‘All the cameras have left for another war” is the devastating line from one of my favourite poems by the Polish writer Wislawa Szymborska. I thought about that a couple of weeks ago in a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro when I ran into three fellow British female journalists, all of us long-time Afghan hands. Immediately talk turned to Afghanistan. The Taliban had just announced women must cover their faces — bring back the burqa — and we were all in horror.
Like our Afghan friends, we remain in shock at what happened in August — and last week’s report by the Commons foreign affairs committee shows why. It was scathing. “Missing in Action,” it said. “A betrayal of our allies.” “A
