Afghan charity evacuation confusion ‘was regrettable’

THE Government has said it “regrets” the confusion caused by the decision to evacuate animal welfare charity staff from Afghanistan, according to an official report.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said ministers and officials had given evidence to an inquiry led by a cross-party committee of MPS in “good faith”, and “at no stage” sought to be “deliberately” misleading.

The FCDO acknowledged however that an “error” in internal communication left some staff believing the Prime Minister had made the decision to call Nowzad’s staff forward for evacuation.

Downing Street has previously denied Boris Johnson played any role in prioritising their removal.

However, the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) said in a scathing report earlier this year that “multiple senior officials” believed he had and “we have yet to be offered a plausible alternative explanation”.

Addressing the FAC report, in which it was accused of giving “intentionally evasive, and often deliberately misleading” responses to the committee’s investigations, the FCDO acknowledged that “more care should have been taken” within the department in how the decision was communicated to staff.

“The Government regrets that it took as long as it did to establish what the decision-making process had been in this case, and how the decision was communicated internally to FCDO staff,” it said.

‘The Government regrets that it took so long to establish what the decisionmaking process had been’

“It agrees that, in this particular case, more care should have been taken within the FCDO in how the decision was communicated to staff.”

Nowzad was set up by former Royal Marine Paul “Pen” Farthing, who launched a high-profile campaign to get his staff and animals out of Kabul as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan last year. In the end, the charity’s staff fled Afghanistan to Pakistan rather than with the animals on a plane from Kabul.