Fresh evidence on UK’s botched Afghan withdrawal backs whistleblower’s story

[dimsum]

Further evidence alleging that the government seriously mishandled the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been handed to a parliamentary inquiry examining the operation, the Observer has been told.

Details from several government departments and agencies are understood to back damning testimony from a Foreign Office whistleblower, who has claimed that bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, and a lack of planning and resources led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.

The Observer revealed in August that thousands of emails of urgent cases of Afghans in danger were being left unread for days at the height of the crisis, with the messages of senior MPs among those not to be opened. Even government ministers had emails that had not been addressed.

Fresh evidence on UK’s botched Afghan withdrawal backs whistleblower’s story

MPs’ inquiry given further details of Britain’s mismanagement of Afghanistan exit with ‘people left to die at the hands of the Taliban’

www.theguardian.com

 

[Good2Golf]

Canada: Here, hold my beer.

 

[CBH99]

What I still don’t get, and what still blows my mind… is why these folks & immediate family weren’t flown out of country to Canada when a Roto was coming back.

Not them, their immediate family, closest friends, extended family, distant cousin, and their dog. But the interpreter/contracted help, and their immediate family.

Surely flying them out with a Roto coming home would have a) been a lot more practical than this nonsense a decade later…

b) we told them they would be relocated after their service. Did we forget the part that it only might happen a decade or so down the road, at best?

c) Canada could have stood out as one of the only countries to have honoured the agreement, aka HUGE international brownie points


The only other alternatives are a total lack of competence/planning, or we never intended to honour the agreement…

We seem to be able to fly 20,000 (mostly ungrateful) Syrians here with no f**king problems once so ever.

But Afghans who embedded with and assisted our CAF during operations? Nope. Sorry.


Hopefully lessons will be learned and applied in the future. If we have similar agreements with various locals, it gets honoured as soon as they hold up their end of the bargain.

 

[McG]

… we told them they would be relocated after their service.

Did we promise that?

The only reason to extract every interpreter & their family on the heels of a roto would be if we planned to lose. Otherwise, they were the people the country needed to keep to make the transition that we were fighting for.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Canada: Here, hold my beer.

I listened to Scott Taylor on City News in Halifax this about this from the Canadian standpoint.

He seemed very meah about Canada's role and basically wrote it off as it's been a decade meah

 

[Booter]

Did we promise that?

The only reason to extract every interpreter & their family on the heels of a roto would be if we planned to lose. Otherwise, they were the people the country needed to keep to make the transition that we were fighting for.

With the war dragging on and expected to be years it was announced in 2009 for those helping us. Because they faced reprisal while the war was going on- not because we planned to lose. It was announced in 2009 and extended in 2011- but never actually worked right,

I can’t find the original article but this one from 2011 talks about it.

Program to bring Afghan interpreters to Canada ends with most turned away - The Globe and Mail

After risking their lives working with the Canadian Forces, just one in three are accepted

www.theglobeandmail.com

It actually may have ended with the “combat mission”. As is usual with Canadian public service- the program was made and we can’t honour the spirit of an idea; because the mechanisms aren’t defined so all the policies slow it down or work against it because it was meant for different era.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

What I still don’t get, and what still blows my mind… is why these folks & immediate family weren’t flown out of country to Canada when a Roto was coming back.

Not them, their immediate family, closest friends, extended family, distant cousin, and their dog. But the interpreter/contracted help, and their immediate family.

Surely flying them out with a Roto coming home would have a) been a lot more practical than this nonsense a decade later…

b) we told them they would be relocated after their service. Did we forget the part that it only might happen a decade or so down the road, at best?

c) Canada could have stood out as one of the only countries to have honoured the agreement, aka HUGE international brownie points


The only other alternatives are a total lack of competence/planning, or we never intended to honour the agreement…

We seem to be able to fly 20,000 (mostly ungrateful) Syrians here with no f**king problems once so ever.

But Afghans who embedded with and assisted our CAF during operations? Nope. Sorry.


Hopefully lessons will be learned and applied in the future. If we have similar agreements with various locals, it gets honoured as soon as they hold up their end of the bargain.

Because they had to keep up the charade that the Mission was a glowing success.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Because they had to keep up the charade that the Mission was a glowing success.

All hail the 'Ink Spot' strategy!

When a cheerful Colonel trotted that one out one time I was able to share the fact that, speaking as a scuba diver, I noticed that Octopus used ink as a 'smoke screen' when they were trying to escape

 

[CBH99]

Did we promise that?

The only reason to extract every interpreter & their family on the heels of a roto would be if we planned to lose. Otherwise, they were the people the country needed to keep to make the transition that we were fighting for.

Fair enough.

And as far as I knew, that was part of the deal. For some of them, that was the deal breaker and/or motivator for them stepping forwards to help us.

At the end of each Roto wouldn’t have made sense, you are right. But when we were packing up and making sure everybody was accounted for on the final Roto, our interpreters should have been counted among them.