On 23 August 2021 in the aftermath of the Fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Simon Coveney approved the deployment of an Emergency Consular Assistance Team (ECAT) comprising ARW personnel and a small team of DFA diplomats to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in order to evacuate Irish citizens. ARW personnel had served in small numbers with ISAF and RSM from October 2006 to March 2007 and from September 2014 to March 2015, mainly as trainers, medical staff and IED experts. The options available to the Irish government to extract its citizens were hampered by Ireland's lack of an organic strategic airlift capability.