Whistleblower Says Afghans Died Due To Chaotic Pull-Out

Chaos, failure to allocate resources, fatal delays at critical times, and a lack of communication in Whitehall severely damaged the British government’s Afghan evacuation operation, according to a whistleblower.

- Kimsen Gupta

Tens of thousands of pleas for help from those under threat went unanswered in a system incapable of handling the situation, said a former Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office official. Some of those who were abandoned were subsequently murdered by the Taliban and other Islamist groups.

Raphael Marshall, who worked as a desk officer during the crisis, described how for one afternoon in the middle of the airlift he found himself as the only one monitoring the Afghan Special Cases Inbox when thousands of requests for help, from government ministers, MPs and charities, as well as Afghans, were pouring in.

He estimated that between 75,000 and 150,000 people, including dependents, applied for evacuation. “Fewer than 5 per cent of those received any assistance” with the consequence that “it is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban”, Mr Marshall said.

Giving evidence to an inquiry into the Afghan evacuation by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Marshall claimed Dominic Raab, then foreign secretary, took several hours to deal with cases which needed his approval as the window for the airlift was coming to a close.

Mr Raab, he says, then stipulated through his private office that he needed “all the cases set out in a well-presented table to make decisions”. The foreign secretary’s “choice to cause a delay” when time was running out for people to get to Kabul airport “suggests he did not understand the desperate situation”, Mr Marshall said.