Sunday's editorials are dominated by the escalating violence in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of allied troops.

 

Scotland on Sunday

'Afghanistan will deepen pandemic's legacy of division' writes Paigham Mustafa.

"In the UK we shouldn't be complacent. Covid-19 has sparked a deluge of online homophobia, racist memes and hate messages. I see them every day.

"According to a recent report from Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency,  mental health is an important issue in relation to terrorism and violent extremism, and that  Covid-19 will have been another stress factor for potentially vulnerable individuals.

"Europol notes that in 2020, there were 57 completed, failed and foiled terrorist attacks in the European Union. These were in Austria, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. Like it or not, lockdowns have impacted on mental health and darker elements have taken advantage of this to recruit new members to their causes.

"The Taliban's victory in Afghanistan will give this added impetus; a sense that violence does work, and that militant Islam is on the march. I also see that on social media every day."

 

The Sunday Times 

Neil Oliver says the situation in Afghanistan shows "how fast advances in equality can roll back"

"If ever there were inspriation for a great reset, it is the latest chapter of the story of Afghanistan.

"During the 20th century and earlier there were periods of improvement in the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan. Deep and stubborn are the roots in that country, that part of the world, of a culture that inextricably links female modesty with family honour.

"Immodest woman and girls - those seen outside the home, going to school, working, driving, exposing so much as a finger, an inch of skin - are anathema to may Pashtun people making up as much as half of the population.

"The traditional culture of the Pashtun is drawn from Pashtunwali, a set of social codes whose implementation by the Taliban makes even the strictest interpretations of sharia, the Islamic legal system, look easygoing by comparison.

"Now the darkness descends again. The presence of the US, the UK and others was, as it turns out, as effective as a hand placed in water. In the instant the hand was withdrawn, the water closed the gap as though it had never been there."

 

Sunday Mail 

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab "scaled new heights of baloney" writes John Niven.

“I do love a quality excuse. If you have children, you’ll be familiar with the fantastical, convoluted explanation masquerading as an alibi.

“The whole “it wasn’t me/the dog ate it/that was broken before I was even born” school of thinking.

“But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab scaled new height of baloney with his account of a phone call that was meant to have been made to arrange the evactuation of interpreters from Afghanistan.

“Raab had “delegated” the call as he was “too busy (on holiday, on a beach in Crete) to make it himself.

“It now transpires that even the delegated call – which could have saved lives – was not made either.

“The excuse given by Raab’s office? Simply a shrug and the words “the delegated call failed to happen”.

“I think that’ll be my go-to phrase the next time I screw up monumentally.”