BETRAYAL OF THE BRAVE
As illegal migrants flood in unchecked, Afghan interpreters abandoned by Britain are forced to pay people smugglers to escape revenge of the Taliban
AFGHAN interpreters who claim they have been ‘abandoned’ by the British Government are resorting to people smugglers as they flee Taliban revenge attacks.
One of the men, who worked for Gordon Brown, the SAS and the SBS in the conflict, has told how he has survived three attempts on his life in the past eight months.
Known to UK troops as Chris, he has been shot by Taliban looking to avenge his work for the ‘ British infidels’, twice escaped gunmen and ambushes, seen his relatives beaten, his three-year-old son injured, and received more than two dozen specific death threats.
Yesterday doctors told him his pregnant wife will lose the baby she is carrying after she was punched with knuckle-dusters in an ambush targeting Chris as he tried to move his family to the ‘safety’ of the Afghan capital Kabul.
The 26-year-old father of two said he is now so desperate that he is resorting to selling the family belongings to pay people smugglers because ‘to stay here will mean death as a consequence of my loyal service to Britain when I helped save many of their soldiers’ lives’.
It is an escape route where only last month another ‘desperate’ former translator was murdered – he is believed to be the fourth translator to have been tortured and killed on their way through Iran to Europe.
Chris was a frontline interpreter for three years, only leaving because of intimidation to his family. In December he survived an assassination attempt, spending 27 days in hospital after bullets hit him in his leg, also injuring his son.
British officials in Kabul accept that the lives of Chris and his family are in danger, and Afghan police admit he is on a Taliban hit list.
But he has been told there is currently ‘not enough evidence’ of the threat to his life for him and his family to be moved to Britain.
This is despite an Army officer who served with him writing: ‘Chris as an interpreter for British forces has put himself in a special category for retribution by the Taliban. He is someone I have literally trusted with my own safety and that of my men.’
Also among those Chris translated for were actor and documentary maker Ross Kemp and General Sir David Richards, the head of international forces in Afghanistan.
Another former translator, named only as Khushal, used people smugglers to escape the Taliban and is currently in Calais, where he has met up with a former British Army officer whose life he saved. George Tyldesley, 29, even tried to help him break into the Eurotunnel after becoming ‘outraged’ at his treatment by the Government, but was stopped by police.
The former captain in 2nd Battalion Mercian Regiment said: ‘The guy has suffered incredibly and he wouldn’t need to have suffered if he had been treated properly.’
Nine days ago the Daily Mail revealed how Shaffy, another interpreter targeted by the Taliban after being shown on TV translating for David Cameron, claimed he too had been ‘abandoned’ by the UK.
Yesterday Chris told how he was moving his family from their home in Khost, near Afganistan’s border with Pakistan, with financial help from British officials, to Kabul eight days ago when they were ambushed, his pregnant wife punched and his brother-in-law beaten up.
Chris escaped but his laptop containing all his personal details – including his work with the British, pictures with soldiers on operations and contacts for other translators – was seized. ‘We were very lucky, they would have killed me,’ he said. ‘The British know all about these attacks but they have so far refused to accept I have to leave Afghani- stan. My wife is in hospital, she was badly hurt and terrified in the Taliban attack. The foetus was displaced and due to that she had severe stomach cramps, so the doctors have decided to abort.
‘My innocent wife, my children are paying the penalty of my service to the British but this all counts for nothing to your politicians. They should look at their own families, imagine and think...’
Yesterday his wife (Chris asked we do not use her name) was still on a drip in the stark conditions of Khost hospital, lying beneath a blanket beside an open glassless window with her son Muhammad swishing flies from her face.
Chris added: ‘If I am to live, I have
‘My wife was badly hurt’
no alternative but to leave and I have spoken to smugglers. Britain does not want me despite everything I have done for their soldiers, so I will try for Germany.
‘We have sold everything to pay the smugglers the £5,000 they want. I know there is only a 50 per cent chance I will make it, but if I stay there is a 100 per cent chance the Taliban will find me.’
Like most frontline translators who want to build new lives in the UK, Chris does not qualify for an immigration scheme because of his dates of service. The scheme is only for those with at least a year’s continuous service after December 2011 unless there are exceptional circumstances.
DAYS ago, this paper revealed how an Afghan interpreter, denied asylum in Britain, was targeted by the Taliban after being shown on TV working for David Cameron.
Today, we highlight the cases of others – i ncluding ‘ Chris’, who translated for Gordon Brown and the elite Special Air Service – who have turned to people smugglers in their desperation to escape from revenge attacks.
Of course, Britain cannot give a home to everyone who, in the words of the 1951 convention on refugees, has a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ – a definition that could now embrace a quarter of the world’s population. But don’t we have an overwhelming moral obligation to those whose lives are in danger solely because they served our country?