Conclusion 8

However, on the strategic and humanitarian level the evacuation fell disastrously short. Shortcomings in ARAP, the scheme to evacuate Afghans who had worked directly for the UK Government, left many waiting for a response until it was too late. A total failure to plan how to help Afghans at risk due to their work to promote British values without working directly for the Government—the “Special Cases”— left many in danger. Some will have not taken other options, as they remained with false hope of a rescue that would never come. The Foreign Office wasted time by exploring the options for such a scheme only after the Taliban takeover. The hasty effort to draw up a list of those eligible for evacuation was poorly devised, managed, and staffed. In the absence of criteria that allowed for meaningful prioritisation of cases, the scheme seemingly relied on MPs’ interventions as its primary measure of the vulnerability of those seeking extraction. Given MPs’ responsibility to represent constituents, not to triage needs, this was never going to be a reliable way to deliver the right outcome—but only to attempt to silence criticism. The department failed to perform the most basic crisis-management functions, such as rostering an adequate number of staff to key teams, despite the fact that this Committee raised similar issues around the FCDO’s response to the pandemic. Underlying operational problems— such as a failure to integrate FCO and DFID IT systems—further undermined the effort. Junior staff were left unsupported to deliver a poorly designed policy, making life-and-death decisions with little support or guidance, at a cost to their mental health. While a degree of chaos is to be expected in a crisis, the mismanagement of this category of evacuations was inexcusable. The chaos and lack of preparation was not the sole responsibility of the department. A lack of seriousness, application and coordination at a political level across Government fatally undermined the task in