We must do our duty by Afghan heroes...

CHANCES are you have never heard of Colonel Shafiq Ahmed Khan, a former director of intelligence with Afghan Special Forces. But at this time of celebration of loyalty and duty, I think you should. The Colonel was a 61-year-old grandfather who took the incredibly brave decision to help UK Special Forces and intelligence officers fight the Taliban.

He joined the elite Task Force 444 and in so doing made himself a prime target for retaliation by the barbaric death cult that is the Taliban.

Regrettably, Colonel Khan was not one of the 15,000 Afghans brought to safety in the UK last year through Operation Pitting, amid those desperate scenes at Kabul airport, and the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy.

The Colonel was forced to go into hiding as the Taliban stepped up the public beatings and killings of those who had worked for the British.

But in January this year, realising the situation was becoming impossible and after countless death threats, he applied to relocate here.

Tragically, that is one application among thousands that will now not require processing.

While hiding in the Kabul area he was told his family home in Panjshir had been raided and looted.

An Afghan who worked as a British military interpreter and who had worked with the Colonel explained: “He decided to go home to check on the property and was told it was safe – but it was a trap.

“Shafiq was sitting with his wife and grandchildren on the second floor when there was a knock on the door.

“He had been expecting his brother and went to answer it. When he opened the door the Taliban fired shots and two hit him on the right side of the chest and in the heart killing him.

“This is the reality of those who worked alongside the British.”

It is also the reality of a British government with a then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, who was on holiday and reportedly failed to make a number of crucial telephone calls.

It is also the reality of a civil service with the relevant department chief, Sir Philip Barton, also enjoying a holiday.

He stayed on for another 11 days, as British troops scrambled to get as many UK nationals and Afghans to safety in the murderous conditions of Kabul airport.

How Barton (I’ll decline to use his title of Sir on this occasion) is still in his job shows the lamentable level to which much of our civil service has sunk.

The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace clearly knew what was coming. He hit the headlines when he choked back tears

on my breakfast radio show last year when he admitted, “we’re not going to get everyone out”.

The Government is swift to say the evacuation of Kabul was the largest military undertaking of its kind in more than half a century and is on a par with Dunkirk in sheer numbers.

That seems correct – but there seems little to celebrate when we have clearly left ■

THE first Channel migrants to be put into the Rwanda relocation programme will be there in under two weeks, says the Government.

Around 100 have been informed their cases will be heard in the centre in the East African country.

But given the level of resistance, queues of human rights lawyers and campaigners are already forming to block this.

So here’s a deal.

If all those 100 folk leave on a plane on June 14, I’ll wear full Rwandan national costume for my picture at the top of this page.

so many behind “on the beaches” as it were. As the Taliban strengthens its grip on the country, it is reported that revenge killings and beatings increase by the week.

An interpreter who worked at the British Embassy has had his brother kidnapped and taken hostage by the Taliban.

He is waiting to hear if his request to come to Britain has been approved, but meanwhile has been told he must give himself up to save his brother.

HE KNOWS he will be executed at once and his six children will be left without a father. So, as we rightly celebrate the pageantry of a truly unique monarch whose entire life has been defined by duty and we see the serried ranks of our armed forced and the thrilling fly past by warplanes ancient and modern, reflect on our most recent military operation.

And ask yourself this: do you think we have shown loyalty and done our duty by them?

Picture: JIM HOLDEN/ENGLISH HERITAGE WHAT AN inspired way English Heritage cooked up to mark the Platinum Jubilee. Using one pillar of this nation’s durability, history and tradition in Stonehenge, they projected images of another notable pillar, the Queen, across some of the ancient stones. The result was a delightful look back through the remarkable service this equally remarkable woman has given – and full credit to whoever chose each individual picture: every one capturing the mood of the decade in question and more often than not showing her genuinely enjoying herself. A “monumental” triumph for all concerned.