A whistleblower has claimed he was left to deal with thousands of emails pleading for help from desperate Afghans as he lifted the lid on the failures of the UK’s evacuation effort in Kabul.
Evidence published by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday from Raphael Marshall – who worked for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) during the mission – has led a senior Tory MP to say Afghans who helped the UK had been “betrayed”.
Exposing a short-hours culture in the FCDO that led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”, Marshall told how at one point he was the only person monitoring an inbox where pleas for help were directed.
Emails were opened but not actioned, 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”.
He said: “These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.”
He added: “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.”
Marshall worked in the Afghan Special Cases team, which handled the cases of Afghans who were at risk because of their links with the UK, but who did not work directly for the UK government.
He estimated that “between 75,000 and 150,000 people (including dependants) applied for...
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