Whistleblower sacked for speaking out on withdrawal from Afghanistan takes UK government to court

An ex-official at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) who revealed Britain’s chaotic response to the fall of Kabul, said the civil service has become so dangerously politicized that officials who speak out risk being sidelined or sacked. (Shutterstock)
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Updated 04 February 2023

Whistleblower sacked for speaking out on withdrawal from Afghanistan takes UK government to court

  • Josie Stewart, who gave an anonymous interview and leaked emails to the BBC about the withdrawal, said the civil service has become ‘dangerously politicized’
  • A former head of illicit finance at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, she is challenging her dismissal under the Public Interest Disclosure Act

DUBAI: A former senior official at Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is taking the UK government to court test the legal protections for whistleblowers, amid concerns they are not sufficient to protect civil servants.

Josie Stewart, who worked at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and was sacked after turning whistleblower to reveal details of the chaotic UK response to the fall of Kabul, said the British civil service has become so dangerously politicized that officials who dare to speak out risk being sidelined or losing their jobs.

She told The Guardian newspaper that former colleagues felt their role was to protect ministers, some of whom were only interested in “looking good,” rather than working in the public interest.

Stewart, who was head of the illicit finance team at the FCDO, was fired over an anonymous interview she gave to the BBC about the government’s handling of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. She is challenging her dismissal, based on the provisions the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

In her first interview since her dismissal, she said the government’s strategy for the withdrawal of its forces had been shaped by political concerns at home. Ministers were more focused on media coverage and “the political fallout” than saving lives, she added.

Her legal action adds to the pressure on Dominic Raab, who was foreign secretary at the time and who is currently fighting for his political career following allegations of bullying, which he denies. Raab was heavily criticized for failing to return home early from holiday in August 2021 when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

Stewart, who worked for two years at the British embassy in Kabul during her seven years with the FCDO, volunteered to work in the Whitehall crisis center when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. One of her allegations was that ministers had not expected the British public to care about the evacuation of locals who had helped British troops amnd officials.

Her case, for which a final hearing is scheduled for September, could set a precedent for how the courts handle similar cases in future, including clarification of whether whistleblowers can avoid dismissal if they disclosed information in “exceptionally serious circumstances” and it should therefore be considered “reasonable” to have done so.

In her interview with The Guardian, 42-year-old Stewart said: “If the law is not tested and used then I don’t know how much it actually means, as potential whistleblowers don’t know which side of the line it is going to fall. Is what they’re going to do likely to be legally protected or not? If they don’t know, then I’m not sure how meaningful the fact the law exists is.”

Stewart, who now works for nonprofit organization Transparency International, alleged that the civil service has been dangerously politicized since the era of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and she accused the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, of failing to stand up for officials.

“I increasingly saw senior officials interpreting their role as doing what ministers say and providing protections to ministers,” she said. “It was almost as if their first loyalty (was) to their political leaders rather than to the public.

“Essentially people who said ‘yes’ and went along with it and bought into this shift in culture and approach were those whose careers went well. Those who resisted either found themselves buried somewhere or looking for jobs elsewhere.

“It threatens the impartiality of the civil service. The civil service is supposed to bring expertise in how to get things done. It risks that expertise being neutered by a slant towards focusing on things that look good rather than achieving impact.”

Stewart also suggested the politicization of the civil service had a dramatic effect on the government’s handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan. Moreover, she highlighted the government’s failure to draw up a plan to help Afghan nationals who had assisted the British, such as translators or contractors, but were not eligible for the existing Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy because they did not work directly for the UK, to leave the country.

“There was no policy because we didn’t intend to do it at all,” Stewart said. “The only reason it came into life during the crisis was because the government was surprised to learn that the British people did actually care and did feel that we owed something to those people.

“Then they thought: ‘Well, people do care and we had better do something about it.’ So it was a misjudgment, politically. Hence the chaos.”

The crisis center received thousands of emails from desperate Afghans asking for help, which remained unopened until pressure from MPs led Raab to promise in the House of Commons that they would all be read by a certain date.

In January 2022 Stewart gave her anonymous interview and leaked emails to the BBC’s Newsnight program that revealed a decision to allow the animal charity Nowzad’s Afghan staff to be evacuated had been taken as a result of instructions from Johnson himself that overruled officials, who had said the workers were not eligible and others were at higher risk. Johnson had denied being involved in the decision.

The unredacted emails were accidentally published on social media by the BBC, revealing Stewart’s identity. She was stripped of her FCDO security clearance and subsequently sacked because, without it, she was unable to do her job.

Stewart’s lawyers expect the government to argue that the protections under the Public Interest Disclosure Act do not apply in this case because she was not, ultimately, dismissed for the act of whistleblowing, and they plan to challenge this.

An FCDO spokesperson said: “We are rightly proud of our staff who worked tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The cabinet secretary is proud to lead a civil service that works day in, day out to deliver the government’s priorities for the people of this country.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “We take our responsibilities as journalists very seriously and we deeply regret that the name of the email account was inadvertently revealed when the email was published on social media.”

A spokesperson for Boris Johnson declined to comment.


Over 1,400 migrants are rescued from overcrowded boats off Italy by coast guard

Updated 07 June 2023

Over 1,400 migrants are rescued from overcrowded boats off Italy by coast guard

  • There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria
  • The rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria's east coast

ROME: More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said Wednesday.
There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, in the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, a coast guard statement said. They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early Tuesday.
The statement said the rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast. One coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat, and then later brought on around 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said.
A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard.
Authorities didn’t immediately give details on the nationalities of the passengers or routes taken by the migrant vessels. But generally, many boats with migrants sighted off the Ionian Sea set out from Turkiye’s coast, where smugglers launch crowded and unseaworthy boats.
Earlier this year, a migrant boat navigating on that route slammed into a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and broke apart. At least 94 migrants perished and 80 others survived.
That shipwreck is under criminal investigation, including the role of several members of Italy’s border police corps, which operates vessels off the country’s long coastline. Four suspected smugglers have been arrested.
In addition, prosecutors want to know if rescue efforts could have been launched hours earlier. Italian border police boats reportedly turned back to port because of rough seas, and by the time a coast guard vessel, better equipped to navigate in poor sea conditions, reached the area, bodies were already in the water. In that case, the migrant boat had been spotted hours earlier by a surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, the European Union’s border monitoring force.
Wednesday’s statement by the coast guard said that crew on a Frontex surveillance plane had spotted a fishing boat with the 590 migrants aboard. A Frontex patrol boat and a Frontex support vessel were among the assets involved in the rescue operations for the two fishing boats, according to the coast guard.
Alarm Phone, a nongovernmental organization that frequently receives satellite calls from migrant vessels in distress and relays the information to maritime authorities in Italy and Malta, was among the organizations signaling the need for rescue for the 130 people aboard the fourth boat.


Erdogan proposes destroyed dam probe in Zelensky call

Updated 07 June 2023

Erdogan proposes destroyed dam probe in Zelensky call

  • Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam
  • President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday proposed, in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, creating an international commission to probe the destruction of a major dam in southern Ukraine, his office reported.
Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which was ripped open early Tuesday after a reported blast.
“President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community, including Turkiye, for a detailed investigation into the explosion at Kakhovka dam,” his office said after the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Kakhovka dam sits on the Dnipro River, which feeds a reservoir providing cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) upstream.
The destruction of the dam caused torrents of water to pour into the Dnipro, pushing thousands of civilians to flee the flooded areas while raising fears of an ecological disaster.
NATO member Turkiye, which has good ties with Moscow and Kyiv.


First batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir leaves for Hajj

Updated 07 June 2023

First batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir leaves for Hajj

  • Out of India’s Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 departing from Kashmir region
  • This year’s contingent is the region’s largest-ever embarking on the spiritual journey

NEW DELHI: The first batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir performing Hajj this year left for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday from Srinagar airport, an official from the region’s Hajj authority said.

Out of India’s annual Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 will be departing from the Himalayan region, nearly double Kashmir’s Hajj contingent last year and the region’s largest-ever group embarking on the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Special Hajj flights from India started in the last week of May.

“We have the highest quota this year,” Safina Baig, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Haj Committee, told Arab News after 630 pilgrims departed for Jeddah from Kashmir’s main airport in Srinagar.

“It was an emotional scene with many feeling overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform Hajj in their lifetime.”

Most pilgrims were selected through a draw, except for the elderly and women traveling without a mahram, or male guardian.

“Generally, the selection process happens through draw but as a special gesture we are allowing single women and people above 70 to apply directly without going through the process of draw,” Baig said.

Special arrangements had been made by the Indian government for women traveling without a mahram, she said, including separate accommodation and women helpers.

“By Allah’s grace, I got the opportunity to travel alone to perform Hajj,” said Shamima Akhter, 56, a widow from the southern Pulwama district of Kashmir, who is among 120 Kashmiri women pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia alone.

“This is a good decision to allow single women to travel.”

Akhter’s three daughters helped her raise about $5,000 to pay for her Hajj package, which is around $1,000 more expensive for Kashmir compared with other regions of India.

Baig said she had raised the issue of the higher cost with the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Haj Committee of India.

“What I understand is that the rise in the total expenses is due to higher prices of air fare from Kashmir,” she said. 

“Kashmir is a Muslim majority region, and the government should be more considerate … I feel that the government should provide some relief to the Kashmiri Hajis. It sends a good message.”


Attacks by suspected militants in Burkina Faso kill 21

Updated 07 June 2023

Attacks by suspected militants in Burkina Faso kill 21

  • Burkina Faso struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015
  • Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates

OUAGADOUGOU: Twenty-one people, most of them members of the security forces, have been killed in Burkina Faso in attacks by suspected militants, security sources said on Wednesday.
Fourteen members of the VDP volunteer militia and four soldiers died on Monday in Sawenga in central-eastern Burkina, while five were wounded, a source said.
Another security source confirmed the toll, saying that the clash occurred during an operation to secure the area, and that “more than 50 terrorists were neutralized” in an airborne counter-attack.
Separately, a police source said a policeman and two civilians were killed on Monday night in an attack on a police border post at Yendere, on the southwestern frontier with Ivory Coast.
A trucker in the area confirmed the attack, adding that many local people had already fled into Ivory Coast because of militant incursions.
Ivory Coast hosts around 18,000 Burkinabe refugees, more than double the tally for 2022, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
One of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, Burkina is struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015.
Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates.
More than 10,000 civilians, troops and police have died, according to an NGO count, while at least two million people have been displaced.
Anger within the military at failures to roll back the insurgency sparked two coups last year, culminating in the ascent of a young army captain, Ibrahim Traore.
The junta has ruled out any negotiations with the militants.
It is staking much of its anti-militant strategy on the VDP — the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland militia.
The force comprises civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training and then work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties.
Since its inception in December 2019, the VDP has suffered hundreds of casualties, especially in ambushes or roadside bombings.
Despite the losses, the authorities launched a successful recruitment drive last year, encouraging 90,000 people to sign up, far exceeding the target of 50,000.


Philippine court denies bail request for staunch Duterte critic in drugs case

Updated 07 June 2023

Philippine court denies bail request for staunch Duterte critic in drugs case

  • Petition was for a drug case that saw Leila de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison

MANILA: A Philippine court has denied a bail request from Leila de Lima, a former senator and staunch critic of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, the defendant’s lawyer said on Wednesday, thereby prolonging her detention.
“Sad to inform you that the court denied Senator Leila’s bail application,” Filibon Tacardon, her legal counsel, told reporters.
The petition was for a drug case that saw de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison.
De Lima was arrested in 2017, just a few months after she launched a senate investigation into Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign during which thousands of users and dealers were killed, many by police or in mysterious circumstances. She has been in police detention ever since.
A Philippine court in 2021 dismissed a drug case against de Lima, 63, while another court in May acquitted her from a charge that she received drug money from prison inmates.