UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab neglected to make an urgent phone conversation while on vacation in Greece to seek help airlifting translators out of Afghanistan, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
Senior officials in the Foreign Secretary's staff reportedly recommended that he contact Afghan Foreign Minister Hanif Atmar immediately, and it was necessary that Raab make the call rather than a junior minister. However, the foreign secretary, who was enjoying a luxurious break with his family in Crete, was reportedly "too busy" to make a call himself.
"The Foreign Secretary was engaged on a range of other calls and this one was delegated to another minister," reads the Foreign Office's Tuesday statement quoted in the report.
The Afghan foreign ministry, on the other hand, declined to set up a call between Atmar and a junior minister who was not his direct counterpart right away. As a result, the heads of the countries' foreign policy authorities did not speak for at least a day, reportedly wasting valuable time before the Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday.
Former Afghan interpreters, who worked with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, demonstrate in front of the U.S. embassy in Kabul June 25, 2021.
© REUTERS / STRINGER
According to reports, thousands of UK citizens, local Afghan interpreters, and their families have been stuck in Kabul since the fall of the Afghan government, waiting for evacuation flights back to the UK. Raab has come under some heavy fire since it was revealed that he was on vacation when the Taliban completed their swift takeover.
The foreign secretary has since argued that he was active while away from the country and could direct Foreign Office operations online. However, in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Raab was accused of "dereliction of duty," while the Labour party leader Sir Keir Starmer argued that one "cannot co-ordinate an international response from the beach."
Raab instead said he attended a number of meetings from his hotel and stepped outside only "episodically" to see his family, while he also returned to the UK early on Monday morning.
The opposition also went on to slate Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was also on leave during Afghanistan's critical days.
Recently, there have been multiple reports emerging on social networks and conventional media of attacks and even killings of former translators who worked for the Western coalition during the war, despite official assurances from the Taliban that the former translators are safe and will not be subject to acts of revenge.
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