Exclusive: Inside the UN’s chaotic flight from Taliban takeover

The United Nations’ security response to the Taliban’s lightning 2021 overthrow of the United States-backed Afghan government was plagued by poor planning and a breakdown in communication, exposing a fundamental lack of staff trust in the organization’s ability to protect them at a time of extreme crisis, according to a highly confidential internal security review seen by Devex. The 24-page review documents the U.N.’s challenging effort to “stay and deliver” services in Afghanistan when thousands of U.S. and NATO forces and foreign embassies evacuated, leaving a gaping security vacuum. But it also paints a portrait of extensive bureaucratic dysfunction in the U.N.’s security strategy for guiding the organization through one of the most violent and dangerous political and military transitions in years. The report — commissioned by the U.N. Department of Safety and Security and chaired by an independent consultant — faulted the U.N. security system’s risk assessment of the safety of its workers in the months leading up to the toppling of the Afghan government. And it claimed that the U.N. repeatedly waited too long and missed opportunities to evacuate or relocate threatened staff in major Afghan urban centers, from Herat and Kandahar to Jalalabad and Kabul, before the Taliban captured those cities. “The lack of an implementable relocation and evacuation plan and clear convoy procedures, combined with the timing of relocation and evacuation decisions, left many with the perception that the security professionals were ill-prepared to manage the situation,” according to the report, which involved interviews with 107 current and former officials and covered the period from May through October 2021. “No timely decision was made, nor action was taken for relocating the Jalalabad staff until the city’s capture on 16 August,” the report — “Lessons Learned on the U.N. Security Management System’s Response During the 2021 Afghanistan Crisis” — stated. “The instructions to relocate from Herat and Kandahar were also made too late, as the Taliban was taking control of cities, airports and routes that were vital transport nodes.” Most Afghan national staff, however, chose not to be evacuated from regional cities to the capital because they lacked the social support networks they had at home, the report notes. There were 730 international, 3,397 national, and 4,128 family dependents in mid-summer 2021, according to the report. “Lessons learned will be acted upon.” --— Stéphane Dujarric, chief spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general The review reserves its harshest criticism for the U.N. Security Management System, which had overall responsibility for the protection of thousands of U.N. workers in Afghanistan. UNSMS was led by the organization’s top political leader: Deborah Lyons, a Canadian diplomat who served as the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in 2021 and the U.N.’s designated official for security. While the report does not name Lyons, it refers repeatedly to the actions of the designated official, or DO. Lyons serves as the mission’s designated official, though she delegates that authority to another official when she is out of the country. The review credits the U.N.’s own internal threat assessment unit in Afghanistan, the Security Information and Operation Center, or SIOC, claiming its warnings about the pace of the Taliban offensive were dismissed and ignored by the mission’s leadership. Lyons acknowledged flaws in the U.N.’s response and said that she had advocated conducting an internal review of the U.N. performance shortly after the crisis. But she was generally proud of the way the U.N. performed in the face of a monumental security challenge. “What we did was pretty good, and very responsible in that no international or national staff was harmed in the sense that no one died and no one was seriously injured,” she told Devex in a phone interview. ‘Not a finger pointing exercise’ The report defends the role of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security, which commissioned the report, in confronting one of the greatest security challenges for a U.N. mission in decades, prompting one former U.N. official, who was in Kabul during the Taliban takeover, to fault the reviewers for minimizing flaws in DSS’ own role in the crisis. “DSS did not cover themselves in glory,” the official said. “DSS, as is often the case, looks to exonerate themselves.” The review called out unidentified U.N. member states, claiming they were either incapable or unwilling to aid the evacuation of U.N. nationals, withholding visas or passports even as they publicly highlighted the importance of protecting nationals who helped support the international mission in Afghanistan. Lyons emphasized the challenge of evacuating nationals, saying the U.N. lacked the resources that foreign governments had at their disposal. “We don’t have an immigration department,” she said. “We rely on member states should we evacuate them.” But the report charges that the political leadership relied too heavily on flawed security advice from the United States and the United Kingdom on the Afghan government’s capacity to ward off a Taliban offensive. It noted that the decision of U.N. senior officials to depart Afghanistan just days after Kabul fell to the Taliban left a “gap” in the U.N. response. The review did not identify any officials by name, saying only that the designated official and other “key role players” had left the country in the middle of the crisis. The designated official is the most senior official in the mission at any given moment. Lyons and other U.N. officials departed Kabul on a Russian Utair charter flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Aug. 18, three days after the Taliban entered the capital and the U.S. evacuated its diplomats by helicopter. Their exit followed the departure of key Western diplomatic contingents, including from the U.S. embassy. Lyons told Devex that she needed to leave Kabul to establish a satellite operation outside the country in Almaty with more than 100 international staffers, and that she left behind two strong deputies and more than 130 international employees to maintain vital operations. She also noted that the slimming down of the international presence reflected the fact that there was no political process underway, and that the U.N.’s main mission was addressing the country’s humanitarian needs. “Even as many other entities were leaving Afghanistan around 15 August 2021, the United Nations stayed, and still remains in Afghanistan, where some 24 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance,” Stéphane Dujarric, the chief spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, told Devex in a written statement. “At the same time, we managed to evacuate to safety some 136 UN Afghan national staff who were perceived to be at particular high-risk based on our security assessments.” “This is not a finger pointing exercise,” Dujarric wrote. “The report is meant to capture both good practices and challenges to improve our preparedness and responses in complex, high risk environments and determine how to best balance our constant concern with safety of all our staff and the need to keep our critical operations going for the benefit of the most vulnerable.” A great deal of fear The crisis unfolded following an agreement between former President Donald Trump’s administration and the Taliban in February 2020 to conclude an orderly withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, if the Taliban lived up to a set of counterterrorism commitments. The Biden administration committed to abide by the deal but delayed pulling out until Aug. 31, even though the Taliban had already begun mounting military attacks against the U.S.-backed Afghan security forces. In May, the Taliban launched a nationwide offensive, starting in Helmand Province, the site of some of the heaviest fighting, that rapidly spread the following month to 26 of the country’s 34 provinces. The lightning pace of the military offensive appeared to catch the U.S. military off guard, resulting in perhaps the most chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from a country since the Vietnam War. The final days of the U.S. saw scenes of extensive numbers of terrified Afghan civilians massing on the tarmac of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in a desperate effort to flee. Video footage captured desperate civilians clinging to the outside of an American transport plane, falling to their deaths as it gained altitude. In a tragic display of the perils of evacuating Kabul, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive in a crowd at the Abbey Gate entrance to the airport, killing approximately 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. servicemembers. “Despite some ties with the Taliban at various levels, there was a great deal of uncertainty and fear amongst UN leadership, staff, and its implementing parties regarding the attitude and intent of the Taliban towards the United Nations,” the review stated. Chaotic comms The U.N. began a partial evacuation of staff to Kabul’s airport, but the effort was hamstrung by a flawed system for tracking U.N. workers throughout the country, and a chaotic communications system that used incompatible radio equipment and different frequencies for multiple U.N. agencies, according to the review. “Different systems/equipment were incompatible, implying that many UN entities could not communicate with one another. Example: the evacuation convoy movement from UNOCA [the U.N. headquarters building in Kabul] to the Kabul International Airport caused chaos as diverse groups of vehicles used different radio frequencies and/or communication systems,” the review stated. Meanwhile, staff lists were “mostly inaccurate,” leaving evacuation planners “confused” and adding to the general anxiety. The lists included duplicate entries for the same individual, staffers who no longer worked at duty stations, or who had already left the country on rest and relaxation breaks. Some national staff lacked critical documents for dependents, including passports or proof of eligibility required to leave the country. “The staff lists required much validation to identify the staff who were to be evacuated,” the report said. “This resulted in delays in convoy preparation and the movement of staff.” “It was found that several staff had not received any communication from their superiors for at least two weeks after the fall of Kabul,” it stated. A loss of trust The decisions fell heaviest on the local Afghan staff, many of whom feared Taliban retaliation for having worked alongside the U.N. and struggled to be evacuated from captured cities nationwide. The U.N., meanwhile, remained committed to continuing its programs in Afghanistan. It would only agree to the evacuation of local staff as “a last resort” and only after the U.N. Department of Safety and Security had assessed individuals on a case-by-case basis, a cumbersome process given that there were nearly 3,400 national staff, plus 4,128 family dependents in Afghanistan during the crisis. “There was no straightforward process in Afghanistan to assess which National staff were at direct risk because of their employment with the UN,” the report added. “The ad-hoc nature of the process also resulted in marked staff frustration and anger, particularly among National staff.” Complicating that effort, the U.N. Security Management Team could not ensure access “to secure runways or helipads” for evacuation or relocation.” The U.N. mission’s “air assets were grounded or damaged,” according to the review. During the worst days of the crisis, many local staff lost access to WhatsApp, cutting them off from vital updates on the security situation. Some local staff questioned the value of town hall meetings, claiming that “international staff would overtake discussions and raise issues of personal concern rather than focus on the bigger security challenges in-country.” “National staff indicated that they were uncertain about whether they could still rely on their International UN counterparts,” the review added. The U.N. sought to prioritize the protection of women, establishing a U.N.-wide Female Working Group and Female Advisory Group. “However, the action sometimes fell short; no clinic or medical doctor was available for National female staff,” according to the review. “Several female staff mentioned that for weeks after 15 August, there was no contact with the UN staff, and they felt isolated.” “There existed and still exists significant anxiety and fear among UN female staff,” it stated. The review suggests that few had anticipated the speed with which the Taliban’s military offensive would progress, saying “many predicted the Taliban would take over Kabul but did not anticipate it would happen in mid-August, with USA forces still on the ground and without any resistance from the Afghan forces. The common forecast scenario was that there would be fighting on the outskirts of Kabul, and if Kabul fell, it would be closer to the end of the year.” But the review also reveals that the U.N. internal threat analysis cell, the SIOC, had provided weekly updates from March to July 2021 offering “clear indications of the rapid advances of the Taliban. In one presentation in mid May, it forecasted the fall of several provinces, including Kabul close to the dates the actual takeover played out. These forecasts, however, were often lost in presentations that focused heavily on past events and incident statistics.” The prevailing view of many in the U.N. Security Management Team “was that a power sharing deal would be reached and that the Afghan Security Forces would eventually stop the Taliban offensive and effectively counter their control over provinces, especially around Kabul,” the report added. “As a result, the analysis that presented a forecast that the fall of provinces, including Kabul, did not significantly inform updated risk assessments, nor resulted in updated security plans nor did it significantly inform security decision-making.” ‘Lessons learned will be acted upon’ The DSS report provides a comparatively flattering portrait of the role of its own boss, Under-Secretary-General Gilles Michaud, in the crisis, saying that a visit he paid to Afghanistan in June 2021 was a “morale booster” and demonstrated U.N. headquarters’ interest in the situation on the ground. It also noted that headquarters “provided robust assistance” to its team on the ground. On Aug. 13, it added, the New York-based head office activated a Crisis Coordination Center “knowing HQ advice was a phone call away.” In contrast, the report suggests deep tension between the U.N.’s political staff, who were “perceived as risk-averse” and who favored a speedier evacuation of staff from the U.N.’s far-flung regional hubs, and U.N. humanitarian agencies, which argued in favor of maintaining a presence to continue the delivery of life-saving supplies and services. It also reflected unusually sharp criticism of the U.N.’s top leader on the ground. The designated official, the review states, “did not have an in-depth understanding of the functioning of the UNSMS [U.N. Security Management System] at HQ and country level. The DO also received security information and advice from contacts outside the UNSMS, which did not serve her role as DO and final decision-maker well. “She was regularly briefed by UK and USA generals on their perceptions of what might take place,” it added. One international official in Afghanistan at the time said that the U.S. assurances to the U.N. that the Taliban transition could still be managed was wishful thinking. “The senior U.S. military leadership bought it because they had a reason to buy it,” the official said. “Everyone on the ground knew. There was a betting pool. I was off by two weeks.” Still, the official thought the review was unreasonably harsh in its assessment of Lyon’s role. “The report unfairly throws her under the bus on one or two things,” said the former U.N. official. “One is that she listened more to the generals, which I don’t think is true. She doesn’t take decisions in isolation. She takes the advice of the country security personnel and her security management team.” Lyons told Devex that “it is ridiculous to suggest that I was replacing the advice of our own security system with that of U.S. and U.K generals. Certainly, I was integrating advice from every reliable security source we could find. This was all shared with headquarters, and our own internal security assessment team. “No one predicted an immediate collapse. No one did,” she added. “And if they are telling you they did they are deluding themselves. No one expected Kabul to fall in a period of days. … No one expected the Afghan government and Afghan leadership would leave town so quickly.” Dujarric, the senior U.N. spokesperson, pointed out that staff security in Afghanistan, as in any other trouble spot, is the responsibility of the host country. “Overnight, that responsibility shifted from a recognized government to the Taliban. This created a situation with its own particular challenges.” “As we do regularly following major events, the UN conducted an after-action review to examine lessons learned from the chaotic events that took place prior to and right after the Taliban takeover,” he added. “Lessons learned will be acted upon.” Update Jan. 24, 2023: This story has been updated to clarify that the U.N. review incorrectly stated that the U.N.'s principal security adviser departed Afghanistan after Kabul was captured by the Taliban.