If you can't see the relevance of a single-seat multi-role platform, with a proven LDP capability, a well integrated recce pod and mission planner, with a helmet sight, ETAPS and EFRCs, then I can't help you.
Perhaps the Jagmates will be better placed for Typhoon by posting them to makeweight ground tours or instructing on the Tucano or on the UASs?
Why no show this time?
Because as soon as the Jaguar is used, it is obviously, publicly useful, thereby making its withdrawal without immediate replacement much more difficult to justify.
Had the Jags just come back from Kandahar, just imagine how much more fuss would there have been. There would have been no place for ill-informed pundits to make stupid remarks about aircraft not being useful.....
And this useless non-combatant jet had exactly the strafe capability that force commanders in Afghanistan have been demanding (the CAS capability that can "stop boys and girls getting injured and killed at the current front line" if you like), and which the Harrier cannot provide.