Afghan expert: A spy or fall guy?

IS MICHAEL SEMPLE a spy or just a fall guy?

The tall, broad-shouldered diplomat with a shaggy beard had worked in Afghanistan for 20 years before being ordered to leave the country last Christmas.

The western-backed government of President Karzai said it was taking the dramatic action to expel the Dublin-born language expert, and a Briton working for the UN, because they were “detrimental to the national security of the country”. Kabul accused the pair of holding talks with the Taliban in the war-torn southern province of Helmand.

Curiously, Mr Semple, though working for the EU, was being paid €120,000 a year from the budget of Irish Aid and an internal Foreign Ministry briefing document on the expulsion spoke of the possibility of him committing an “error of judgment”.

Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern later said the claim was unfounded and a department memo referred to Mr Semple as being a “fall guy in a complex situation”, but admitted the Irish government has no way of independently verifying what really happened last December.

Mr Semple, educated in Belfast and Oxford, and dubbed a “Lawrence of Arabia” figure for his love of wearing traditional Afghan clothes, strongly denies being a spy or acting inappropriately.

“The work I have been doing is basically trying to maintain contact at all levels of Afghan society and to make sure that the international intervention does what it is supposed to, which is to bring peace and stability to the country,” he told RTÉ.

Mr Ahern backed Mr Semple’s version of events. “Mr Semple was involved in efforts to seek to attract ex-combatants in the region to support the government and the rule of law in Afghanistan. We are satisfied that this role was within the mandate of the EU Special Representative’s office,” he said.