DON’T DARE LEAVE THE BRAVE BEHIND
SAIGON 1975: Desperate Vietnamese clamour for a final U.S. airlift — only to be abandoned to their fate. Now as our troops leave Afghanistan, the Mail, which has led the campaign for loyal translators to be given sanctuary in Britain, issues this plea ...
ON APRIL 30, 1975, Sandy Gall was one of the few Western journalists to stay in Saigon to witness the South Vietnamese capital’s fall to the forces of the Communist North. In previous days, chaotic scenes at the American embassy had provided the most iconic images of this final act of the Vietnam War. Thousands of locals who had reason to fear the victors begged and fought to be allowed aboard the last U.S. helicopters taking a lucky few from the embassy roof to navy vessels lying offshore.
That morning Gall, later ITN’s distinguished newscaster, entered the by now abandoned and looted compound and climbed to the helipad on the roof. There he came across a pitiful scene.
‘A crowd of 150 to 200 Vietnamese men and women were clustered together like frightened starlings,’ he recalled in a memoir. These people had been employed by the Americans and were ‘clearly hoping, against all the odds, a last helicopter would reach down and pluck them to safety.’ But there would be no 11th-hour rescue by the foreign democratic power they had served. Instead, many faced arrest and years in brutal re-education camps, or even execution.
This September 11 will see Afghanistan’s own ‘ Saigon moment’. When it comes, will the United Kingdom follow the baleful Vietnam War template and abandon those locals who put their own lives on the line for our foreign policy goals? Sadly, that seems to be the case.
‘ It’s time to end America’s longest war,’ U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday. And so the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC will see the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan come to an end.
At the war’s height the U.S. had 110,000 troops in theatre. Now it has fewer than 4,000. By September 12 there will be none.
On the ground, the Westernbacked Afghan government’s security forces are under increasing pressure as the Americans continue their pull-out.
Taliban- controlled territory continues to expand. Peace agreements could prove a chimera. Aggressive local Taliban commanders have already declared their own victory.
What does this mean for the UK? When the Americans leave, Britain’s last 750 personnel in Afghanistan — now largely engaged in training local soldiers in Kabul — will have to follow them, because they rely on their larger NATO partner for security.
But for the past 20 years Britain has also fought — hard — on the ground there. At the height of ‘our’ war there were 9,500 British soldiers in the country.
And while fighting the Taliban in its Helmand heartland, British forces also employed hundreds of Afghans as translators.
These men were vital conduits for ‘hearts and minds’ interaction with local communities, as well as providing tactical intelligence on the battlefield and beyond. T
HE frontline was a very dangerous place — 454 British troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002 — and its dangers were shared by the translators, scores of whom also became casualties. But theirs was an even greater risk. They are considered ‘ spies for the infidel’ by the Taliban and are targets for revenge.
Unlike the soldiers they worked alongside, there is no escape from the threat at the end of a tour of duty. An estimated 350 translators who worked for coalition forces have been killed since 2014 when British frontline operations ended. At least three have been assassinated this year already.
For more than five years the Daily Mail has run the awardwinning ‘ Betrayal of the Brave’ campaign to highlight the plight of those Afghans who have been targeted and sometimes killed by the Taliban because they worked for the British military.
With our total withdrawal now less than five months away, the issue has become acute.
Are we going to abandon them to persecution and murder? This month the Government implemented a new policy to provide relocation to hundreds of Afghans in this predicament. But many fear this offer of sanctuary has come far too late.
MAYAR only saw a Taliban fighter once the gunman stepped from cover to open fire from less than 20 metres away.
Screaming a warning to his driver, the former British Army translator instinctively crouched behind the dashboard as the bullets ripped through his car.
Thirteen hit the vehicle, one piercing his driver’s leg. But 37year-old Mayar escaped from the well- planned Taliban attack unharmed. That time.
Mayar told the Mail this week: ‘The Taliban see me as a traitor. They have spies in all areas of society. They are confident they will find every one of us.’
Mayar translated for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron during a visit to the British military hospital in Helmand, and worked for the British military for three years.
At the time of the attack last year he was working for a charity clearing land mines.
He has received numerous death threats and seen his 14-year- old son targeted. Home is no longer a safe place. Yet his first application for asylum in Britain was rejected because he had not spent at least 12 months on the frontline.
Mayar had worked between 2011-2014 in the hospital at Camp Bastion. His duties included going out on to the battlefield to collect the wounded and questioning injured Taliban. Many, he recalled, threatened revenge.
The father of three, who had been made redundant and left with glowing references from the military, applied for sanctuary again when last year another policy change opened the way for more of those who risked their lives for Britain to relocate.
Mayar believed that at last he would be successful — of the ten translators who worked with him in Bastion’s hospital three are in the UK, four have been told they can come, one is in the U.S. and one on the way to Australia. But three weeks ago he was left ‘devastated and heartbroken’. Again, he had been turned down.
He is planning one final appeal. But then came the news of the September 11 total withdrawal. The Taliban will once again be ‘the power’ in the country.
‘It broke my heart and made me feel sick,’ Mayar says. ‘The Taliban will laugh in our faces as they kill us. They have won and we have all lost.’
Mayar is one of dozens of translators to have contacted our Betrayal of the Brave campaign since the announcement of the UK’s pull- out. All speak of their fears and desperation in a way they never have before.
When our campaign was launched, interpreters told us how they had faced chilling retribution for their work with the British, with colleagues blown up, beheaded, assassinated or kidnapped, their families targeted and driven from their homes.
There were men like Waheed, given a letter that had been handed to his seven- year- old daughter, signed by the Taliban and warning that he and his family would be ‘fed to the dogs’; Chris, who described how his pregnant wife was beaten so badly she lost their baby; Haroon, the nine-yearold nephew of a translator, kidnapped and murdered. All,
they said, was because they had worked for the British.
Initially, the British government played down the threat. But the day after the Armed Forces minister suggested there was no evidence interpreters were in danger, we reported the story of translator Parwiz Khan, 22, who left the frontline to return to his family and was shot dead by the Taliban on the doorstep of his home. Days later, his brother Sam, 28, also a translator, was attacked. M
ANY translators kept the fact they worked for the British secret. Family members have ‘betrayed’ some to the Taliban. One who had survived an IED was told by his grandfather he was a ‘traitor’ and he wished he had died.
With little hope of coming to the UK legally, the interpreters turned to people smugglers. At least two paid with their lives, others were robbed and beaten by border guards. One had his family kidnapped and held to ransom.
As a former UK translator supervisor, one of Rafi Hottak’s roles was to deliver the bodies (or body parts) to translators’ families after they were killed in the field. One, he recalled, had been beheaded.
We first met Rafi, now 33, in Afghanistan after he had been blown up on the Helmand frontline by an IED that killed a British officer. He suffered appalling injuries and pictures of his scarred body taken by Mail photographer Jamie Wiseman illustrated the everyday risks for those on patrol.
A year later after death threats and attacks, he made it to the UK in the back of a lorry and claimed asylum. At first he was refused, but with the help of evidence from the Mail, this was overturned. His is one of more than half a dozen cases where our evidence has helped overturn the threat of rejection and deportation.
Rafi, who has qualified as an accountant and lives in the Midlands with his family, said: ‘The Betrayal of the Brave campaign has literally been a lifeline for translators, it has given hope to those cruelly left behind. But with the Taliban takeover we need it more than ever.’
In June 2018, then Defence Minister Gavin Williamson announced a new policy officials said would allow in 50 more interpreters and their families. Two years later the Mail revealed only two had arrived.
By far the most significant changes in policy have been made by current Defence Minister Ben Wallace, a former soldier, and Home Secretary Priti Patel, who changed the rules last September allowing those who had served a minimum of 12 months on the frontlines and resigned to come to the UK.
At least 30 interpreters whose cases were taken up by the campaign have been told they can relocate to the UK. But some have been warned it may take 18 months to get here. Last week, one of those who has been accepted was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint and believes he only escaped because his mother was in the car. Eza, 42, who worked for three years for UK forces during which he was wounded by a Taliban sniper, said: ‘The delay is cruel. Every day presents another opportunity for us to be attacked or killed.’
Translators say the release of Taliban prisoners as part of the peace deal this year only increases the dangers. Many were captured and jailed with the help of interpreters and now want revenge.
When this year Feda Mohammad, 42, who had worked with British forces, was executed in an ambush, the Taliban boasted he had ‘died like a dog.’
Many translators say their final hope rests with a policy introduced this month that will allow hundreds of Afghans whose lives are at risk because they helped the UK the chance to come to Britain.
The policy, in recognition of ‘the changing situation in Afghanistan’, was driven by the Defence Secretary after pressure from the Mail.
Officials stress that all will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and Mr Wallace’s direction that discretion be shown will potentially open a door to the UK that once appeared slammed shut.
Crucially, it gives hope to sacked translators previously told they could not settle in the UK. While some had their work terminated for serious offences, others maintain they were dismissed unjustly, pointing out: ‘The Taliban does not care if you were fired, only that you worked for the infidel.’
These sentiments are echoed by interpreters who took some of the greatest risks by working alongside UK Special Forces, but are now struggling to qualify for relocation. This is because they were not employed through the Ministry of Defence but via the Afghan authorities or British Embassy. Only those employed by the MoD have previously been eligible.
AMONG them is 34-year-old Shane, who worked for three years on difficult, dangerous Special Forces operations. He was trusted enough to be flown to the UK to brief the government on the situation. yet he has seen his case rejected despite the pleas of soldiers who said he ‘risked all’ to provide life-saving intelligence.
Retired Colonel Simon Diggins, the former British Military Attache in Kabul and founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for translators, has warned of a ‘betrayal’ if interpreters are left behind.
‘The inevitable consequence of withdrawal is that interpreters will be left highly vulnerable to attack.
‘While everyone welcomes peace, there is a big danger the Afghan interpreters will be the sacrifice.’