Whistleblower Claims Kabul Evacuation Was Even Worse Than It Looked

The UK government prioritised the evacuation of animals over British nationals and Afghan refugees including Afghans who worked with British soldiers as Kabul fell to the Taliban, a Foreign Office whistleblower has claimed.

The evidence of Raphael Marshall, who worked at the Foreign Office during the evacuation efforts in August, to a Parliamentary committee sheds new light on hopelessly chaotic attempts by the British to evacuate people from the country before the Taliban took hold.

On the 25th of August 2021, “extreme measures” were being taken to preserve “the extremely limited capacity at the airport”, including not evacuating embassy guards or British soldiers, Marshall’s written statement said.

“In this context, we received an instruction from the Prime Minister to use considerable capacity to transport Nowzad’s animals,” Marshall says, referring toNowzad, an animal rescue charity set up by Paul “Pen” Farthing, a former British Royal Marines commando who served in Afghanistan.

Because of this instruction, “My colleagues and I eliminated thousands of Afghan friends of the UK at risk of murder from the evacuation lists.” They did this because of limited capacity at the airport. “On Wednesday the 25th of August, many people referred [for evacuation] by Secretaries of State were rejected due to limited capacity. This capacity was subsequently used to transport animals.”

“There was a direct trade off between transporting Nowzad’s animals and evacuating British nationals and Afghan refugees, including Afghans who had served with British soldiers,” he says.

The UK government has denied this. Boris Johnson told Sky News that the claims are “complete nonsense”.

Farthing has denied that any soldiers were used to evacuate Nowzad animals.

Marshall’s testimony describes the operation to evacuate Afghans and British nationals as being in complete disarray, with failing systems, inexperienced staff given little instruction and a lack of urgency. 

Between the 21st of August to the 25th of August “there were usually over 5,000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment, including many unread emails dating back from early in August. These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.”

On the 29th of August, the Observer newspaper published a story revealing that “thousands” of emails from MPs and charities about urgent cases of Afghans trying to escape Kabul had not been read. Following the publication of this story, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Police (ARAP) and Afghan Special Cases team lost access to the inboxes. “In my opinion this was an admission that the method of processing invoices only served a public relations purpose”. However, if the method served a real purpose, “then locking the inboxes undermined rescue efforts for public relations purposes.”

Marshall also claims that emails were processed improperly so that Johnson could tell MPs that there were no unread emails. “Between Wednesday the 25th of August and Wednesday the 1st of September, I believe emails were processed by marking them with a flag once read but were not entered into a spreadsheet,” Marshall said. I believe 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. It is difficult to see what other purpose this method served because these emails will need to be reread and prioritised before any action can be taken.”

Marshall also levels criticism at the then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for dithering over decisions on individual cases, suggesting that he “did not understand the desperate situation at Kabul airport”, and meaning that in at least one case, this may have been a factor in one family not succeeding to enter the airport in time.

Raab was criticised at the time for being on holiday at the start of the crisis. He was subsequently replaced as Foreign Secretary.

The team trying to process applications was understaffed and inexperienced, Marshall says.

“I believe that no member of the Afghanistan Special Cases team had studied Afghanistan, worked on Afghanistan previously, or had a detailed knowledge of Afghanistan,” Marshall says. “My own knowledge of Afghanistan is largely limited to reading Rory Stewart’s book.”

One team leader did not know that the correct term for people from Afghanistan is “Afghans”, and referred to them repeatedly as “Afghanis”, suggesting a lack of experience.

In one instance, Marshall encountered a person who was “clearly scared at being asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing.”

The person initially declined to do the task but Marhall persuaded them that this would mean the emails went unread which would be worse.

The testimony also raises serious questions about the way in which cases were decided.

Cases were prioritised based on summaries of cases written by people with little Afghanistan expertise, meaning that they were sometimes misleading.

Cases were meant to be decided based on three criteria; Their vulnerability – ie. how likely they were to be killed by the Taliban; Their support for the UK and; “Significance/sensitivity”, a poorly defined criteria the meaning of which appeared to change depending on the case. At the time, a very high number of Afghans met the first two criteria, but “no guidance” was given to prioritise them.

There was also “no instruction to distinguish between claims with and without evidence or to review evidence provided” meaning that it is “possible that some evacuation slots were misallocated to people who misrepresented the level of risk that they faced”.

Marshall says that Foreign Office staff who volunteered to help on the 22nd of August were “visibly appalled by our chaotic system”.

Soldiers drafted in to help worked with one computer between eight of them until one computer between two was eventually provided, slowing the issuing of travel documents to Afghans, likely meaning that some of them were left behind and may have been killed.