New Leaked Details of UK’s “Chaotic and Dysfunctional” Evacuation of Afghanistan

Dysfunctional and chaotic. This is how a former British official described the handling of the evacuation of Afghanistan after the arrival of the Taliban in the capital, carried out by the UK Foreign Office.

Raphael Marshall said that the process of choosing who could go on a flight was arbitrary and that thousands of emails from people asking for help were not read.

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He further stated that the then British Chancellor, Dominic Raab was slow to make decisions.

In the two weeks after the Taliban took over Kabul, around 15,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan by the British government.

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That group included 5,000 British citizens, 8,000 Afghans and 2,000 children.

In a statement written as evidence and issued to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Marshall revealed that up to 150,000 Afghans who were in danger due to their ties to the United Kingdom requested to be evacuated, but less than 5% received help.

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

Marshall, who worked as an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until his resignation in September, pointed out that the agency’s crisis center was not adequately staffed and that there was also a lack of experience and coordination between his office and the Ministry of Defense. .

Marshall also said that the British chancellor took hours to respond to emails and “did not fully understand the situation“.

Raphael Marshall, 25, worked as an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ensures that thousands of emails from people asking for help were not read.

He also said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s order to evacuate the dogs of a charity went against the criteria of the Foreign Ministry and left many people at risk of being killed behind.

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What are the accusations?

The errors pointed out by the former official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs include:

• Only 5% of the 150,000 people who applied for help received it
• No one on the application handling team had detailed knowledge of Afghanistan or had ever worked there.
• No one spoke any Afghan language, and calls to people who requested help were made in English.
• Decisions about who to rescue were arbitrary and thousands of emails from people asking for help were never even read.
• The IT system was dysfunctional. Eight soldiers who were recruited to help shared a computer
• Chancellor Dominic Raab was slow to make decisions in difficult cases and did not fully understand the situation.
• The animals of the Nowzad charity run by a former marine were not in danger and their evacuation was at the direct expense of people at risk of death.

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“I think we did a good job”

Speaking to the BBC, former Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said lessons would be learned from the past in Afghanistan, however he claimed the UK had done a good job compared to other countries.

He recalled that London had managed to evacuate 15,000 people in two weeks, a number greater than any other nation except the United States.

In addition, he noted that criticism of his decision-making came from a “relatively young desk official.”

The former British chancellor insisted that his main challenges were verifying the identities of applicants on the ground and listen to them safely to Kabul airport, don’t make decisions from London.

“I do not doubt that there were challenges, I do not doubt that there will be lessons to be learned, but if you look at the facts, I think we did a good job according to the recent standards of evacuations and international comparisons,” he said on the BBC Breakfast program.

During the evacuation there was chaos outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (EPA).

When the Taliban entered Kabul in August, the British government initiated a plan to evacuate Afghans who had worked directly for the UK and another to identify and assist those at risk due to their ties to the country.

“5,000 unread emails”

Marshall worked for a team of officials who handled a group known as “Afghan special cases” that included Afghan soldiers, politicians, journalists, civil servants, activists, aid workers, judges and guards who had indirectly worked for the UK government through subcontractors.

In the desperate days at the end of August, when the Taliban were advancing on Kabul, many of these people emailed the Foreign Ministry for permission to leave the country.

Marshall noted that there were “about 5,000 unread emails in the inbox at any one time” and “in thousands of cases the emails were not even read,” including the cases of MPs.

He highlighted that the process of prioritizing applicants was “arbitrary and dysfunctional“The criteria used by the government were useless and ambiguous, causing confusion, he added.

A UK government spokesman said that more than 1,000 Foreign Office employees worked tirelessly under difficult circumstances and prioritization decisions needed to be made quickly to help as many people as possible.

He also reported that London was still working to help evacuate other people from Afghanistan and that since the end of the operation they had helped more than 3,000 people to leave the country.

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