Foreign Office admits crucial call to help Afghan interpreters was not made

Mr Raab was on holiday on the Greek island of Crete when the request to make the urgent phone call was made (Photo: Getty Images)Mr Raab was on holiday on the Greek island of Crete when the request to make the urgent phone call was made (Photo: Getty Images)
Mr Raab was on holiday on the Greek island of Crete when the request to make the urgent phone call was made (Photo: Getty Images)

The crucial phone call Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was urged to make to help Afghan interpreters flee Afghanistan did not happen, the Foreign Office has admitted.

Mr Raab was reportedly “unavailable” when officials in his department suggested he “urgently” call Afghan foreign minister Hanif Atmar on 13 August.

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The call should have been made two days before the Taliban marched on the capital city of Kabul and took control, enabling help to be provided to interpreters who supported British troops.

Why is Raab facing pressure to resign?

Mr Raab was on holiday on the Greek island of Crete when the request to make the urgent phone call was made, and is said to be staying at the luxurious five-star Amirandes Hotel.

The Foreign Secretary has come under fire after he was “unavailable” to make the urgent phone call to Mr Atmar before Kabul fell to the Taliban.

It was initially reported that the Afghan Foreign Ministry refused to arrange a call with a junior minister, delaying it until the following day (14 August).

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However, the Foreign Office has now admitted that the call was not made before the Afghan government collapsed.

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development spokesperson said: “Given the rapidly changing situation, it was not possible to arrange a call before the Afghan government collapsed.”

Questioned about the actions of Mr Raab, defence minister James Heappey said people at all levels in the UK Government are “working their backsides off” to evacuate people.

Speaking to Sky News, he said: “I don’t know the exact details of the Foreign Office ministers’ call sheets.

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“What I can tell you, as the Secretary of State (Ben Wallace) said yesterday, is I know that no one phone call would have been decisive in changing the trajectory – either for the collapse of the Afghan government or indeed the acceleration of the airlift.”

Mr Heappey added he could only comment on what he sees in his meetings and via his phone calls.

He said: “What I see is that from the Prime Minister to secretaries of state to my junior ministerial colleagues around government to senior civil servants, all the way down to the brave volunteer civil servants who have gone forward to Kabul … is people across Her Majesty’s Government working their backsides off in order to get people out.”

Mr Heappey confirmed that 963 people have been evacuated from Kabul on the RAF “air bridge” in the last 24 hours.

Labour demands answers

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It has also been reported that Sir Philip Barton, Matthew Rycroft and David Williams, the respective permanent secretaries of the Foreign Office, Home Office and Ministry of Defence, were also on holiday amid the evacuations from Afghanistan.

Senior officials are understood to have continued working on Afghanistan while on leave, but Labour has now demanded details about the government’s handling of the situation and Mr Raab’s holiday while the Taliban took control.

It has set out a list of 18 urgent questions for the Foreign Secretary to answer about his trip and his department’s handling of the crisis.

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said: “For the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to be on holiday during the biggest foreign policy crisis in a generation is an unforgivable failure of leadership.”

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Labour, along with the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, have all called for Mr Raab to either quit or be sacked by the Prime Minister in the wake of the Afghanistan crisis.

Meanwhile, senior MPs have warned that the government must ensure it meets its responsibility towards UK-linked workers that have been “pursued into hiding” by Taliban forces.

In a letter to the Home Secretary, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and Conservative Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Defence Select Committee, urged Priti Patel to provide more resources to support issuing visas.

The urgent plea comes in an effort to ensure those who are trying to leave Afghanistan do not face any administrative delays which would be “unforgivable at this dangerous time”.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, NationalWorld.