Dominic Raab bats away fury over Afghan shambles after whistleblower account

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The Foreign Office’s top mandarin today told shocked MPs he stayed on holiday for 11 days after the dramatic fall of Kabul – as he admitted there are ‘lessons to be learned’ from the Afghanistan debacle.   

During an extraordinary committee hearing, Sir Philip Barton revealed that he was on leave from August 9 and did not return until August 26, nearly two weeks after the government collapsed and handed the Taliban control. 

He refused to say where he was on holiday, but disclosed that it was partly in the UK and partly abroad – trying to play down the impact on the crisis response by saying he had put cover in place and at the time he left there was ‘no inevitability’ about the situation spiralling. 

‘If I had my time again I would have come back from my leave earlier,’ Sir Philip said. Furious MPs questioned when he had booked the trip – and why he was allowed to be off at the same time as then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, as well as the national security adviser and the heads of the Ministry of Defence and Home Office.     

The £185,000-a-year mandarin – who has a pension worth £1.7m – said the evacuation from Kabul following the collapse of the government was ‘one of the most complex and challenging crises we’ve had to face’. 

But he conceded there were ways it could have been handled better and he ‘wished’ the operation had been able to get more vulnerable people out. 

Sir Philip, senior colleagues and Mr Raab are all scrambling to fend off damning testimony from a junior civil servant who claims that at times they had been the only person dealing with thousands of emails from those desperate to flee the Taliban. 

Raphael Marshall said soldiers had to be drafted in for desk work in the Foreign Office when officials stayed at home and refused to do overtime. 

In a bombshell dossier handed to the Foreign Affairs Committee, he accused Mr Raab – who was also on holiday at a luxury resort in Crete when the crisis erupted, but came back more quickly – of undermining the rescue efforts by delaying decisions.

He alleged that thousands of pleading emails were opened, but not dealt with, just so that Boris Johnson could tell MPs there were no unread messages. 

He also accused senior civil servants of refusing to come into the office because they were working from home, saying it hindered the rescue effort further. 

‘In my opinion, staffing shortages were exacerbated by some staff working from home, which hampered communication,’ he wrote in his statement to MPs.

Sir Philip confirmed that there was an eight-hour shift pattern in effect during the crisis – but argued that it was to avoid ‘burn out’ rather than for ‘work-life-balance’.  

‘I simply don’t recognise that. I think it’s based on a misunderstanding. There isn’t a clocking off culture at all in the FCDO,’ he said.

‘We spend more time actually trying to persuade not to work too hard and to burn out.

‘In terms of the eight hours, when we are in a full-blown crisis we do have an eight-hour shift system. We make sure therefore that people are getting a period of rest and then coming back on to shift…

‘Sometimes depending on the time zone and the pace of work in a crisis we might have a long day with two shifts. In this case we went for a three shift system.’

‘This wasn’t about work-life balance, this was about rostering shifts in a crisis to make sure people don’t burn out in a crisis.’

Tory MP Alicia Kearns – who previously worked at the Foreign Office – said in her experience there needed to be ‘conscription’ of staff to ensure rotas were filled.

‘I’ve never in my time at the Foreign office ever seen a crisis where they were able to fill all the slots without coming out and asking for more and more and more capacity,’ she said.

‘I find it incredibly plausible… that there were not enough people filling night shifts. The idea that we had only one person at some points on a special cases inbox, that is not enough.’

But Sir Philip said the department had developed its way of working through crises over the years.

Nigel Casey, the director for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, added that there was an ‘element of compulsion’ for the whole organisation to contribute staff to the response.  

The committee was told that by August 11 it was deemed the British embassy in Kabul was no longer safe, while diplomats were relaying to London by August 13 that the Afghan government was unlikely to survive. 

Asked what day he returned from holiday, Sir Philip told the Foreign Affairs Committee: ‘I’m happy to get into dates in a minute but let me just say before I do that, I have reflected a lot in August on my leave, and if I had my time again I would have come back from my leave earlier than I did.’

Sir Philip said he did put in place cover arrangements and ‘stayed in touch with the department all the way through the period’.

The mandarin was told by committee chair Tom Tugendhat that he found it ‘strange’ that Sir Philip chose to remain on holiday after Dominic Raab, the then-foreign secretary, had returned.

But Ms Kearns was blunter, saying: ‘I don’t think it is enough to say, ‘mea culpa’.

‘How in two weeks did at no point, you go, ‘I can’t, I have to go in and protect my people?”

She added: ‘If this isn’t what failure looks like, what does?’ 

In another brutal assessment of the overlapping holidays, Mr Tugendhat said: ‘The concern is that if both leaders are out of the country at the same time it does raise some very serious concerns.

‘It may not be that actually you would have had a substantive influence on this incident. It may be that you are right that the substantive difference was only on your colleagues and being able to support the efforts they were making in the crisis centre – although for some of us that would be still rather important…

‘The problem I think many of us have… is the very idea that the PM, the deputy PM… PUS (permanent under-secretary) the national security adviser, the PUS at the home office and the PUS at defence were all away at the same time.’

He went on: ‘Leadership matters. It’s not just about the difference that a leader can make in terms of tactical command, but about the strategic intent that it demonstrates for an organisation and the seriousness with which an organisation pursues its functions.’

He said: ‘You are not sir, a civil servant. You are head of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Corps. That is a function greater than the civil service.’ 

As Sir Philip repeatedly said he would do things differently in hindsight, Mr Tugendhat broke in to say: ‘It sounds less credible every time you repeat it. It sounds platitudinous.’

The mandarin was pressed on when he booked his holiday, but replied: ‘I’m really not going into details on my holiday arrangement.’

Told by Labour’s Chris Bryant it would be a ‘dereliction of duty’ if it turned out that he went on holiday when it was ‘obviously clear there was a crisis’, Sir Philip said: ‘I have thought about this very hard.

‘I do regret the fact that I didn’t decide to come back to support them (his colleagues), but I don’t think it affected the outcome, in terms of the people we were able to evacuate from Afghanistan.’

Mr Raab – now Justice Secretary and deputy PM – dismissed the whistleblower claims in a round of interviews this morning and pointed the finger at Joe Biden for not providing a ‘longer time window’ before withdrawing troops. 

He stressed that the UK could be ‘proud’ of extracting 15,000 people in two weeks, more than any other country apart from the US. 

‘I know I did everything I possibly could,’ he said, adding that he did not believe the Afghan debacle was why Mr Johnson axed him from the Foreign Office in a reshuffle.

Mr Raab is believed to have returned early from his holiday in Crete on August 15, as the dramatic collapse in Afghanistan came to a head.  

His comments were later echoed by the Prime Minister, who claimed that Op Pitting – the evacuation carried out by the military – was ‘one of the outstanding military achievements of the last 50 years or more’.

Mr Johnson also denied as ‘complete nonsense’ claims he personally insisted priority was given to rescuing some animals from Kabul, with rumours that his wife Carrie influenced the move.  

But Labour MPs called for Mr Raab to resign. And Conservative MP Nus Ghani tweeted highlighting the whistleblower testimony and saying: ‘We warned of the chaos, we signposted brave Afghan girls targeted by the Taliban, we begged for help to save lives of Afghan Women who defending us. 

‘And this was the humiliating reality shaming our international reputation.’ 

Mr Raab said that checks were needed to ensure that dangerous extremists were not being brought to the UK. ‘We did everything we could. But you have to have some form of process,’ he told Sky News. 

The Cabinet minister also said he ‘did not accept’ that people working from home and on set shifts hampered the efforts. ‘I regularly checked that we were properly resourced,’ he said. 

And he insisted extra staff would not have made a difference as there were ‘inherent’ problems with getting information from Afghanistan. ‘The challenge was deciphering the facts on the ground,’ he said. 

The allegations raise ‘questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office’, says Tom Tugendhat, Tory chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee. 

The panel today publishes a 39-page dossier written by Mr Marshall, who worked as a civil servant handling requests from Afghans seeking mercy flights out of Kabul in August.

Mr Marshall estimates that less than 5 per cent of between 75,000 and 150,000 people who applied to the ‘special cases’ team received assistance.

‘It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban,’ he warned. In a series of revelations he tells how:

On one afternoon half way through the two-week evacuation effort he was the only person processing the emails;There were 5,000 unread messages in the inbox at any given moment, with desperate subject lines such as ‘please save my children’;A staffing crisis in the Foreign Office was compounded by civil servants working from home, including team leaders;Officials were able to refuse to work nights and overtime as part of a ‘deliberate drive’ to prioritise ‘work-life balance’.Staff who worked more than their designated eight hours were ‘encouraged to leave’;Soldiers drafted into the Foreign Office had to share one computer between eight for almost a day;The criteria for evacuation was so vague that cooks and cleaners who had worked for the BBC were rescued but not some interpreters who had served alongside UK soldiers;Mr Raab created unnecessary delays by refusing to make a decision on a list of exceptional cases until it was reformatted.

After the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August, thousands of desperate people appealed to the British to be rescued. 

In an operation lasting a fortnight, more than 15,000 British and Afghan citizens were airlifted by the UK. But many were left behind when the final mercy flight left on August 28.

The foreign affairs committee is holding an inquiry into the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Mr Marshall has provided the MPs with a written statement on the department’s response.

The ‘special cases’ team he was in looked at the claims of those at risk because of their links with the UK, including Afghan soldiers, politicians, journalists, civil servants, activists, aid workers and judges.

This was separate from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme for those who worked directly for the UK Government, such as military translators. Amid staffing shortages, Mr Marshall said the officials struggled to process the volume of emails and failed to prioritise cases. 

The 25-year-old, who joined the Foreign Office straight from Oxford University, said no member of the team working on these cases had detailed knowledge of Afghanistan.

Junior officials were ‘scared by being asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing’, according to his evidence. 

On the afternoon of Saturday, August 21, Mr Marshall claims he ‘was the only person monitoring and processing emails in the Afghan special cases inbox’.

Mr Raab said he did not recognise the allegation that only 5 per cent of Afghan nationals who applied for help to flee the country under one UK scheme received assistance.

He said it was ‘right’ the UK had a process in place to check for those at ‘genuine risk of persecution’ and protect the country from potential threats.

Asked if he recognised the whistleblower’s figures, he said: ‘I don’t. But what is certainly true is that we had a lot of people rushing to get out of Afghanistan for all sorts of reasons.

‘And I think it’s right that we had a process in place to check two things: One, that we were helping those at genuine risk of persecution, or British nationals or people who had worked for the British Government.

‘And secondly, making sure that we didn’t allow anyone to come into the UK who might present a threat to the UK.

‘And it was important to have a process to make those decisions swiftly but also accurately.’

Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Do I think that, with the benefit of hindsight, we can learn lessons from the operation? Yes, of course.’

But he said he feels that some criticism of the evacuation effort was ‘dislocated’ from the facts.

‘Do I also want to say that some of the criticism seems rather dislocated from the facts on the ground – the operational pressures that with the takeover of the Taliban, unexpected around the world, both our teams in Afghanistan, military, Home Office, Foreign Office, all doing a great job, working very closely together, coupled with the crisis centre in London?

‘Yeah, I do think that not enough recognition has been given to quite how difficult it was.’

Pressed over whether he had been moved from the Foreign Office due to the handling of the situation, Mr Raab said: ‘Those are decisions for the Prime Minister, but I am pretty confident from what he said to me that it wasn’t in relation to Afghanistan.’ 

The whistleblower claimed that Mr Johnson issued an instruction to evacuate animals from the Nowzad shelter, run by the former Royal Marine Paul ‘Pen’ Farthing.

But a No10 spokesman told reporters: ‘It’s entirely untrue. At no point did the Prime Minister intervene. We’ve always prioritised people over animals, as we’ve said both during and subsequently.’

Pressed on whether Mr Johnson directly intervened to assist Pen Farthing and his staff leave the country, the spokesman said: ‘No, he didn’t instruct officials to take any particular course of action on that issue.’

He added: ‘The Prime Minister’s focus was on saving and evacuating as many people as possible. That was the instruction that he gave to the whole of Government.’

Downing Street also insisted Mrs Johnson did not intervene in the situation.

‘That claim is untrue,’ the spokesman said. ‘Neither the Prime Minister nor Mrs Johnson were involved.’ 

Mr Tugendhat said: ‘These allegations are serious and go to the heart of the failures of leadership around the Afghan disaster. 

The evacuation has been described as a success by some, but these allegations point to a very different story – one of lack of interest, and bureaucracy over humanity.’

A Government spokesman said: ‘UK Government staff worked tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight. 

This was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second largest evacuation carried out by any country. We are still working to help others leave.

‘More than 1,000 FCDO staff worked to help British nationals and eligible Afghans leave during Operation Pitting. 

The scale of the evacuation and the challenging circumstances meant decisions on prioritisation had to be made quickly to ensure we could help as many people as possible.’ 

Civil servants’ obsession with work-life balance left Afghans at Taliban’s mercy

Across 39 devastating pages of evidence, Raphael Marshall today lays bare the extraordinary shambles at the heart of the Foreign Office after Kabul fell to the Taliban.

With the militants in control of the country, thousands of desperate Afghan workers and their families appealed to Britain to be airlifted to safety.

Yet the junior diplomat was, at times, the only person left dealing with hundreds upon hundreds of emails, almost all of them pleading for help.

In a detailed written statement to the Commons foreign affairs committee, published today, Mr Marshall – described by the committee as a ‘whistleblower’ – outlines how chronic staffing shortages at the department were compounded by colleagues working from home, refusing to work weekends and sticking to the culture of eight-hour shifts ‘despite the urgency’ of the situation.

The junior diplomat, who has now left the Foreign Office, also suggests the evacuation effort was hampered by delays in decision making by the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab.

SO MANY LEFT BEHIND TO BE MURDERED BY THE TALIBAN

Mr Marshall, a 25-year-old graduate working at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in Whitehall, was assigned to the Special Cases team. 

This was separate from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme that handled the cases of Afghans who worked directly for the UK Government, such as translators. 

Instead, the Special Cases dealt with the claims of those at risk because of their links with the UK – including Afghan soldiers, politicians, journalists, civil servants, activists, aid workers and judges, as well as guards and others who worked through sub-contractors.

In his statement, he estimates that ‘between 75,000 and 150,000 people (including dependants) applied for evacuation’ via the Special Cases team but concludes, damningly, that fewer than five per cent ‘have received any assistance’. 

He writes: ‘It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban.’

5,000 UNREAD MESSAGES

The whistleblower says that many of the emails to the Special Cases inbox were unread, with around 5,000 unread at any one time at the peak of the crisis. 

He says many of those pleading for help detailed ‘grave human rights abuses’ by the Taliban, including ‘murders, rapes and burning of homes’. 

He says that while the emails received an automated response that they had been ‘logged’, this was ‘usually false’.

A SINGLE CIVIL SERVANT TO READ THOUSANDS OF EMAILS

On the afternoon of Saturday August 21 –halfway through the two-week effort to rescue Afghans from Kabul – Mr Marshall reveals he ‘was the only person monitoring and processing emails in the Afghan Special Cases inbox’. 

He adds: ‘No emails from after early Friday afternoon had been read at that point. The number of unread emails was already in the high thousands, I believe above 5,000, and increasing constantly. 

Around four other people had been rostered to work on the Special Cases team but had not come on shift… I had not originally been rostered but had decided that I was morally obliged to put myself down because I saw the team was not fully staffed. 

If I had not, it is possible there would have been no one to process the emails at all.’

He continues: ‘These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.’

At the point where he was the only person answering emails, British Paratroopers were desperately trying to hold the line at Kabul airport and it was feared the rescue operation could collapse. 

The airport was besieged by thousands trying to escape that weekend.

WORKING FROM HOME AND AN 8-HOUR CULTURE

‘In my opinion, staffing shortages were exacerbated by some staff working from home, which hampered communication,’ writes Mr Marshall. 

‘This was on occasion significant in a context where policy was poorly defined and the situation unclear.’

He believes that on two days in the final week of the evacuation, no one was allocated to work the night shift on his team dealing with the requests for help. 

He writes: ‘Despite the urgency of the situation, the default expectation remained that FCDO staff would only work eight hours a day, five days a week. 

Staff were only asked to work shifts for which they volunteered. This likely resulted in a lack of night shifts and limited cover over the weekend because these shifts were less popular… I believe this reflects a deliberate drive by the FCDO to prioritise ‘work-life balance’.’ 

He says staff who worked more than their designated hours ‘were often encouraged to leave by colleagues’ and senior leaders suggested working more than eight hours was ‘inefficient’.

ONE COMPUTER SHARED BY EIGHT SOLDIERS

Soldiers were drafted in to work in the Foreign Office in London processing appeals for help as the department struggled, despite employing more than 17,000 diplomats worldwide. 

They were not given passwords so for almost a day ‘the soldiers worked with one computer shared between roughly eight people’. 

‘This obviously considerably reduced their efficiency and speed,’ says Mr Marshall.

MISLEADING CLAIMS OVER EMAIL RESPONSES

For one week ’emails were processed by marking them with a flag once read but were not entered’ into the Foreign Office’s database of people requesting to be evacuated. 

The whistleblower states his opinion that ‘the purpose of this was to allow the Prime Minister and the then foreign secretary to inform MPs that there were no unread emails’. 

All incoming messages ‘received an automatic response that the request for assistance had been ‘logged’,’ adds Mr Marshall. 

‘This was usually false. In thousands of cases emails were not even read.’

BBC CHEFS HAD PRIORITY OVER INTERPRETERS

The Foreign Office’s ‘process for selecting which Afghan applicants to evacuate was not credible’, according to Mr Marshall. 

‘Usually little distinction was observed between applicants who explained a specific risk, for example that they had received specific death threats… and between applicants who merely referred to the general risk posed by the Taliban coming to power.’ 

He adds: ‘Some decisions made are likely impossible to justify. For example, I understand that we evacuated the BBC’s Afghan cooking and cleaning staff. 

Although I wish these people the best, it is impossible to justify why they were prioritised above interpreters or others at much greater risk and had performed much greater services to the UK.’

LACK OF CO-ORDINATION WITH MoD OR THE USA

Mr Marshall writes that there was little or no effective consultation between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, with one colleague remarking that the failure to co-ordinate threatened to undermine the whole rescue operation. 

There was also no co-ordination with the US authorities, which he says may have led to ‘duplicate visas’. 

Attempts to share evacuation lists were opposed by one official suggesting it may have been a breach of European data protection laws and data security rights. 

He says an email he wrote warning people might die unless things improved was criticised for being ‘shrill’.