Thread by @brayparry

Presenting the war in #Afghanishtan as a failure and a mistake is ignorant and an insult to the service personnel who have fought in Afghanistan over the best part of 20 years. There are indisputable failures, primarily the chaotic withdrawal that has put so many lives at risk 1/

It is also beyond devastating for #Afghanistan citizens, particularly Afghan women, who will lose hard fought rights overnight. For them, western withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government will have a devastating impact on their daily lives. 2/

As archaic as their rule appears to us, implementing western democracy into #Afghanistan was naive. It is a country divided into factions. Forming a Government and military that would resist Taliban advances without ongoing western support was always unlikely. 3/

Yet that doesn't mean the #Afghanishtan war was a failure. The Taliban are not Al-Qaeda. In 2001, the Taliban sheltered Al-Qaeda as they planned devastating attacks on western countries. Over the last 20 years, Al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan has been all but eliminated. 4/

The Doha agreement, that our Defence Secretary @BWallaceMP now claims he publicly opposed from the start despite no evidence to the contrary, was signed in the knowledge that Taliban rule was inevitable. Its purpose is to ensure #Afganisthan is no longer a terrorist state. 5/

If that agreement holds, and there is much scepticism around that, then the world will be safer as a result of our service personnel fighting alongside our allies to dismantle Al-Qaeda operations in #Afghanistan. Their sacrifices will not have been wasted. 6/

So it is absolutely essential that, alongside doing everything we can to accommodate #Afghanishtan refugees, the UK, US, and NATO hold the Taliban to the Doha agreement and ensure that there is not a resurgence in Al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. 7/

We need to use this moment to reflect on what western intervention in foreign conflicts/countries looks like. Our intervention in #Afghanishtan should have always been about Al-Qaeda, with an exit strategy that handed power back once the Al-Qaeda threat had been dealt with. 8/

This should be the model of intervention in future: Where terrorist organisations are a threat, intervention should concentrate on dismantling the terrorist organisation with a clear exit strategy, even if that means handing power back to Governments harbouring terrorists. 9/9

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