Source · Select Committees · Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Paragraph: 33
The evacuation required clear decision-making, strong political leadership and tight coordination.
Conclusion
The evacuation required clear decision-making, strong political leadership and tight coordination. We have seen little evidence of this. To the contrary, decision-making was so unclear that even senior officials such as the National Security Adviser could not be certain how key decisions were authorised. It is clearly unacceptable that neither ministers nor civil servants have been able to articulate the operational chain Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan 55 of command involved in conducting a major evacuation. The political leadership on offer vacillated so much that no clear priorities were set for who should be evacuated and in what order, giving many thousands of vulnerable people, to whom we owed a debt, a hope that could never be met. Although ministers claimed that they worked closely together, the decision to run the operation through three departments undermined coordination. This is particularly disturbing at a time when the UK faces significant foreign policy challenges, including in relation to Ukraine, Russia, the Balkan states, Yemen, and the Northern Ireland Protocol. Unity of purpose, clarity and coordination require serious intent and consistent political leadership.
Paragraph Reference:
33
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
The Government is grateful to the Foreign Affairs Committee for its report on the UK’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Government agrees that there are fundamental lessons to learn, and to act on, from this experience and the feedback received. The Government accepts that there were areas of its crisis response which need improvement, and is determined to raise standards in its preparedness for, and response to, future crises. The FCDO specifically is committed to implementing those lessons, as it seeks to do after every major crisis. The Lessons Learned section of this response sets out the steps the FCDO is taking as a Department both to deliver, and to monitor delivery of, that commitment.