A former Royal Marine accused of prioritising pets over humans during the is making a film he says will tell the true story behind the controversy. Titled Operation Ark, the film will tell the story of controversial evacuation of rescue animals from Afghanistan during the chaotic fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021. Strays, military dogs and animal victims of war had been under the care of the nonprofit charity, Nowzad, which Mr Farthing founded 10 years earlier while serving in Afghanistan.
During the withdrawal, Mr Farthing had just days to employed at the charity, raising a million pounds of private funding to put them on one of the last flights out of the Afghan capital. But the mission sparked a fierce backlash after some staff were left behind amid horrific scenes of desperation and stampeding at the airport. Mr Farthing was accused of valuing the lives of “pets over people” and leaving Afghans at the mercy of the Taliban regime.
Critics included , the Tory MP and Afghanistan veteran, then chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, who said: “We’ve just used a lot of troops to get 200 dogs out, meanwhile my interpreter’s family are likely to be killed.” But Mr Farthing claims that he was thrust into the spotlight to divert attention from the Foreign Office’s “serious systemic failures” over the evacuation. , then foreign secretary, came under fire after he did not return from a holiday in Crete to deal with the crisis.
Mr Farthing says that altho.