A whistleblower has described the UK Foreign Office's handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan as 'dysfunctional and chaotic', with thousands of emails from desperate Afghans left unread. Raphael Marshall, a former senior desk officer at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the process of deciding who could board a flight was arbitrary.
Marshall said up to 150,000 Afghans at risk due to their links to Britain applied for evacuation, but fewer than 5% received assistance. He added that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban. The whistleblower also criticised then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for being slow to make decisions.
Meanwhile, Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office's top civil servant, faced MPs' questions about his decision to continue an 11-day holiday after Kabul fell to the Taliban. Sir Philip said he had 'reflected a lot' and would have returned earlier if he had the chance, but insisted cover arrangements were in place. Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat described the decision as 'strange' given Mr Raab had returned.
Mr Raab defended the evacuation, calling it 'the biggest operation in living memory' and noting that the UK helped more people than any nation except the US. He dismissed Marshall's criticism as coming from a 'relatively junior desk officer' and said the main challenges were on the ground in Kabul, not in Whitehall.
The whistleblower also alleged that Prime Minister Boris Johnson instructed officials to evacuate dogs from an animal charity, which went against Foreign Office criteria and left people at risk behind. Mr Johnson called the allegation 'complete nonsense' and praised the rescue operation as 'one of the outstanding military achievements of the last 50 years'.
