Whistleblower describes ‘chaos’ of UK Afghan exit

The UK Foreign Office’s handling of the Afghan evacuation after the Taliban seized Kabul was “dysfunctional” and “chaotic”, a whistleblower has said.

Raphael Marshall said the process of choosing who could get a flight out was “arbitrary” and thousands of emails with pleas for help went unread.

The then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was slow to make decisions, he added.

Mr Raab told the BBC lessons would be learned but the UK did a “good job” compared to other countries.

He said 15,000 people were evacuated by the UK from Afghanistan in two weeks, “the biggest operation in living memory” and a larger number than any nation except the US.

Mr Raab said the criticism of his decision-making was from a “relatively junior desk officer” but the main challenges were in verifying the identities of applicants on the ground and safely escorting them to the airport in Kabul, not in making decisions from Whitehall.

Other criticisms were “rather dislocated from the operational pressures and conditions”, he said.

“I don’t doubt there were challenges, I don’t doubt there will be lessons to be learned but if you look at the facts, I think we did a good job by recent standards of evacuations and by international comparisons,” he told BBC Breakfast.

The 15,000 people airlifted out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the capital, Kabul, included 5,000 British nationals, 8,000 Afghans and 2,000 children.

In written evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Marshall said up to 150,000 Afghans who were at risk because of their links to Britain applied to be evacuated – but fewer than 5% received any assistance.

“It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban,” he added.

Mr Marshall, who was a senior desk officer at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) until he resigned in September, said there was “inadequate staffing” at the department’s crisis centre.

There was also a “lack of expertise” and a “lack of co-ordination” between the department and the Ministry of Defence, he added.

Mr Marshall also said Mr Raab took hours to answer emails and “did not fully understand the situation”. BBC