Ministries aware of the Afghanistan crisis early on, continued to work at cross-purposes

The fact that the Dutch evacuation of life-threatening Afghans was so dramatic is because ministries mainly worked at cross-purposes. This is evident from an extensive reconstruction by Fidelity. It was also far from clear who was eligible for evacuation in the first place.

The reconstruction shows, among other things, that outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte was already asked in June of this year to urgently evacuate Afghan interpreters who had worked for the Netherlands. This was done by means of a letter sent by two Dutch military unions, drafted by soldiers, veterans and interpreters from eight different countries. The letter also ended up at NATO headquarters. A month earlier, Anne-Marie Snels, the recently departed chairman of the AFMP military union, had tried unsuccessfully to contact the Ministry of Defence.

In June, it also became clear in the House of Representatives that the Taliban were on the verge of taking Afghanistan completely. Several MPs then tried to get the outgoing cabinet to start evacuating, but encountered impenetrable walls: the Ministry of Defense (Bijleveld, CDA) pointed to Foreign Affairs (Kaag, D66) as responsible. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred to Justice and Security (Broekers-Knol, VVD), which referred the Ministry back to Foreign Affairs. That transfer of responsibility continued even after the Taliban captured the capital, Kabul. In the end, outgoing Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld said he wanted to send a plane to evacuate the interpreters ‘only in extreme cases’.

How much the outgoing cabinet looked away from the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is apparent from the fact that even in August State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol insisted that Afghan asylum seekers could be deported to the Netherlands. At that time, the British and French, among others, had been setting up an air bridge for months to be able to start the evacuations from Afghanistan as soon as possible. In early August, Germany decided to evacuate all Afghans who had worked for that country in any way. Bijleveld then made it clear to the House that she only intended to bring interpreters to the Netherlands and no one else, because the outgoing cabinet feared ‘an uncontrollable increase in the number of applications’.

–

–