Civil servants scrambling to save Afghans were ‘appalled by our chaotic system’ and animals were put above humans
Damning new light has been shed on the hour-by-hour decisions taken and frustrations encountered by a civil servant trying to help desperate Afghans flee the country in the days after the Taliban takeover.
These are some of the key criticisms made by Raphael Marshall, a former desk officer at the Foreign Office.
The government falsely claimed each request for evacuation was logged, when in fact thousands of emails – including many sent by MPs – went unread, Marshall said.
When Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, complained to the then foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s private office that 10 cases he had raised in an email had not been read, a message was sent back to Tugendhat saying: “We were processing them.”
But Marshall said that was wrong: “In fact, none of these cases had so far been processed at all.”
Marshall estimated that up to 150,000 people applied for evacuation, but that fewer than 5% of those got any assistance. He added: “It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban.”
When a new system was introduced following fury at the masses of unread emails, Marshall said all emails were then read, but nothing was done with their contents and that he thought this was “to allow the prime minister and the then foreign secretary to inform MPs that there were no unread...
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