Scotland is our home now but I need to know my family are safe in Afghanistan
– Naqibullah Eshaqzai
An interpreter who fled Afghanistan with his young family after working with Nato forces has spoken of his happiness at his chance of a new life in Scotland but said he fears for family members left behind.
Naqibullah Eshaqzai has settled in the Glasgow area after fleeing his former home last month as the Taliban seized the country before sweeping into Kabul.
Eshaqzai worked as an interpreter between 2009 and 2011 for the Natoled International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, helping translate for forces including the British Army.
The 36-year-old managed to gain residency here with his wife – who has asked not to be identified – their daughter Horia, seven, and son Sefatullah, six, but said he is concerned for his parents and siblings who remain in Afghanistan.
He said: “We managed to get out for our own safety and get flights into the UK. We have come to Scotland and this is our home now. The Taliban have been searching for people who worked for ISAF and their family so it is a very worrying time for us. I just want my family to be safe.”
He added, since arriving in Scotland on August 1, he has been to the Job Centre and has registered his children in primary school: “I have a diploma in IT from Kabul and I want to try to improve my English and get a job. It is a little bit cold in Scotland but that is lovely and is not a problem compared to what is happening in Afghanistan.”
We told last month how another former interpreter, Ahmad Refa, had found sanctuary in Scotland but family back in Afghanistan had faced death threats from the Taliban.
More than 2,200 Afghans who worked for the Allies have found new homes in the UK but pressure is building on ministers to help others and their families left behind after the Taliban seized control of the country.
Mohammad Asif, director of the Afghan Human Rights
Foundation, said: “There is a bleak future for people in Afghanistan. Those who were interpreters did a very difficult and sensitive job and both they and their families are now at risk. I am not convinced about any positive portrayal of the Taliban. The British Government should do all it can to get interpreters and their families and all those at risk out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.”
Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said last week it was impossible to put a figure on how many people were left in Afghanistan who may be eligible to come to Britain.
He said the vast bulk of British nationals had left but there were also eligible people under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme, for people who helped UK forces, and others, who could be under threat from the Taliban.
He said: “We are going to continue working to get people out who fall into those groups, predominantly now it will be in that third group, people at risk of reprisals, whether they be highprofile individuals, of religious minorities or others who may be under severe risk of reprisals from the Taliban.”
The fall of Afghanistan is great news for people smugglers. A few of the luckier Afghans – if any can be called lucky – have already arrived in the UK by plane: granted visas as they were deemed at risk because of working for the British army, media or aid agencies.
The risks are real. When I was a journalist in Afghanistan 10 years ago my interpreter was so scared of being recognised he wore a balaclava every day: but in Afghanistan’s spluttering economy he needed the £150 a day I paid him.
Other Afghans – those who failed to make it through the Darwinian hell of Kabul airport but our government think “most in need” – will be allowed to apply for resettlement if they can make it to a third country; 5,000 in the first year and 20,000 in total, numbers calculated it’s not entirely sure how.
But the scheme hasn’t started yet and it has also yet to be announced how or when or where the visas can be obtained or how long the process will take. Or indeed how the people will make it out of Afghanistan to claim. Presumably many will be dialling People Smugglers’ International Rescue.
A third group – too scared to wait, or untrusting of the
UK’S dodgy record of honouring obligations, or just too determined – will make a bigger investment in the people smugglers: not just those fearing Taliban revenge but families hoping for a future for their children free of Sharia law and economic chaos; women wanting to have a job, a university education; young men of fighting age fleeing being forced to fight. After thousands of dollars and two continents by foot and lorry, many will join the desperate souls paddling rubber dinghies towards our shores. And they know time is not on their side.
Thanks to Priti Patel’s Nationality & Borders Bill, it may soon become a criminal offence to come to our country illegally – the penalties being imprisonment and deportation, but God knows where to. Some will die on the way.
Although the Afghans who enter the UK through the government visas are allowed to work immediately, the “illegal migrants” won’t be so lucky. Processed into the depressing and lonely asylum seekers’ limbo, housed and fed by the UK taxpayer, they will be forbidden to work legally, until their asylum applications have been granted – something they find bewildering, and so do I.
The UK is currently suffering a massive labour shortage. Why can’t we let migrants do the jobs? Make it part of the asylum process. I’ve met loads of illegal migrants over the last 10 years as the producer of the Trojan Women Project for Syrian refugees. Anyone who has the guts and determination to get here under their own steam is remarkable – we call them the Alpha Migrants. Most are educated members of the professional middle class hoping for a better life.
Our economy is hamstrung by a lack of lorry drivers, fruit pickers, care workers, waiters and chefs – supermarket shelves stand empty as goods remain undelivered, cafes and hotels were unable to cash in on the summer’s staycation bonanza.
Many of these jobs were previously done by Eastern Europeans, who have returned home, thanks either to Brexit or Covid; but Britain has always depended on immigrants to do jobs Brits didn’t want to do – before the Eastern Europeans it was the Commonwealth.
Being a fruitpicker isn’t the dream job but it’s a foot on the ladder, a chance to earn money, meet people, improve your English. It beats sitting in a hostel waiting for the Home Office. Immigrants have always done lower calibre jobs in hope of a better future.
Ask Priti Patel – her parents fled Uganda in the ’70s for the UK and ran a newsagent. And now she’s Home Secretary.