They will kill us, warn former Afghan staff refused UK asylum
‘The Taliban label us as UK employees, spies and supporters, which can be really deadly for all of us’
‘The innocent and poor pay the cost of the war in Kunduz. Government forces and the Taliban are the enemy of civilians’
MORE than 100 Afghan former employees of the British Council have had their requests for asylum denied, as they warn the Government that the Taliban will “kill or torture” them if they are “left behind”.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity, the ex-british Council Afghanistan staff said they were “discouraged, disappointed and deeply saddened” to learn that they had been rejected for resettlement under the Afghan Resettlement and Assistance Programme (ARAP) by the Afghan Threat and Risk Evaluation Unit.
They said that during their work with the council visiting schoolteachers and students they were told on numerous occasions that they were “promoting British culture… through education”.
One 28-year-old former employee, who worked for the council from November 2018 to March 2020 and was forced to flee Lashkar Gah last month due to “high security threats, and targeted killings”, said his colleagues had “worked faithfully and tirelessly for the British Council and Her Majesty’s Government for achieving the objectives of the UK Government”.
Their work involved implementing the English for Afghans project in Kabul, as well as 15 more provinces, “for more than two years and five months”. “Each and every one of us represented the British Council, British Embassy and the UK Government in our workplace and community,” he added.
“If this piece of information is leaked to the Taliban, IS, or any other terrorist groups, they will never ask us about our type of contract, contract duration, or our role. They only label us as UK Government’s employees, spies, and supporters, which can be really deadly for all of us.” They called on the Government to consider them eligible for relocation to the UK as the security situation in Afghanistan worsens “day by day and our lives are threatened imminently as the Taliban have started searching for those who worked with the foreign offices or Afghan government”.
Just days ago the Foreign Office advised all British nationals to leave the country because of the worsening security situation.
Robert Clark, defence policy associate at the Henry Jackson Society think tank, said the Government needed to “change immediately” how it helped more Afghan civilians.
He said: “This is yet another tragic example of how the ARAP scheme – whilst progressing in recent weeks – is still blighted by a fundamentally incoherent policy which needlessly differentiates between Afghans who had different job roles working for the British.
“The Taliban are not differentiating between this niche point – so why does the UK Government continue to do so?”