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Professor Sara de Jong, of the Sulha Alliance, which works to help former translators, said: ‘Still too many interpreters at risk are left in Afghanistan and refused resettlement, because they were suddenly fired from their jobs, often after years of faithful service. There can't be any justice until the MoD gets to the root of the issue, which is that they fired more than one-third of their local Afghan interpreters, without the due process we would expect.'

It was the research and work of Prof de Jong that led to the MoD revealing the UK military terminated 1,010 interpreters out of 2,850 up to August 2014 without the right of appeal – 264 were dismissed after serving 12 months or more ‘outside the wire’ in Helmand.

She said: ‘British Army soldiers who fired an interpreter, didn't know at the time that this could subsequently block the interpreter's resettlement. The current policy approach is not fit for purpose: we need a case-by-case assessment in which context and testimonies of interpreters and others are carefully considered.’

Professor Sara de Jong, a founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which helps Afghans who worked for the UK, said : 

'We are happy that Muzhda, who raised her voice on behalf of all BC teachers in a video message on the 2nd anniversary of the Taliban take-over to plea with the UK Government to finally bring them from Pakistan to the UK, is finally here.

'We and others still waiting, are left with questions about why the UK Government only acted to move them to safety when the Pakistan Government threatened to deport these Afghans.'

Ahmed, a former British army interpreter in Afghanistan, was approved for evacuation two years ago yet remains stuck in an Islamabad hotel room paid for by the UK’s diplomatic mission.“I have been here more than 700 days,” the 32-year-old said bitterly.

His Pakistan visa expired over a year ago, and he fears being deported to Afghanistan, even though Islamabad has pledged not to kick out people in his situation. “When I text my caseworker, he’s telling me: ‘Be patient, be patient, be patient’,” he told AFP. “The worst word is ‘Be patient’,” said Ahmed, who is also supported by Sulha Alliance -- an association campaigning for Afghan interpreters who worked with the British army.

Sara de Jong, a co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghans who worked for the British government to resettle in the UK, said she was delighted that Ahmad and his family had finally been given sanctuary more than two years after first reaching out to the organisation. But the delays in his case were unfortunately not unique, said De Jong.

“Concessions by the government in the court on individual cases, should lead them to expedite the UK resettlement of all other Afghan interpreters whose relocation has been frustrated by mistakes and obstacles for more than two years,” said De Jong, also a professor of politics at the University of York.

Without the legal right to work or to access education and healthcare, and now with the threat of deportation, individuals that the Guardian interviewed said they felt like prisoners and they expressed regret about having worked for the British government [..].

“This is a story of government failing and not taking the lives of Afghans seriously,” said Sara de Jong, a co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghans who worked for the British government to resettle in the UK, and a professor of politics at the University of York.

Professor Sara de Jong, of the Sulha Alliance which campaigns for former translators, welcomed the resumption of flights, but said: 

'They are understandably nervous and confused to see some families leave on the first flight, without others being informed about the timeline of flights, the prioritisation and any agreement with the Pakistan government.'

Campaigners have called on the government to make it easier for Afghans who worked with the British military to be resettled in the UK.

The main resettlement scheme is restricted to those deemed at significant enough risk, such as interpreters and translators. However, it does not cover jobs such as mechanics, chefs and drivers. The Sulha Alliance charity said such individuals were also at risk of attacks by the Taliban.

Peter Gordon-Finlayson, a former army captain who co-founded the Sulha Alliance, said he was concerned about how the government is assessing the levels of risk involved for Afghans wishing to be resettled in the UK.

He said the government argues that Afghans working in roles other than interpreters were not on the ground with British troops and so were not directly seen by the Taliban and the local community as working alongside the UK, putting them at less risk. 

"Unfortunately that is not quite true," he told the BBC. "The reality is that those who were recruited to be mechanics and chefs and so on and support the British Army, were recruited locally from the areas around where the British military camps were - and so they were known within the community - and they were seen every day going in and out of British army bases, so they are very much at risk."

About 3,000 Afghans currently in Pakistan are registered as eligible for resettlement to the United Kingdom under the British government’s two-tiered scheme for relocating at-risk Afghans.

They are “waiting in U.K.-funded hotels in Islamabad for their transfer to the U.K.,” said Sara de Jong, co-founder of Sulha Alliance, a nongovernmental organization advocating for former British military interpreters abroad. “While the Pakistan hotels were initially just used as short-term transits for biometric tests and visa issuance, in December 2022, the U.K. government halted the regular flights because they claimed that there was no longer U.K. accommodation available into which these Afghans could be moved,” de Jong told VOA.

The Taliban maintain that Afghans who worked for the former government and for the U.S. and its allies are covered under their general amnesty and will not face persecution. Their claim is repudiated in reports from the U.N. and human rights groups documenting extrajudicial detention, torture and assassination of their former enemies by members of the Taliban regime.

“The Taliban have a track record of broken promises, including their promise to respect girls' right to education, which they are violating every day,” de Jong said, adding that former Afghan interpreters face grave risks to their lives in Afghanistan.

Charities and campaigners have called for the immediate transfer of these eligible families to the UK in light of the Pakistan government’s threats to expel them from the country.

Charity The Sulha Alliance said: “We are calling for the immediate transfer of Arap and ACRS eligible Afghans waiting in Pakistan to the UK. 

They are no longer safe. Pakistan’s crackdown on undocumented Afghans directly affects Afghans in UK foreign office hotels, waiting for UK housing.” 

Prof de Jong, professor in Politics, University of York, and co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, said: ‘Until today, local interpreters continue to be left out from the public record and commemorations, despite dying alongside the British soldiers with whom they worked. 

The information revealed in the Metro’s FOI response is one step towards the Sulha Alliance’s goal to honour and remember those who are too often forgotten: interpreters who were killed and injured, as well as the interpreters still left behind in Afghanistan and those resettled to the UK who carry the psychological wounds from their experiences.’ 

Sara de Jong, co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, a charity that supports Afghan interpreters, said: "Having waited for their turn, deprived of employment, education and security in Pakistan or Iran, eligible Afghan interpreters and other staff now have the right to finally get an answer from the UK government to the simple question: 'When will I be moved to the UK with my family to start our new life?'"

Calling for “tangible actions” Dr Sara de Jong, co-founder of the Sulha Alliance charity working with Afghan interpreters, said it was “hard to disagree with Johnny Mercer that it’s high time to make the Afghan resettlement schemes finally ‘work properly’”.

Some 2,000 loyal interpreters and others who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the British were offered sanctuary here after the ruthless Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan. But they are being denied actual entry into the UK - with officials blaming lack of access to housing.

Erin Alcock, of solicitors Leigh Day, who represents an ex-translator in Iran and is also working for interpreters in Pakistan, said : 'My client and his family, like hundreds of others still waiting, are now told there is an additional barrier to their relocation to safety – one that is impossible for most to meet.'

Dr Sara de Jong, founding member of the Sulha Alliance which campaigns for ex-military translators, said: 'The news that 5,000 hotel beds are available shows that there is an easy solution available for the accommodation of Afghan interpreters and other eligible Afghans. 

UK hotels offer no permanent solutions, but they are endlessly better than hotels in Pakistan and other third countries where children are deprived of education and their parents prevented from working.'

The Sulha Alliance campaigns for the resettlement of Afghan interpreters in the UK and was formed by former UK soldiers who worked with them. Peter Gordon-Finlayson, a spokesman for the group, told The National a lack of detail in Omar's case and other similar ones makes it difficult to assess the accusations fairly. “As an organisation that’s partially made up of veterans we hold national security as the highest priority,” he said.

But the concern of the group is that the UK’s Ministry of Defence provides the government with information to allow settlement under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme which is then overturned by the Home Office on national security grounds. The ex-Army Officer, who was deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand Province for a six-month tour of duty in 2011, said more context was needed to judge the current case fairly.

“We’re all for the right call being made but we just want to make sure that the appropriate level of scrutiny during that process is being applied. There needs to be proper scrutiny rather than a throwaway or flippant comment that’s then used against someone.”

More than 1,300 eligible Afghans – many of who risked their lives beside UK troops – are currently in hotels in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. One former frontline translator has been there more than 520 days and about 70 have been in hotels for more than a year.

Dr Sara de Jong, from the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for ex-military translators, criticised the Government, saying: 'Afghan interpreters who are approved as eligible for relocation deserve better than being abandoned in Pakistan hotels.' Dr Jong added: 'It's in the interest of British society to invest in the more than 680 children who will make the UK their home but who are now left stranded without any access to education.'

Dr Sara De Jong, co-founder of charity The Sulha Alliance, which advocates for and supports Afghan former interpreters, said: “It is very concerning that Afghans directly employed by the British army in essential support roles are being denied relocation, just because they did not work as interpreters. Some have worked for the UK for over 15 years but their appeals for help are met with silence.”

She added that these Afghans were “equally crucial to the UK’s mission”. She said: “As they were often recruited locally, they are at risk due to their exposure to local Taliban.”

Dr Sara de Jong, co-founder of charity The Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for Afghan interpreters, said: “We currently see that too many Afghans who enabled the UK mission are still waiting for a decision, are unfairly excluded while at risk, or are left in limbo in third countries.

“Interpreters who risked their lives to protect British forces, are left unprotected by the British government.”

Dr Sara De Jong, senior lecturer at the University of York and co-founder of charity The Sulha Alliance, said: “The interpreters who I am in contact with report significant mental distress.”

She added: “The 1,000 Arap eligibles, including 500 children left in limbo in Pakistan risk falling victim to an ‘out of sight, out of mind policy’. Yet others are still in Afghanistan and have been waiting for over a year for an Arap decision.”

The scandal surrounding the treatment of Afghans who served alongside British forces has intensified, as today we reveal that hundreds of men, women and children eligible to come to the UK have been abandoned in Pakistan.

The 4-star Crown Plaza in Islamabad is one of seven hotels used by the British High Commission, the Times has been told. In response to a written parliamentary question, James Heappey, the armed forces minister, admitted that half of the 1,000 Afghans living in Islamabad are under the age of 18.

Dr Sara de Jong, the director of the Sulha Alliance, a charity for Afghan interpreters, said the government was housing refugees in Pakistan as part of a “cost-cutting exercise”. “The delay to their UK resettlement equates to outsourcing the accommodation issue to a

cheaper country,” de Jong said.

Dr Sara de Jong, co-founder of the charity Sulha Alliance and lecturer at the University of York, said UK bureaucrats often failed to understand what documents are available in Afghanistan.

She said Afghan marriage certificates were not readily available in English and the Taliban had “pretty much stopped” issuing children’s passports, leaving eligible Arap applicants stuck in Afghanistan because they don’t have documentation for their children. [...]

In one case the Sulha Alliance recently supported, an applicant was asked to provide an adoption certificate – something not available in Afghan society.

The Sulha Alliance, which is campaigning for stranded Afghan interpreters and others, told the inquiry that the Home Office had rejected the visas of some applicants who were told to relocate by the MoD. It said: “The building of hope by one UK governmental department before a rejection by another has meant that the approach has been disjointed. It has resulted in some interpreters selling their homes and packing up their lives because they had believed that they were being evacuated; in others, it has resulted in a sense of anger and rage.

Britain is “still letting down many who risked their lives and their families’ safety by working for the allies or the Afghan authorities,” the committee said.

The Sulha Alliance, a charity that campaigns for the rights of Afghan interpreters who worked for the British military, said: “The building of hope by one UK governmental department before a rejection by another has meant that the approach has been disjointed.

Dr Sara de Jong, a lecturer in politics at the University of York and co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, a campaign group that represents interpreters, said the government needed to process Afghans eligible for the Arap scheme more quickly. She said awarding medals to those who had arrived would help to boost their self-esteem.

“Symbolic recognition is very important for our community. We know from our comparative research that other countries such as New Zealand and France already award medals, and we have advocated for many years for the UK to follow their example,” she said.

The MoD has revealed that 135 interpreters were injured in Afghanistan, 111 of whom were on patrol with British troops at the time, and 26 were killed.

The Sulha Alliance CIO charity said the numbers reflected "the sacrifices" made.

The MoD told The National that claims had been delayed but pledged to work through all existing casesThe Sulha Alliance CIO criticised the British government on Friday after it was revealed 30 per cent of Afghans eligible under the Arap scheme have yet to be relocated.

Their faces are obscured, nameless participants in a war that now seems a distant memory. They visited each of the men, with Barnham taking portraits and De Jong, who is co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, a charity campaigning for the rights of former interpreters who have served with the British military, conducting interviews.

The collaborative project, which won a bronze prize in the portrait category at the 2022 PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris, gives a human element to an ongoing campaign to speed up the process of resettling former interpreters in the UK. Those featured in the exhibition arrived in England, Scotland Wales since the summer of 2021, but the process of relocation is far from over.

In October, the Sulha Alliance reacted to a report that more than 5,000 Afghans are still waiting to be relocated by saying that ‘unnecessary processing delays’ were leading to more problems. The issues were said by the charity to include ‘absolute poverty’ and ‘expired passports’. 

More than 5,000 Afghans are still waiting to be relocated to the UK more than a year after troops withdrew, figures have revealed.

According to Captain Ed Aitken and Sara de Jong, , co-founders of the Sulha Alliance, these heartbreaking figures confirm our impression from our daily contact with Afghan interpreters left in Afghanistan, desperate for progress on their resettlement applications. 

Some interpreters have not heard anything for more than 6 months on their pending applications, while other interpreters whose applications have been approved are waiting in vain for further instructions on how to get to the UK. 

The unnecessary processing delays cause additional obstacles for relocation, as more interpreters deserving of our protection find themselves in absolute poverty and with expired passports. 

Its title encapsulates all of their stories: “We Are Here Because You Were There: Afghan interpreters in the UK”. It’s the work of Andy Barnham, a portrait photographer and British Army veteran and Dr Sara de Jong, a Senior Lecturer in the Politics Department at York University. 

These startling portraits look down on you from the bare walls. There are no educational packs and nothing is on sale. This hasn’t been manicured for easy consumption. And this is as it should be: only the faces of people from a distant land are here. People who paid a harsh price for doing what they thought was right … and then to find that this country wants nothing more to do with them. 

A new art exhibition aims to highlight the personal stories of Afghan interpreters in the UK. 'We are here because you were there' is a collection of photographs and interviews with Afghan interpreters settled in the UK. Striking, broken images of Afghan men looking directly into the camera sit alongside hard-hitting personal testimony of suffering and struggle. 

Army veteran and photographer Andy Barnham said he wanted "to engage with the people behind the headlines and the numbers". Proceeds of the photo book go to the Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghan interpreters. Co-founder of the charity and senior lecturer at the University of York, Dr Sara de Jong, said: "I think it's really important for Afghan interpreters to recognise their own story, see that people want to listen to that story, and see that their stories are worth telling. 

Former captain Ed Aitken, co-founder of the Sulha Alliance: "The Sulha Alliance are still supporting hundreds of former interpreters and locally employed civilians who have requested relocation through the ARAP scheme. Some Afghan interpreters have been told they're eligible but have not been given instructions on their pending evacuation, while many are still awaiting a decision."

"We're regularly sent images of people who have been attacked by Taliban, just for being the brother or father of a former interpreter, pleading for help on how to access relocation. The burden of evidence & eligibility is still too high. They spend their lives in fear & hiding."

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan a year ago, Britain evacuated hundreds of Afghan interpreters who had risked their lives working for British forces. They brought with them glowing references from their former military bosses, testifying to their skills, loyalty and work ethic. But now all this stands for nothing as they try to find work in Britain.

[At] his local Job Centre, they tell Imran he needs to build work experience in the UK in order to get a job. The certificates he has held onto for years, are suddenly deemed worthless. Even though his first job as a young adult was with a British employer, he is now treated as a stranger. And no one seems to value the skills he was once praised for.

The Sulha Alliance, a charity which has supported applicants to the UK’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) and lobbied for necessary improvements to the policy, along with Afghans support the assistance offered by the UK government to Ukraine, but Dr de Jong said that Afghans do believe that their “own suffering is not always responded to with the same urgency.” 

The Sulha Alliance has also made recommendations, published by the British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG), including encouraging the establishment of a “family reunion scheme for Afghans who are settled in the UK, on similar terms to the Ukraine Family Scheme, to allow Afghans in the UK [...] to bring extended family members over who will be able to live, work and study in the UK and access public funds.” 

Sara de Jong, co-founder of The Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghan interpreters, said some of the families who had been moved out of hotels had been put in very isolated areas. The government's resettlement scheme is known as Operation Warm Welcome here, but de Jong calls it "Operation Not So Warm Welcome". 

“There’s a postcode lottery in terms of where you end up and whether your case worker has the necessary expertise and networks as well as the commitment to do more than the absolute minimum,” de Jong said. Some families have been moved into houses with no furniture and bedding, or into damp homes with mould on the walls that are making children sick, she added.

Afghan interpreters have been reunited with soldiers they served with at a special event in Scotland. Charities the Sulha Alliance and Help For Heroes brought them together for a special lunch at the Namak Mandi Restaurant in Glasgow.

Co-founder of the Sulha Alliance Ed Aitken said: "The intention is really to build a community. It's the military personnel who worked alongside these guys who know how much we owe them and therefore how important it is to welcome whilst they’re rebuilding their lives here in Glasgow."

Sara de Jong, co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghans who worked for the British government to resettle in the UK, said: “The ARAP [Afghan Resettlement and Assistance Policy] team’s slowness and unresponsiveness leaves applicants in limbo, while fearing for their lives. 

The processing of applications needs to be expedited, and applicants should be given clear timelines, which will also help reduce duplicate applications from Afghans simply desperate to get a response.”

Barnham’s new series, called We Are Here Because You Were There: Afghan Interpreters in the UK, explores “the deep entanglement between the UK and Afghanistan, and the way it has shaped these Afghan interpreters’ lives from childhood or early adulthood,” he says.

Barnham worked closely with Sara de Jong, a politics lecturer at the University of York and co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of Afghan interpreters who worked with the British Armed Forces and now wish to settle and build a life in the UK.

The Sulha Alliance charity, which helps rescue former interpreters with the British Army from Afghanistan, said it was receiving hundreds of phone calls and emails from those in hiding.

Ed Aitken, the charity's co-founder and former captain with the Royal Lancers, who completed two tours of Helmand, said the interpreters' families were being "systematically hunted down" by the Taliban.

"They have no qualms about attacking brothers and fathers if they think they are related," he said. 'I have no faith'.

Ed Atkins is a former soldier who founded the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for the rights of Britain's former staff. Looking back to the summer, he says schemes to help Afghans were under resourced.

"We found ourselves in a situation where we were battling an under resourced policy which was still quite narrow, and therefore meant that lots of those who did apply and were processed were being rejected," he said. "Myself and Lord Richard Dannatt [former head of the army] and others wrote to Ben Wallace to say we really must do more, and the policy really must be more generous, and we were told by the Ministry of Defence, 'no no, everything's in hand, this is a very generous policy'. "And this was weeks before Kabul fell. And we got ourselves into the situation that we have."

One linguist who came to the UK under the ex-gratia resettlement scheme for locally employed civilians (LECs) from Afghanistan told the Sulha Alliance that he could not find work because he did not have qualifications from the UK. 

“That’s why I ended up in a warehouse. And I’m the person who can speak six languages, but the talent, the skills, and the knowledge [are] all wasted up here.”

Another former interpreter supported by the organisation, which campaigns for Afghans who were interpreters for the British Armed Forces, described his first three months in the UK as “the worst three months of my life”.

In the Sulha Alliance we are endeavouring to support those Afghans and their families who served with and alongside British forces in Afghanistan. That is not the totality of Afghan migrants, but of the former interpreters and their families it can be truly said ‘they are here because we were there’ — and we owe them. [...] 

In many cases, it just needs the government to fulfil its own promises: to grant them Indefinite Leave to Remain, enabling them to access loans, long-term employment and tertiary education; and to establish the 300+ university scholarships promised in August. These aren’t new demands. These promises were made throughout last year but they haven’t been fulfilled. The government calls its plan Operation Warm Welcome; for rather too many this is proving ironic at best.

Dr Sara de Jong, political scientist and co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, which advocates on behalf of Afghan interpreters, told The Independent the figure provided by Mr Cleverly should be taken with “a pinch of salt”, as the government only counts those who were called forward to the airport for evacuation, but couldn’t make it out on time, and not the “many others” whose applications are or were still in process.

“Not all applicants will find their way to the Sulha Alliance, so we only see the tip of the iceberg. Many of the people we are in contact with are in hiding and have left their homes. They have little means to sustain themselves. If they do not already have a passport, it is hard to get it at the moment.”

The plight of [Afghan] former military interpreters and other “Locally Employed Staff”, many of whom served closely with our own service personnel, was enough to encourage the JobOppO team to quickly pull this programme together to support their AfghanOppO programme.

Working in partnership with the Sulha Alliance, a charitable organisation who have been supporting former interpreters for the last 6 year, their programme is simple and follows the following process; Step 1: The Sulha Alliance verify and refer eligible former Afghan nationals to JobOppO.

"'Ministers have quietly made it much harder for Afghans who worked alongside us to enter the UK,' said Dan Jarvis, Labour MP and former paratrooper. 

Sara de Jong of the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for interpreters, said ARAP applicants would now suffer twice: from the backlog and the change in rules. 

The Mail's award-winning Betrayal of the Brave campaign has highlighted the cases of dozens of former military translators and Afghans who worked for the UK but were not airlifted out. 

Rights groups have expressed concern for the mental wellbeing of refugees who are now living in limbo in the UK, unable to fully rebuild their lives without access to their own homes.

Sara de Jong – who petitioned for the rights of former interpreters ahead of the evacuation with the group she co-founded, the Sulha Alliance – said that some Afghans had been moved “from hotel to hotel with their young children, without any prospect of permanent accommodation.” 

“The continued instability and insecurity is affecting their and their families mental health…they need some stability so they can start rebuilding their lives.” 

"There are a significant number of individuals who are entitled to our protection, who should have been evacuated, who weren’t evacuated and who need to be evacuated," 

Simon [Diggins, Sulha Alliance Co-Founder] adds that the Sulha Alliance treads an interesting line of being prepared to challenge the government, but at the same time works constructively to bring improvements into place. “We want the community to thrive,” he says, “and that means working really hard in terms of education opportunities, not just for the interpreters but particularly for their families, their wives and children.

The Sulha Alliance [...] said it “welcomes” UK push for safe passage but urged caution regarding Taliban promises given “continuing threats” experienced by former Afghan staff. [...]

“Safe passage is essential not only for the few hundreds local staff who were called forward to the airport but did not make it on time, but also the over 50 former Afghan interpreters and dependents with UK visas who got trapped in Afghanistan when collecting family members,” the Sulha Alliance said. “We also appeal to the UK government to expedite the applicant of the over 100 local staff who have contacted us but are still waiting to receive and update on their settlement status.”  

One former officer, Colonel Simon Diggins [co-founder of the Sulha Alliance], also warned there was a danger of radicalisation if people are left waiting for too long and promises of a "warm welcome" are broken.

He said rescuing families from the Taliban was only part of the government's job. "We need to get them to a place where they can start to settle, where they can start to not just survive, but thrive," he told Sky News.

"Let them live their best lives in this country. Let's show the best of this country to them. We're not seeing that at the moment."

The Sulha alliance, a British NGO that supports Afghan interpreters, said it was in touch with “several” interpreters and other local staff who had no safe place of refuge in Kabul.

“They desperately need more specific information from HMG on where they should go and what they should do,” said Sara de Jong, a senior lecturer at the University of York and one of the co-founders of the group. “Should they go to any third country they can reach, and who should they notify if they manage? They should not be left in this dangerous limbo for much longer, especially with many of them having applied to ARAP many months ago.”

[W]hile Wallace and Patel spoke this month of their “huge debt of gratitude” to interpreters and other Afghan partners, networks such as the Sulha Alliance point out that many thousands of eligible evacuees are still missing from official government figures, with days or even hours left to close the gap. 

Advocacy and legal groups are still reporting countless cases of interpreters being (wrongly) told they are not eligible because they were sub-contractors, or were fired for minor administrative breaches, or because they are deemed a “security risk” – despite having already passed vetting to work with British soldiers on the battlefield, many risking their lives for years.

Charlie Herbert, a former major-general who was a commander of UK troops in Afghanistan and is helping Afghans get on to flights with the Sulha Alliance group of campaigners, said he believed no more than 20 per cent of the hundreds of people with whom they had been in touch had been evacuated.

He said that it was "increasingly apparent that the first waves of Afghan evacuations have favoured the wellconnected, rather than the vulnerable". He said: "Are they really more deserving than those who worked alongside the army in Helmand?"

Christian Nelleman, head of the group providing intelligence to the UN, said that a Taliban door-to-door hunt was under way for people on their wanted list and warned it could lead to mass executions.

He said: 'They have lists of individuals and even within the very first hours of moving into Kabul they began a search of former government employees – especially in intelligence services and the special forces units.

Ed Aitken, a founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for the rights of interpreters, warned: 'These brave and deserving men cannot be left behind.'

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme, launched on 1 April, was designed to resettle interpreters and other people who worked for the UK in Afghanistan.

And the Home Office says it has resettled 2,000 former Afghan staff and their families in the UK, since 22 June. The target is 5,000 by the end of this year under this scheme. Just over 1,000 people have also been resettled in the UK since 2013 under a previous scheme called the Ex-Gratia Policy.

But not all who have applied to the scheme have been accepted, according to the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for the rights of Afghan interpreters. A 2018 Defence Committee report found: "British forces were supported by some 7,000 Afghans, known as locally employed (or engaged) civilians (LECs)."

The United States’ own evacuation mission, Allies Refuge, was launched in early July and in contrast to the British approach accepted that those claiming sanctuary would have to be evacuated before their applications could be processed. 

The UK missed this opportunity. As late as last Saturday, the Sulha Alliance campaign to resettle Afghan interpreters (of which I am a co-founder) was still in detailed conversations with MoD officials about Afghan nationals who were being denied protection. As an example, one individual, [...] who had worked for us for years had his visa revoked, allegedly for having links to the Taliban. 

Afghanistan is a country where it is normal for there to be only two degrees of separation between most of the population, so most people will have some ‘links’ to the group. But putting this to one side, his alleged offences have not been explained to him [...], nor is there any opportunity to appeal.

Afghan interpreters and other local staff are in a significant degree of danger at the moment. [...] We have very good evidence of what you might call list taking going on. So the Taliban may be low level commanders knocking on people's door asking if anybody worked for NATO. And given the situation you will not be surprised to hear that faced with that, people who have worked for us in the past, have fled their homes. [...] If an individual has a reasonably plausible set of paperwork or details, then we should move them out of danger first and worry about the processing of paperwork later.

Then there are the 1,010 translators who had their contracts ‘terminated’ without right of appeal. No fired translator was considered for relocation even if they claimed they were Taliban targets. 

But under pressure from the Mail and the Sulha Alliance, which helps Afghan workers for the UK, Mr Wallace — a former soldier who has done more to enable Afghans to relocate than any of his predecessors — recently relaxed the policy so those dismissed for ‘minor offences’ qualify.

Ed Aitken, a former captain and co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, an Afghan interpreters campaign group, said it received dozens of messages every day from terrified former interpreters and locally employed staff who were trapped in Lashkar Gah.

"They have sent us videos of Taliban fighters going from house to house searching for anyone who worked for the British," Mr Aitken said. "The Taliban are not discriminating between the nuances of employment. Anyone who worked with British forces will be killed mercilessly."

He warned the UK would risk "blood on their hands" if it failed to "adapt their policies quickly to keep up with the changing situation and make the relocation scheme far more generous".

His family have bravely and loyally overseen security at the British Embassy in Kabul for 70 years. Mohammad followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers in becoming a guard, security supervisor and translator over the two decades [...].

Mohammad was told his case was rejected because he was no longer directly employed by the British Government but via a subcontractor. He had been directly employed between 2001 and 2004, but when the UK moved its embassy, he and his colleagues were subcontracted, meaning they fell outside the relocations policy.

Mohammad's case has been taken up by the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for translators and other Afghan workers. Founding member Sara de Jong said: 'How can the Government deny Mohammad our protection through relocation to the UK? This demonstrates a major flaw in the Afghan relocation policy.'

The interpreters at the embassy help with the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP) [...]. The team were originally rejected from the scheme themselves because they did not work directly for the government.

Details of their plight surfaced after a group of 45 former military officers and officials wrote to the prime minister to urge the government to allow more Afghans into Britain. The Sulha Alliance campaign group said about 450 Afghans, including 130 interpreters, had contacted them after being rejected.

Colonel Simon Diggins, former defence attaché at the British embassy in Kabul, said on behalf of the Alliance: "By working for us, they indubitably put their lives at risk and, with Taliban advances, these risks are increasing. I cannot believe therefore that someone is trying to split hairs and exclude them from the new policy."

The plight of those employed through subcontractors was one of the issues in the letter to Boris Johnson, which warned that Britain faces 'dishonour' if those who served are left to be murdered by the Taliban. It was coordinated by the Sulha Alliance, campaigning for translators and other Afghan workers. 

Founding member Sara de Jong said: 'We were dismayed to find out that the long-serving British embassy interpreters are excluded from the resettlement scheme, because they are subcontracted.

'Not only do they work on behalf of the British state, they are extremely exposed as their job requires them to move outside the gates of the embassy compound. The compelling case of the embassy interpreters illustrates the wider structural injustices that result from the UK Government trying to absolve itself of responsibility for its Afghan staff by using third party contractors.'

Former military chiefs have warned that a relocation scheme for Afghans who supported British troops during the conflict is not fit for purpose, with hundreds denied sanctuary in the UK. The group of 45 retired military officers and officials said the government's relocation scheme was "not being conducted with the required spirit of generosity and urgency" and urged the prime minister to review it.

Campaigners, including the Sulha Alliance, which has taken up the plight of Afghan interpreters, have said the policy should be more generous. Ed Aitken, a former captain and co-founder of the alliance, said that about 450 Afghans who had worked for the British had told the group they had been rejected.  The MoD has refused to disclose how many applicants have been excluded, citing "operational security reasons" in response to a parliamentary question submitted by Johnny Mercer, the former Tory minister for veterans.

More than 40 military chiefs today urge Boris Johnson to speed up the relocation of interpreters from Afghanistan. 

The officers, including former Army chief Lord Dannatt and former special forces leader Brigadier Ed Butler, argue the criteria should be less onerous. Meeting all the criteria can be impossible because of missing paperwork. The British embassy in Kabul, which administers the ARAP, is short staffed, leading to delays and clerical errors when dealing with the huge caseload.

The Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for the former interpreters [...] has details of 450 cases refused under ARAP because they were terminated, did not work in an 'exposed' role or were not directly employed by the UK government. The Daily Mail is aware of additional cases.

Boris Johnson should allow thousands more Afghans who worked with British forces to relocate to the UK urgently, eight former chiefs of staff who were in charge during the Afghanistan conflict have said.

So far 2,200 Afghans, including former translators, staff and close relatives, have been given help to build new lives in Britain [...]. But the Sulha Alliance, an Afghan interpreters' campaign group, estimate that British forces employed more than 3,000 translators and 4,000 other staff, meaning there are thousands more remaining who are potentially at risk.

The military chiefs insist in their open letter, sent yesterday, that all former interpreters and other Afghan staff should be allowed to seek sanctuary in the UK, unless they pose a threat to security. "We urge the Government to act immediately," they wrote. "Time is of the utmost essence to save the lives of those who served alongside our servicemen and women in Afghanistan and who saved countless British lives."

Dozens of former military commanders have called on the government to allow more Afghans who worked for British forces to resettle in the UK. 

Those who have signed the letter include four former chiefs of the defence staff, Lord Boyce, Lord Stirrup, Lord Richards and Lord Houghton; two former heads of the British Army, Sir Peter Wall and Lord Dannatt; Lord Ricketts, the former national security advisor, and former Defence Minister Johnny Mercer, who served as a soldier in Helmand. 

The Sulha Alliance, which is campaigning for the rights of former Afghan interpreters [...] claims the government only expects to relocate a maximum of 800 interpreters and their families under the ARAP scheme.It says that number is less than a third of the 3,000 interpreters who worked for the UK. Nor does it include other locally hired staff who were not in an "exposed role", such as cooks and gardeners.

Campaigners for Sulha Alliance, which has taken up the plight of Afghan interpreters, are outraged that so many other contractors for the British Army have been forgotten. Ed Aitkins: “The Taliban are completely indiscriminate when it comes to retribution against those who helped the British and international troops. They couldn’t care less if you were an interpreter who was terminated from employment or a pot washer in the kitchen.

"[W]hat we are seeing is a resettlement policy that is being implemented in a pernickety and ungenerous way [...]. And I’m pretty certain this is not what the British public want. And it’s certainly not what the serving and veteran community wants.”

Former local staff to British forces recently held a protest in Kabul, urging the UK Government to evacuate them. 

S. was an interpreter for them, but because he was dismissed his application for resettlement was rejected. He said the same happened to dozens of others: "We kindly request the UK Government to help us. The Taliban will not look at our termination, they will kill us."

Sara de Jong: "The NATO came to Afghanistan [...] promising human rights. Quite a few of the people that I interviewed wonder where their human rights are. 

While the British Government has stepped up efforts to relocate former locally-employed staff, the global politics student has joined campaign group the Sulha Alliance in warning that the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) risks leaving out many who are at risk.

‘The fast-track resettlement programme is a welcome gesture but it is not enough,’ Nazir Ayeen said. ‘It is too little and not inclusive enough; it doesn’t allow labourers to come to the UK, it doesn’t include people dismissed for any reason and it doesn’t include the whole community of Afghans who worked for the British Government. It’s very specific in who to resettle and how it happens.’

Sara de Jong, of the Sulha Alliance which has campaigned for translators, said: ‘For the handful of resettled interpreters who were engaged according to cultural custom, but who couldn’t marry officially before coming to safety in the UK, we need a generous arrangement to bring their wives to the UK. 

The inability to protect their families back in Afghanistan takes a psychological toll on the interpreters. With the Taliban gaining in strength every day, and little time left till the US and Nato withdraw, these families should be urgently reunited, to protect wives and children against revenge from insurgents.’

According to the Sulha Alliance, a UK-based organisation that advocates for the rights of former interpreters, up to 35 percent of Afghans had their contracts terminated for discipline breaches. 

Maajid, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fears for his safety, was a translator for coalition troops in Helmand Province between 2009 and 2011. After two years, Maajid, like Abdullah, lost his job, after getting into a physical altercation with a fellow interpreter at their patrol base in Helmand. Maajid claims the incident occurred after he refused to give his colleague a can of Pepsi. 

Now, Maajid says that even Kabul isn’t safe. “The situation is getting worse day by day,” he said. “We can’t go outside… we don’t have life. This is life in a prison.”

The wives of Afghan former translators have begun legal action against the Government to allow them to join their husbands in Britain. A dozen women fear being left to face Taliban revenge attacks – with UK and US forces due to pull out from Afghanistan by September 11.

Their husbands, who were interpreters for the UK military, were engaged to wed them when they were granted sanctuary in Britain. Now lawyers for the women told the Home Office they will seek a judicial review of the decision, highlighting the risk they face from the Taliban and their denial of the right to a family life.

The Sulha Alliance for the interpreters said: 'These families should be urgently reunited to protect wives and children against revenge.'

"The consequences of leaving things too late are known. French President Emmanuel Macron asked whether the former French interpreters were likely to become ‘Les Harkis Nouvelles’ – a reference to the North Africans who supported the French colonial administration, only to be abandoned to a cruel fate when France decided to relinquish its colonies. 

As Afghanistan is unlikely to be the last significant overseas deployment by the British Armed Forces, it is worth recalling the convoluted evolution of this policy, which is not yet over. The answer to the question, ‘when does it end?’ appears to be ‘never’."

Dr Sara de Jong, senior lecturer in politics at the University of York, works with the Sulha Alliance on behalf of Afghan interpreters and their families. 

Stating any local staff - not just interpreters - can be at risk, she gave the example of Abdul Basir, a former employee of the French Army who was denied repatriation to France three times and last month was assassinated.

"I am sorry to hear Jamal is facing these issues with his father's relocation,” she said. “His father should be recognised as at risk because of his work as a labourer. Also, Iraqi interpreters were actually allowed to bring extended family.”

Dr. Sara de Jong, one of the [Sulha Alliance]'s founding members, said too many LECs have "fallen through the cracks of the relocation policy. The fact that the government failed to have an appropriate policy in place earlier cannot be a reason to exclude [those who have now fled to third countries]".

"We also need to ensure that [former Afghan Locally Engaged Civilians] can build up a meaningful life [once they are relocated]. It's not just about staying alive. It's about the right to a life."

Dr Sara de Jong, senior lecturer in politics at the University of York, spoke on behalf of the Sulha Alliance – which campaigns for the rights of former Afghan interpreters who have served with the British military. 

"The Sulha Alliance is delighted to see that the group on the first flight has now been brought to safety in the UK. Many have been waiting for years to finally be relocated. However, the much greater number of former local staff is still in Afghanistan at the moment."

On June 1, the Sulha Alliance, which advocates for former Afghan employees with the British armed forces, said that all NATO members should adopt relocation policies to protect former interpreters and other Afghan employees. 

It noted that NATO has been divided in its approach, with some members, such as Canada, offering no relocation plans. Australia and Germany have not expedited resettlement.

The Sulha Alliance, a campaign group in the UK, and 16 other partner organisations from seven countries, have written a letter to the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, urging member states to provide immediate protection to Afghan employees and their families as troops withdraw.

In the letter, copied to Boris Johnson, they said that Nato countries should immediately evacuate the staff they had employed to ensure "that those who protected our lives will themselves be safe from reprisal".

Dr Sara de Jong, political scientist at the University of York and co-founder of the Sulha Network: "Afghanistan is of course a very unsafe country for many people, but this is a group of people who is specifically targetted because of their employment history. 

"There has always been a broad consensus among the British public, wherever you are on the political spectrum that [relocation Afghan interpreters] is the right thing to do. 

Dr. de Jong said [that] the April policy excluded staff members who had been fired, a point of concern given that many staffer members had been let go for minor offenses, such as carrying personal electronic devices to update their families or not returning from leave for personal reasons. And the policy change came too late for Afghans who have already fled and now reside, sometimes without documentation, in other countries like India, Serbia and Turkey, she said.

Government sources on Monday confirmed a report in The Daily Mail that said that those who had been dismissed for minor offenses but were otherwise eligible for resettlement would be approved if there were no other reasons for concern — a development that advocates said could have a major impact.

The onus now was on the government, Dr. de Jong said, to reach out to Afghan workers who were previously ineligible and help ensure that they apply for relocation.

Example of coverage in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel and Dutch newspaper Trouw of Sulha Alliance's joint international letter to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Heads of State and Governments in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, France and Italy. 

"Without a coordinated effort to guarantee the protection of the Afghan local staff that supported its partner nations, NATO risks betraying its own promise that the “drawdown will be orderly, coordinated, and deliberate”.

The Sulha Alliance says some 35% of translators, amounting to 1,010, will not be offered the option to settle in the UK.

"We need the Government to actively reach out to those they have previously rejected on that basis, as recently as late April. 

[Who have been fired] for having phoned their family to say that they are safe, which was considered a security breach because they were carrying a SIM card or a mobile phone."

Ed Aitken, a former British Army officer and the co-founder of the Sulha Alliance, which is supporting former interpreters, welcomed the pledge to speed up the application process.

Mr Aitken said: ‘The announcement is good news, although there are still gaps with those who are eligible for support, most notably interpreters who were terminated. ‘There is some concession for those who were terminated for the most minor offences but the bar is still set very low for exclusion from the scheme, particularly when you compare it to the bar for exclusion for those seeking asylum, which is set very high. The question that needs to be asked is, does the alleged offence really justify the death sentence that exclusion from the scheme would certainly result in?’

On Monday, 16 organisations from across seven NATO nations campaigning for the rights of local Afghan workers and including the UK-based Sulha Alliance wrote an open letter calling for alliance members to "provide immediate protection to Afghan staff and their families who are facing threats".

The letter said translators "are afraid that they will be left behind not only due to inconsistent criteria, but also because the deteriorating security situation makes it impossible to travel to interviews and obtain documents in time".

Retired Colonel Simon Diggins, the former British attaché in Kabul and now a campaigner for the Sulha Alliance said he welcomed the acceleration of relocations saying it showed “goodwill and a positive attitude of officials and senior ministers”.

However, he was critical of a continued lack of clarity for translators who were dismissed from the British Army and may be denied relocation as a result. Diggins also questioned whether logistics would allow so many to be relocated in so little time.

“I am really not sure how they are going to make it work with all those numbers. I really hope they can. But the numbers are huge and do they really have the resources to deliver that?” he asked.

Listen to this BBC World Service interview with our Co-Founder, Retired Colonel Simon Diggins, who responds to the announcement about the acceleration of the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). 

"The difficulty is that some people who they now may accept, have in the past been rejected. And they are in a slightly desperate place and wondering, 'what on earth do we do?', and so some of them have not come forward to apply to the new ARAP scheme. So we need the Government to go out and actually positively contact them."

Veteran Army officer Ed Aitken, founder of the Sulha Alliance campaign group, said he was “pleased” about the scheme but warned that there was a “low” bar for rejecting those who previously risked their lives to support British troops.

“We are pleased with where we are but there are concerns there are some glaring gaps where there are going to be parts of this community who are left vulnerable and won’t be included under this policy,” Mr Aitken, who undertook two tours of Helmand Province, told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

Dr Sara de Jong of the University of York and a founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for interpreters who worked with British forces, says the threat against locally engaged staff is not new “but the Taliban regards the peace accords as a confirmation they won the war”. “The confidence of the Taliban – and their ability to take revenge – has increased.”

De Jong says it is “logistically possible” for coalition countries to extract personnel at risk and their families. [...]  “Where there’s a will there’s a way. This is an international mission that seeks to coordinate among partner nations, why is there no coordination on this?”

Afghan veteran Major Ed Aitken, founder of the Sulha Alliance, which supports translators, said: 'After the trauma of the war where interpreters stood shoulder to shoulder with British troops... can you imagine the extra mental health damage the incompetence of this Government has inflicted on these men and their families, to whom we owe so much?

His colleague Sara De Jong added: 'With 5,000 Taliban prisoners released since last year and less than 150 days till the US withdraws from Afghanistan, families should be urgently reunited to protect wives and children against revenge.'

“Unfortunately, we have already been notified about at least 25 cases in which local staff who applied to the scheme were immediately informed that their termination meant that they were excluded from ‘relocation by default’” Dr Sara de Jong, Co-Founder of advocacy initiative Sulha Alliance and Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York, explains.

“First of all, our observation was that the number of disciplinary dismissals was very high; which British company would fire 1/3 of its workers for disciplinary reasons?” Dr de Jong tells City Internation. [...] Dr de Jong also points to the fact that “local staff had no right to appeal against being dismissed so their perspective on the situation remained unheard”.

“We think there needs to be a clearer commitment that even if an interpreter was terminated, if there is a threat to their safety they should be eligible for aspects of ARAP, including resettlement to the UK.” she says. According to Sulha Alliance, there are other challenges in the application process, such as the government not accepting the applications of those from third countries who had to flee. 

The Times - Letter to the Editor - 4th of May 2021

"Thirty-five per cent of the interpreters taken on from 2001 to 2014 were dismissed. That is a staggeringly high proportion and suggests that dismissal was over-used as an HR management tool, rather than as punishment. [...]

[T]he Sulha Alliance has called for a full, transparent and urgent review of all those dismissed. Our investigations reveal little "due process", no right of appeal and nil consideration of previously good service. Some, even after review, may not deserve sanctuary in this country but the bar for excluding asylum seekers, on the grounds of their prior behaviour, is very high; most of those dismissed would easily get in if the asylum-seeker test were applied."

Colonel Simon Diggins (retired) Defence attaché, Kabul, 2008-10; The Sulha Alliance

The Sulha Alliance, which is supporting the man and other former interpreters, says that a third of the interpreters who assisted the UK, around 1,000 people, have been dismissed for minor disciplinary or administrative issues, such as smoking or arriving late, and as a result have not qualified for Government resettlement schemes. 

Retired Colonel Simon Diggins, a former defence attaché to Kabul who is now a spokesperson for the alliance, said today that 35 per cent of the interpreters employed between 2001 and 2014 were dismissed. In a letter to The Times, Col Diggins writes: ‘That is a staggeringly high proportion and suggests that dismissal was over-used as a HR management tool, rather than as punishment.’

The Sulha Alliance said that former and current translators who have put their lives on the line to help British forces are already suffering daily assassination attempts due to their work. 

The support network is calling for an emergency plan to resettle the locally-employed civilians in the UK amid fears the Taliban will mount bloody reprisals after the handover to the Afghan government.

Mr Aitken said: ‘The new Afghan Resettlement and Assistance Policy (ARAP) needs to ensure the previously seen twelve to eighteen month delays in processing applications for relocation to the UK are hugely reduced. We need an emergency plan to get these guys out at the same time as our troops.’

But retired Colonel Simon Diggins, formerly the British attaché in Kabul and now a campaigner for Afghan interpreters, says many of those dismissals were for trivial reasons.

"Whilst some of those who were dismissed did things that were disgraceful, there were a very large number of people who were dismissed for very minor or administrative issues," he told the BBC. [...] "What we're asking for is that their cases are all reviewed."

Afghan interpreters face a “ghastly betrayal” if they are left behind when British forces withdraw this year, a former defence attaché to Kabul said. 

Colonel Simon Diggins said the interpreters were “really scared” by the planned pullout by September 11 and urged ministers to let more of them into Britain.

Retired colonel Simon Diggins, founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which helps translators, has written to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace calling for the [relocation] process to be accelerated. 

Mr Diggins also raised the concern of hundreds of ex-translators dismissed for disciplinary reasons from their jobs, which would normally exclude them from sanctuary in the UK. 

Colonel Simon Diggins, former military attache at the British embassy in Kabul, who campaigns for translators, said the murder was part of a 'campaign to assassinate former interpreters'.

Peter Gordon-Finlayson, former Army captain and founding member of the Sulha Alliance, which campaigns for interpreters, said: 'The Sulha Alliance is delighted that the Government recognises Nesar's qualification for relocation to the UK. He is truly a worthy recipient of UK support.'