also said he backed an ISC investigation to establish what intelligence was gathered about the situation in Afghanistan, when it was shared and what action was taken based upon it.
ISC members are understood to be considering launching an inquiry – but no formal decision has so far been taken, and is unlikely to be taken until parliament returns from recess.