Several thousand Afghans who helped British forces before the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 remain stranded and at risk from the Taliban. This is blamed on poor planning by the UK government.
It has now been reported that 2,000 Afghans – 700 of them children – have been offered sanctuary in Great Britain. However, they remain in hotels in countries, such as Pakistan, and at risk of retribution due to a lack of accommodation for them.
In September 2022 Voice of America reported it had been estimated that as many as 300 interpreters who had worked with U.S. forces had been killed in Afghanistan since 2021 while waiting for visas.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the Home Office is keeping 5,000 unused hotel rooms as an ‘overspill’ for small boat migrants at a cost to taxpayers £5million a week.
This is nothing short of a betrayal.
Afghan interpreters worked under extreme danger alongside British troops.
“We’ve certainly had occasions when they have gone above and beyond in terms of valour. We have two who are currently being recommended for commendations for acts of bravery in the field, one of whom was working on a patrol that came under fire.
“One of the guys went down, the stretcher party came in, one of those guys was shot and the interpreter took the corner of the stretcher and crawled with the remaining team across open ground for 25 minutes under fire and got the casualty out alive,” – Major Jamie Forbes, British Army Labour Support Unit
That the Home Office prioritises mostly young male economic migrants who are not even in the country yet over brave men who served alongside British forces and who need to get themselves and their families to the safety they were promised under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme is a disgrace.
Exactly what kind of a social engineering project are we looking at here?
Picture: Sergeant Rupert Frere, Crown Copyright/MOD 2010
