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Leaving Kabul
DOC RITCHIE assesses an account of the disastrous evacuation by last British ambassador to Afghanistan

Kabul: Final Call: The Inside Story of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan August 2021
Laurie Bristow
Whittles, £18.99

 

IN February 2020 Donald Trump signed the Doha Agreement to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan but, like everything else he has said or done, it failed. The Taliban were invited, the Afghan government was not.

Laurie Bristow was the last British ambassador to Afghanistan and his book details the Kabul evacuation. It is part diary and part grim countdown to the inevitable as he attends ambassadorial drinks, lunches and dinners. 

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