The UK's withdrawal from Afghanistan was a "disaster" and a "betrayal of our allies that will damage the UK's interests for years to come," an inquiry by British lawmakers has found.

The Foreign Affairs Committee said there had been "systemic failures of intelligence, diplomacy, planning and preparation," many of which it said were due, at least in part, to the UK's foreign ministry.

It added that the UK government failed to properly respond to the U.S.'s decision to withdraw from the conflict, "to predict the speed of the Taliban's takeover, or to plan and prepare for the evacuation of our Afghan partners."

The report quotes a former head of the British Army as saying the government had been "asleep on watch" when it came to protecting Afghans who worked for the UK.

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The U.S. and the UK completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of August 2021, ending 20 years of war that culminated in the militant Taliban's return to power.

However, the UK government was heavily criticized for its handling of the evacuation, which led to many Afghans who had assisted the UK's mission there being left behind to face the victorious Taliban. 

A spokesperson for the government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) defended its handling of the withdrawal to the BBC and said it would review and respond to the committee's findings.

The cross-party MPs who carried out the inquiry said while it was "convenient" to blame the FCDO or military intelligence for the failures, ministers should have been driving the policy. 

It added that the decision of the Foreign Office's senior leaders to go on holiday while Kabul was falling to the Taliban marked "a fundamental lack of seriousness, grip or leadership."

During the evacuation it said there seemed to be "no clear line of command within the political leadership of the government," with decisions made on the basis of "untraceable and unaccountable political interventions."

It added that the "most damning" fact was "the total absence" of a plan for evacuating Afghans who supported the UK mission, but who weren't directly employed by the government.

The selection of those eligible for evacuation, it says, was "poorly devised, managed, and staffed" with a failure to perform what it calls "the most basic crisis-management functions."

However, the inquiry stressed that the personnel on the ground during the evacuation were to be praised for carrying out "a chaotic policy to the best of their ability."

But it added that those who lead the department should be "ashamed" that civil servants felt compelled to risk their careers to shed light on the "appalling mismanagement" of the crisis.