President Joe Biden of the United States and, to a lesser extent, our own Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, have taken an immense amount of ‘stick’ from administrations, citizenry and media world-wide for the decision to withdraw NATO troops – who had been there for 20 years, plus – from Afghanistan.

The second most numerous force was British, but the bulk of the army that was there to repel the brutal, fundamentalist Taliban with their seemingly blind adherence to an extreme form of Sharia law (the rules and procedures followed by zealous adherents to the Islamic faith), was from the USA. Once it had been decided they wished to pull out, it was not feasible, militarily, that any other Western nation could, on their own, remain.

Still, it seemed that the countries making up the alliance had, over the two decades, done a decent job; the official Afghan army had, by all accounts, been moulded into an efficient, reliable fighting force, using the most modern and sophisticated weaponry supplied by the Western powers.

Thus it appears that the mindset of the United States’ leader was that this turbulent, war ridden land which has been driven by internal disputes for generations, should from now on ‘stand on its own two feet’; on the surface of it, this was surely not an unfair expectation. The Afghan government had at its disposal an army more than double that of the Taliban insurgents and despite its inadequacies and corruption this leadership team was favoured by a vast majority of the populace over the dour, harsh, unforgiving Taliban with its puritanical demands when it comes to the behaviour of men, and its mindless, often cruel repression of women and girls.

Thus it was surely a fair assumption that if the Western powers took their forces out of this rugged, mountainous land, a well-trained and resourced army, with sophisticated weaponry, backed by the bulk of the resilient inhabitants of this ancient nation state, would be able to repel ­­— without major difficulty — attack from the fanatical extremists so often carrying out barbarities in the name of the Prophet Mohammad; shameful to use his name as his ideology was not dissimilar to that of Jesus in that he preached goodwill and tolerance.

This being the situation in August, with the elected government of this republic seemingly able to pursue a path towards a tolerable, free and reasonably democratic state, the American President stated that it was time his forces left this turbulent land and returned to their homeland; in his view — and that of the Western world — insurrection was not a major threat to this Asian nation.

How wrong we were; for no sooner had Biden given notice that his troops would be heading for airports and leaving than the Taliban was on the march. Surely no major cause for concern as the official Afghan army had sufficient resources and training to repel them. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. For the motley horde of insurgents and terrorists which are the Taliban swept all before them; clearly they have a multitude of faults but cowardice is not one of them. Could that be said of the Afghan army? I do not have the right to make a judgement on that, but it is a fact that whilst some of their numbers fought bravely, many capitulated without firing a single shot and others switched sides. It is believed that even the Taliban were taken aback by how swiftly their foe melted away. Within a fortnight, the entire country including the capital, Kabul, was in the hands of these malevolent people and the President of the republic had fled — though probably not penniless.

Horrific scenes at Kabul’s airport ensued; killings, mayhem and random brutality by the Taliban and the carnage caused by a suicide bomber from the Afghan branch of the even more brutal Islamic State group threatened to derail the valiant attempts of the American and British troops to airlift to safety their own citizens and as many Afghans as possible. The images of terror, panic, despair, tragedy and barbarity will linger long in the memory.

The efforts of our courageous troops and RAF personnel who rescued so many must not be forgotten. However, was the two decade foray into this country ever worthwhile? We lost almost 500 lives (plus many others were permanently maimed), the Americans over 2,300, but what cannot be counted are the lives saved ‘back home’ through the sheer presence of our troops in the region and the disruption this caused to the activities of the terror groups being harboured by the Taliban.

It could be that Joe Biden’s belief that not one more NATO soldier’s life should be sacrificed to protect a nation which seemingly refused to fight for itself was, and is, the correct one. The resultant humanitarian disaster seems to have been as much due to a catastrophic failure of military (and other) intelligence and a complete lack of a coherent contingency plan if such a ‘worst case’ scenario should come to pass. Perhaps after two decades the time to exit was right, but the timing was rushed.