Afghanistan Evacuation Crisis

A foreign office official who requested to stay anonymous has told the BBC that the governments handling of the Kabul evacuation was “unforgivable”.

Kabul was in chaos when President Ghani fled the country as the Taliban moved in to take full control even the US embassy staff were helicoptered out of there heavily fortified compound. Thousands of people headed to Kabul airport. The anonymous civil servant had claimed that ministers were more focused on the “political fallout” than saving lives. She had said the situation was “too upsetting” and people “wouldn’t believe it”. She even corroborated Mr Marshalls previous account of unread emails, where he stated that hundreds of thousands of emails went unread during the evacuation.

She had stated that there was “dozens of people reading harrowing horrific bits of information in emails and knowing full well that nothing was going to be done with any of it other than a report at the end of the day to say the email had been read”. She described it as the worst operation she had ever seen. Sir Philip said he regretted not returning from his holiday while the evacuation was happening, the civil servant had stated that “huge amounts of trauma and suffering were either caused directly because of the way it was handled”.

Labour MP also had a lot to say as he confronted senior UK diplomats with a letter that appears to suggest charity workers and animals were cleared for evacuation by Boris Johnson. The PM denied intervening to help the charity and senior officials gave evidence to foreign affairs committee denied repeatedly denied pets were priorities over people. Sir Philip Barton had said he had not seen the letter and downing street had said the flight did not involve Mr Johnson as it was “an operational decision”.