Since spring 2020, the ambassador and local staffers have been pleading for preparations to be made to allow local embassy staff to leave quickly if the Taliban advance continues. Nevertheless, until two days before the fall of Kabul, Minister Kaag (Foreign Affairs), Bijleveld (Defence) and State Secretary Broekers-Knol (Asylum Affairs) did not decide when local employees would be taken to safety and whether all dependent family members living at home would be with them. were allowed to travel. Among them were staff who had been working for the Netherlands for twenty years.
This is apparent from correspondence between Kabul and The Hague, which is in possession of the Volkskrant. The documents shed new light on the decision-making process surrounding the evacuation. It also states that France offered to take people on a flight in July 2021. Minister Kaag later stated that she was not aware of French evacuations at the time.
Fact sheet
The fact report that the cabinet sent to the House last week does mention talks about the safety of staff members, but it does not say that the cabinet kept putting off decisions about requests for help.
An embassy evacuation list with the names of sixty resident and dependent family members who did not belong to the ‘nuclear family’ of the embassy staff met resistance at the ministry in The Hague and in the cabinet until two days before the fall of Kabul. The embassy was told that only three people from that list could come along. The embassy was allowed to choose which three.
Ambassador Wijgers refused to make that choice, she said in an email to the ministry on 12 August. She emphasized that family members were “as much at risk” as the staff. She asked for help to change Minister Kaag’s mind before the Council of Ministers on 13 August. It did not work.
Noodvisa
A plan by the embassy leadership to issue emergency visas on August 14, despite the refusal from The Hague, was quickly obsolete as all commercial flights from Kabul were canceled. Only then did the three ministers agree to take all staff members of the embassy and all their family members living at home.
Today, the House will again debate with the three ministers about the chaotic evacuation. The embassy sounded the alarm about this more than a year ago, according to the correspondence that de Volkskrant saw.
fire letters
As early as March 9, 2020, embassy employees reported their concerns to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The embassy subsequently sent several fire letters to The Hague to convince them of the urgency of bringing the staff to safety, but no promises were made.
At their wits’ end, staff members turn directly to Secretary-General Paul Huijts on 11 May. They ‘fear for their lives’ and beg to be evacuated along with their live-in relatives. The ministry and government officials continued to refuse until the Taliban took Kabul.
When asked, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that the decision to evacuate the local personnel ‘if the situation worsens’ was taken on July 9, but that the employees were still needed to handle the interpreting scheme and that the fall of Kabul came unforeseen quickly.
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