Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation

A whistleblower has claimed that UK Foreign Office's handling of the Afghan evacuation after the Taliban seized Kabul was ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘chaotic’.

Raphael Marshall said the process of choosing who could get a flight out was ‘arbitrary’ and thousands of emails with pleas for help went unread.

Other criticisms include Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab being too slow to make decisions.

Marshall, who was a senior desk officer at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) until he resigned in September, said there was ‘inadequate staffing’ at the department's crisis centre. He added that there was also a ‘lack of expertise’ and a ‘lack of co-ordination’ between the department and the Ministry of Defence.

Raab has been accused of not fully understanding the situation, although he has since said that the UK did a ‘good job’ compared to other countries.

Key issues flagged by Raphael Marshall include: only five per cent of the 150,000 people who requested help receiving any; no one speaking any Afghan languages, with calls to people asking for help conducted in English; and a dysfunctional IT system, with eight soldiers drafted in to help left sharing one computer.