One of the final UK evacuation flights arrives as 20 year campaign ends

One of the final UK evacuation flights arrives from Afghanistan as 20 year campaign ends.

The 20-year campaign in Afghanistan comes to an end as one of the final flights of people being evacuated from Kabul has landed in the UK. Saturday night saw both diplomatic staff and British troops heading out from Kabul in what is the tail end of a two-week rescue operation.

In the next 24 hours the final military staff will be arriving in the UK, and according to sources in the RAF: “it is clear that the return of UK military forces from Afghanistan by the RAF has now come to a close”.

Vice-Admiral Ben Key, the Chief of Joint Operations is in charge of Operation Pitting, and he has said that the latest pictures have proven that service personnel have “given their all over the last two weeks”.

He commented that: “Some of the pictures that have come back in the last few days have painted a really good impression of just how desperate and difficult those conditions have been in the last few weeks.

“The pictures of them sitting in the aircraft coming back, these are deeply tired people who have given of their all over the last two weeks.

“They have travelled with very little equipment – we didn’t allow them to carry much kit – and in many cases they have lived in the clothes they have been wearing for many days.

“They have been sleeping in rough conditions, eating off ration packs and their sole motivation has been to help as many of the Afghans and British entitled personnel as they possibly could.

He added that: “It’s been a combination of deep professionalism, considerable courage, really sophisticated judgment and, on occasion, huge compassion, and it’s been difficult for those of us back here not to just have the most enormous admiration for what they’ve done and how they’ve gone about it.”

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