Canada’s last ambassador to Afghanistan said he fled the city of.Kabul, leaving 1,250 Canadians behind, because it was too dangerous for diplomats..“We all saw on TV it was two planes after ours that the people were hanging off the airplane when people fell off it,” Reid Sirrs.said on Monday..“So it was quite close for us.”.Sirrs testified at the House of Commons Special Committee on Afghanistan, his first public questioning since closing the Canadian embassy and fleeing Kabul last August 15..“Why did Canada decide not to leave any representatives at the Kabul airport during the evacuation?” asked Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, Que.)..“It was a very chaotic day,” replied Sirrs..“We could hear explosions. We could see fires all over the city. When we came into the military side of the airport itself it was very obvious the city was coming under siege and it became evident to us that a whole bunch of chaotic activity was taking place and was going to escalate.”.“For us, when it came down to why not leave anybody behind, at the time it looked like the whole airport was going to be overrun. We saw a lot of military aircraft coming in, offloading equipment, offloading military personnel, and to us, it just seemed to be far too dangerous for us to stay put and leave anybody in harm’s way.”.The Canadian military organized rescue flights for 11 days after Sirrs and other Department of Foreign Affairs diplomats returned to Ottawa. Sirrs said the decision to flee Kabul was “the right one to make.”.However, members of the committee said the decision was costly for Canadians and Afghan nationals left behind..Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.) noted the United Kingdom evacuated more than 11,000 people, while Canada only evacuated approximately 3,700..Sirrs testified he was surprised by the rapid collapse of Afghanistan following the announced withdrawal of the last of NATO troops..“In fact, we expected the Afghan military to defend the city until the onset of winter, allowing time for negotiations to continue,” he said..Chong said it seemed that the intelligence and advice Sirrs received as ambassador was not accurate. “From afar at the other side of the world here, it was clear to many of us in July that Kabul was going to fall,” he said..In a January 21, 2019 report that was available to Sirrs, federal agencies predicted Afghanistan “could collapse quickly” after the departure of U.S. troops with a “high probability of a rapid victory” for the Taliban. The report Afghanistan: The Precarious Struggle For Stability was written by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and published online..“The Taliban is strong and united, bolstered by senior leaders released from Guantanamo,” wrote the Intelligence Service. “The Kabul government is weak and unable to overcome corruption, factionalism and economic failure.”.“Afghans believe in the idea of democracy, but their reality has been corruption, vote manipulation and violence,” said the report. “Lawlessness is at frightening levels in the cities and in the villages,” said the report. “Many of the crimes are perpetrated by the local police force.”.Decades of war have not changed the country, with the report noting the Afghanistan of 2019 was “remarkably similar” to the Afghanistan of 1992 and 1996..“The only reason rockets are not raining down on Kabul today is because of the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan.”.Matthew Horwood is the Parliamentary Bureau Chief of the Western Standard
