Afghan interpreters ‘failed by Britain’
Translators at risk of Taliban reprisals
POLITICS: A Government programme to help former interpreters for British forces in Afghanistan has failed to bring a single one to safety in Britain, a new report has found.
MPs on the Defence Committee blasted the Intimidation Scheme set up to help civilians at risk of reprisals from the Taliban.
A GOVERNMENT programme to help former interpreters for British forces in Afghanistan has failed to bring a single one to safety in Britain, a new report has found.
MPs on the Defence Committee blasted the Intimidation Scheme set up to help civilians at risk of reprisals from the Taliban after working for coalition forces during the UK’s fighting presence in the country. The scheme seemed to go to “considerable lengths” to stop the relocation to the UK of interpreters and other locally employed civilians (LECs) who were threatened and intimidated, they found.
The failure of the scheme to bring even a single person to the UK was in marked contrast to a second programme, known as the Redundancy Scheme, which has seen 1,150 Afghans re-homed in Britain, the report said.
The investigation, Lost in Translation? Afghan Interpreters and Other Locally Employed Civilians, called for a more “sympathetic approach” to those who risked their lives to aid British forces in the conflict.
Conservative Dr Julian Lewis MP, the committee’s chairman, said: “This is not only a matter of honour. How we treat our former interpreters and local employees, many of whom served with great bravery, will send a message to the people we would want to employ in future military campaigns – about whether we can be trusted to protect them from revenge and reprisals at the hands of our enemies.”
About half of the approximately 7,000 civilians who worked for the British in Afghanistan were interpreters and they often worked in dangerous situations.
The Redundancy Scheme is open to Afghan civilians who had been working in front-line roles for at least 12 months when the UK began to draw down forces in December 2012.
The committee noted that despite previous criticism of its criteria, it had been “generous and proportionate”. In contrast the Intimidation Scheme was “in theory” open to all civilians working for the British. But the report found that it had focused “overwhelmingly” on solutions that involved civilian workers remaining in Afghanistan, receiving security advice or internal relocation within the country.
It noted: “Relocation to the UK has been treated as a matter of last resort. Remarkably and regrettably, not one single interpreter (or other LEC) has successfully been relocated to the UK under the scheme as implemented so far.”
The committee called for a more sympathetic approach and urged the Government to abandon its “relocation only in extremis” policy. It also criticised the Afghan government, which was involved in creating the schemes, saying its claim that relocation might lead to a “brain drain” was “disingenuous”.
It noted: “It is impossible to reconcile the generosity of the Redundancy Scheme with the utter failure of the Intimidation Scheme to relocate even a single LEC to the United Kingdom.”
Relocation to the UK has been treated as a matter of last resort. The report by the Defence Committee.