Tens of thousands of Afghans who applied to Britain for help to flee the Taliban did not receive assistance because of turmoil and confusion within the UK's Foreign Office – and some of those who were left behind have since been murdered, a whistleblower has claimed.
The junior civil servant painted a grim picture of the UK’s response to the Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August, detailing bureaucratic chaos, a short-hours working culture and a stark lack of planning at the governmental department.
In evidence published by the foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday, Raphael Marshall, who worked for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office during the evacuation, said that at one point he was the only person monitoring an inbox where pleas for help were directed.
Mr Marshall said the government’s public statements about hopes that the Taliban had changed did not tally with the information he was receiving.
The committee's chairman, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, said the “failures betrayed our friends and allies and squandered decades of British and Nato effort”.
Mr Tugendhat said it showed the evacuation to be “one of lack of interest, and bureaucracy over humanity”.
Mr Marshall worked in the Afghan Special Cases team, which handled Afghans who were at risk because of their links with the UK, but who did not work directly for the British government.
He estimated that “between 75,000 and 150,000 people (including dependants) applied for evacuation” to the team.
Mr Marshall said “fewer than 5 per cent of these people have received any assistance” and “it is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban”.
He said that no member of the team working on these cases had “studied Afghanistan, worked on Afghanistan previously or had a detailed knowledge of Afghanistan”, concluding that members had "woeful" knowledge of the country.
He said junior officials were “scared by being asked to make hundreds of life-and-death decisions about which they knew nothing”.
At one point, he claimed, eight British soldiers in Afghanistan were sharing one computer because the Foreign Office IT department had not issued passwords to unlock software.
Foreign Office officials and the former ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, are due to give evidence to the committee on Tuesday.
Mr Marshall claimed that then foreign secretary Dominic Raab “did not fully understand the situation”. He also said Foreign Office staff worked their usual eight-hour shifts in the middle of the crisis and many were working from home.
Emails were opened but not were not acted upon, and he felt “the purpose of this system was to allow the prime minister and the then foreign secretary to inform MPs that there were no unread emails”.
“These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’,” he said.
“The contrast between Her Majesty’s Government’s statements about a changed Taliban and the large number of highly credible allegations of very grave human rights abuses HMG has received by email is striking."
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A Taliban fighter prays next to a demonstration organised by the Afghan Society of Muslim Youth, demanding the release of frozen international money in Kabul, Afghanistan. AP Photo -
A Taliban fighter and a group of Afghan men attend Friday prayers in Kabul. AP Photo -
Taliban soldiers in Bagram Air Base in Parwan. Reuters -
Taliban soldiers Seifatollah and Vasighollah stand in a prison in Bagram Air Base. Reuters -
Taliban patrol Kabul. EPA -
Vahdat, a Taliban soldier and former prisoner, stands next to exercise equipment in Bagram Air Base. Reuters -
A Taliban fighter stands guard near Zanbaq Square in Kabul. AFP -
Taliban fighters police a road in Herat. AFP
Mr Tugendhat said: “These allegations are serious and go to the heart of the failures of leadership around the Afghan disaster, which we have seen throughout this inquiry.
"The evidence we’ve heard alleges dysfunction within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and substantial failings throughout the Afghanistan evacuation effort.
“The evacuation has been described as a success by some, but these allegations point to a very different story ... it proved to be a true test of the leadership and effectiveness of the Foreign Office, with the lives of many of our friends and allies in the balance.
“This evidence raises serious questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office, and I look forward to putting these to officials, including former Afghanistan ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow.”
In an interview with BBC’s Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Tugendhat said the Foreign Office was “effectively a Marie Celeste at a time of national emergency” and called the allegations made by the whistleblower “extremely concerning”.
He said the huge backlog of Afghan applications for assistance suggests “whatever the working arrangements were, they weren’t working”. And he said it was “extraordinary” that each person who emailed the Foreign Office for help was allegedly sent an automatic response saying their request had been logged even if it had not been.
The allegations lay bare the utter chaos that engulfed bureaucracy in the UK when Nato’s 20-year war in Afghanistan came to an end and the Taliban rolled back into power in August.
The lion’s share of Mr Marshall’s criticism was reserved for Mr Raab, who was on a family holiday on the Greek island of Crete when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August.
He alleged the then foreign secretary took hours to read a list of evacuation applications before returning it to staff and asking for it to be resubmitted in an easier-to-read spreadsheet. This, the whistleblower alleged, put people’s lives in danger.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Raab, who has since been demoted to Justice Secretary and Deputy prime minister, denied this allegation, saying it was “not quite right”.
Mr Marshall also claimed that prime minister Boris Johnson ordered animals cared for by Pen Farthing’s charity to be given priority over people. The former British Royal Marines commando co-ordinated the rescue of 173 dogs and cats from Afghanistan as well as staff who worked at the animal shelter.
Downing Street said Mr Johnson's wife Carrie did not intervene to rescue the animals.
On whether she took the matter forward, a spokesman said: “That claim is untrue.
“Neither the Prime Minister nor Mrs Johnson were involved,” he added.
Asked if dogs were put before children’s lives, Mr Raab rebuffed the allegation, instead pointing to the rescue of thousands of Afghan citizens which “took an absolutely heroic and Herculean effort”.
“Sorry, it’s just not accurate,” said Mr Raab. “We did not put the welfare of animals above individuals and I think you can see that in the facts of 15,000 people evacuated in just two weeks.
“As I said, the biggest operational activity in living memory and only the US got more out.”
He was also defiant against the claim that requests for assistance were ignored, saying he “never asked for emails to be ticked as read that weren’t read”.
He told the Today programme that more than 1,000 Foreign Office officials were working “night and day” to wade through emails from desperate Afghan and refuted the claim that junior officials were asked to make hundreds of life-and-death decisions about which they knew nothing.
Pressed about whether he sent back a list of evacuation requests to staff, he said: “In terms of presentation, of course with the volume of claims coming in I make no apology for saying I needed the clear facts for each case presented precisely so that we could make swift decisions.”
A government representative said: “UK government staff worked tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight.
“This was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second-largest evacuation carried out by any country. We are still working to help others leave.
“More than 1,000 FCDO staff worked to help British nationals and eligible Afghans leave during Operation Pitting.
"The scale of the evacuation and the challenging circumstances meant decisions on prioritisation had to be made quickly to ensure we could help as many people as possible.
“Regrettably, we were not able to evacuate all those we wanted to, but our commitment to them is enduring, and since the end of the operation we have helped more than 3,000 individuals leave Afghanistan.”
In August, an internal Foreign Office inquiry into the allegations began.
Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry told Sky News she felt “disgusted” and “truly shocked” by the dossier of evidence.
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Mr Raab of being “asleep at the wheel” while overseeing efforts to save Afghans in danger of being killed by the Taliban.
“Lives have been lost because of the chaos they oversaw,” Mr Lammy tweeted. “We see this time and time again with this government. Incompetence costs lives. Afghanistan and the UK deserved so much better.”
