By Andy Drozdziak
A leading Catholic justice organisation has marked the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban by renewing calls for a “humane and protection-focused response to refugees.”
The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021 left thousands of Afghans in great peril, leading many to seek safety in the UK. Almost 10,000 Afghan refugees remain in hotels, waiting for permanent accommodation.
Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) UK, has joined others leading support for refugees in calling on the government, in a joint letter to The Times, to “urgently help those already here and ensure Afghans can safely reach the UK.”
JRS has also criticised the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, which opened in January 2022, ‘for operating too slowly and too late.’
“Those Afghans who arrived in the UK via other means face penalties under the government’s new Immi[1]gration act 2022, and could face forced removal to Rwanda,” JRS said.
“Around 12,000 of those who were successfully evacuated to the UK spent months in isolated hotels, awaiting longer-term accommodation.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel expressed “tremendous pride” in the Government’s controversial evacuation operation, describing the UK effort as “seismic” and a demonstration of the country’s “bond of trust” with those Afghans who had helped UK forces.
However, JRS UK Legal Officer Michael Tarnoky dismissed the scheme as ‘slow and restrictive.’ “The government’s evacuation and resettlement schemes were both so slow and restrictive that many Afghans were forced to make irregular journeys, only to face rejection by the UK asylum system,” he said.
“The human consequences of this chaotic and cruel response are grave. Sadly, they are all too connected to our wider approach to asylum. The government must act to provide gen[1]uine help to Afghan refugees rather than holding up a failed project as a ‘safe and legal route’”.
MPs delivered a similarly critical report earlier this year, describing the chaotic efforts to move people out of the country as a “disaster”, and criticising then foreign secretary Dominic Raab and the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office for not returning from their holidays to take charge.
The hasty efforts to select individuals for evacuation were, it said, “poorly devised, managed and staffed”, leading to “confusion and false hope” among Afghan partners hoping for rescue.
Picture: Afghan refugees crowd onboard a Nato rescue flight from
Kabul last August. PA Media Picture by: LPhot Ben Shread/MoD