UK accused of leaving allies with ‘no safe route out’ of Afghanistan after ending evacuation support

The UK has been accused of leaving Afghan allies “without a safe route out” of Afghanistan following the “shocking” decision to end evacuation support for promised refuges in the UK.

Around 9,000 Afghans who are eligible to come to Britain but are still waiting to be relocated will receive no help from Britain to escape the Taliban, defense secretary Luke Pollard announced on Tuesday.

Instead, they will have to go to a third country like Pakistan to get accommodation and visa support.

MPs, campaigners and lawyers who support Afghans working with the British armed forces but left in limbo said the decision was “shocking and deeply disappointing”.

Defense committee chairman Tan Dhesi said MPs would grill the minister on the decision in May, asking: “We will want to ask why the government’s policy has changed and why is it only changing now, and what assistance, if any, will be provided to eligible Afghans who cannot mobilize themselves?”

He said the committee had heard that some Afghans eligible to move to the UK were now living in hiding and in poverty, “exhausting their resources while being advised by the UK government to stay and await instructions on when and how to leave”.

Rafi Hottak, a former Afghan translator who campaigns on behalf of Afghans serving alongside British troops, said the decision left Afghan allies “trapped in Afghanistan with no real support, no safe way out and no practical alternative”.

He added: “Many served or supported British forces and UK operations at great personal risk, but were left waiting, called out and left without hope for almost five years. During this time families survived on little or no income, selling assets, borrowing and living under constant fear.”

He said the move was a “moral and legal failure” on the part of the government and that letters of approval meant little unless there was support for eviction.

“Why were these people given hope for almost five years if there was no real plan to support them?” he added.

Leigh Day lawyer Erin Alcock, who represents Afghans left in limbo by the UK, said the announcement was a “shocking and extremely disappointing development”.

“We have customers who are stranded in Afghanistan and cannot afford the high visa costs required to travel to a third country for further processing by the Ministry of Home Affairs. They have waited patiently, fearful to be helped, but have now been told that help will not come,” he said.

Colonel Simon Diggins, who served as a defense attache in Afghanistan, said it was becoming more difficult to bring Afghan refugees to the UK as the government’s attitude towards immigration became more hostile.

He said: “The government is trying to see Afghanistan as a safe country to return illegal immigrants to. This feels like a reiteration of the point we were right about in the first place about Theresa May and her hostile environment policy.”

“I still believe we have a moral responsibility to them [those who served alongside UK troops]Because the Taliban is still after them. “These reprisals are now mostly personal.”

He suggested a “pragmatic” approach, which saw frank discussions with the Taliban government about how to return them from the UK and who could be brought to sanctuary in Britain.

Wendy Chamberlain, a Liberal Democrat MP and chair of the parliamentary committee on Afghan women and girls, said the Ministry of Defense (MoD) decision would “effectively force the most vulnerable to find their own way to safety in third countries”, risking abandoning women whose “fundamental human rights are being systematically eroded”.

Person A, an independent caseworker who was among the first to alert the DoD of a massive Afghan data breach in 2023, said he had “serious concerns that the minister and the DoD did not appreciate the enormous financial debt that Afghans assumed to move to a third country.”

They said $20-$30,000 was not unusual and warned that Afghan families could be targeted for deportation once they arrive in Pakistan, even if their visas are valid.