UK warns Taliban against sealing Afghanistan off from world

London: Britain on Wednesday warned the Taliban against attempts to coercively seal off Afghanistan from the rest of the world and urged the militant group to keep its borders open.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said attempts by the Taliban to shut down the country could trigger a "refugee crisis" once Western forces withdrew from Kabul airport on August 31, as migrants make their way to neighbouring countries.

He noted that the Afghan border was "rugged and wide-ranging" and that efforts to isolate the country from the rest of the world would fail.

"If the Taliban leadership, as they were saying overnight, want to avoid the brain drain, they're not going to be able to do that by coercively blocking the border," he told Times Radio.

"You'll just see a larger flow of refugees going out and they'll have to be processed. They're not going to be able to avoid the refugee crisis by just a few roadblocks, they're not going to be able to hermetically seal the Afghan border, which is rugged and wide-ranging," he said.

During a series of interviews on Wednesday, Raab also sought to dismiss media reports of him "lounging on the beach" on holiday at the height of the Afghan crisis earlier this month.

He stressed that he had been constantly in virtual contact with the COBRA [Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms] meeting and officials to ensure the airlift of British nationals and supporters from the

country.

He also said he can't give a precise timeline about the end of UK evacuation flights from Afghanistan, but the mission will be over by Aug. 31.

Raab said it's clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month.

He said that the UK has evacuated more than 9,000 people from Afghanistan since August 15, including 2,000 people in the last 24 hours.