Foreign Office under Kabul attack

The Foreign Office is under siege tonight following the most astonishing allegations that its handling of the evacuation of Afghans after the Taliban seized control of Kabul was “dysfunctional and chaotic
 
The damning accusations were made by a former Foreign Office desk officer turned whistleblower, Raphael Marshall, in a written statement to the Foreign Affairs Committee. 
 
Marshall said in his evidence that the process of choosing who could get flights out of Kabul had been arbitrary, that thousands of emails with calls for help went unread and that soldiers had been put in danger to help the animal charity, Nowzad, rather than rescuing vulnerable Afghans. 
 
The 25-year-old whistleblower, godson of Paul Goodman, the former MP and editor of ConservativeHome, wrote that at times he was the only person dealing with thousands of emails over the critical few days before the American and British forces were due to withdraw from Kabul at the end of August. Emails, he said, received an automatic response that the request for assistance had been logged. “This was usually false. In thousands of cases emails were not even read.”
 
On the afternoon of Saturday, August 21, he added he “was the only person monitoring and processing emails in the Afghan special cases inbox.” Some of the blame was due to staffing shortages but also because so many civil servants were working from home which made communications more difficult and refused to work overtime.
 
Dominic Raab, the then foreign secretary, was also criticised by Marshall who alleged he was too slow to make decisions. Raab subsequently went on holiday to Crete just as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.
 
But Raab, who has since been demoted to justice secretary but is also – for now – deputy prime minister, denied Marshall’s accusations, claiming the Foreign Office did everything it could to evacuate 15,000 individuals in two weeks, in the “biggest operation of its kind.”
 
A No 10 spokesman also denied suggestions that Boris Johnson, at the insistence of his wife, Carrie Johnson, intervened to ensure the military helped Pen Farthing’s Nowzad charity airlift animals out of the country rather than Afghans. 
 
In his 39-page submission, Marshall added that up to 150,000 Afghans who were at risk because of their links to Britain had applied to be evacuated. Yet fewer than 5% received any assistance.
 
In the event, the UK military airlifted 15,000 people out of the country, including 8,000 Afghans, 2,000 children and 5,000 British nationals.
 
Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chair of the foreign affairs committee which is investigating the FO’s handling of the Kabul evacuation, said the allegations raised “questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office.”
 
In another remarkable twist, the FO’s top civil servant, Sir Philip Barton, continued his holiday some 11 days after the Taliban had seized power in Kabul. Barton told the panel of MPs meeting today that, with hindsight, he would have come back earlier. By then Raab had returned.
 
As Sir Philip should know, hindsight is unforgiving. Foresight is better.  If what Marshall is claiming is an accurate version of how events unfolded over those two disastrous weeks during the Kabul evacuation, then the Foreign Office needs a serious overhaul. The fish rots from the head down.