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Afghans wanted by Taliban for assisting UK still stranded two years on [1]
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Date: 2023-08
A women's rights lawyer who prosecuted members of the Taliban is among thousands of Afghans stranded in the country two years after the UK vowed to relocate them.
The lawyer is now in hiding with her husband and three young children and told openDemocracy she lives in fear of being captured.
We also spoke to a man who has been looking after his four nieces and nephews for two years because their parents are stuck in Afghanistan.
The Home Office pledged to resettle 5,000 Afghans in the first year of its Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which launched in January 2022.
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Ministers said one of the scheme’s ‘pathways’ would prioritise rescuing vulnerable Afghans, including women and girls at risk, and anyone who “assisted UK efforts in the country or stood up for values such as democracy, women’s rights, freedom of speech, and rule of law”.
But just 14 people have been resettled under the so-called pathway, according to the latest available statistics published in March.
Naailah*, who worked as a prosecutor for the Afghan Attorney General’s Office, has a warrant out for her arrest and has been in hiding for two years with her family.
She fears that if the Taliban find her, she will be executed in revenge for prosecuting dozens of its members for crimes relating to corruption, violence against women and narcotics.
Naailah said she provided the Home Office with a list of 16 of her colleagues, as well as two female judges, who have been killed by the Taliban since its takeover for carrying out the same work she did.
Despite this, the Home Office is refusing to consider her case unless she makes a perilous journey to Pakistan to register her biometrics at the British High Commission.
“I can’t express how bitterly I am disappointed with the British government,” Naailah told openDemocracy. “We were on the same side, working towards the same goal on improving the welfare and rights of women in Afghanistan. I was on the field working very hard and taking serious risks to achieve those aims. But now, when I’m under threat and when I’m persecuted, I’ve been left to my own devices.”
Lawyers supporting Naailah in the UK said it was clear that she made a clear contribution to the UK government’s strategic objectives, one of which was to “remove corruption and provide justice for the Afghan people”.
Naailah also worked as a defence lawyer for nine years specialising in cases involving women’s rights. She said that she defended more than 200 cases over her career often facing members of the Taliban on the opposite side.
“There were stages during these proceedings where members of the Taliban actually threatened me not to defend the case so that the case would collapse and they would walk free,” she said.
On one occasion, she said she was followed by an armed man on a motorbike while driving to a hearing, who only fled when her driver sped to a police station.
Naailah believes that her work representing women is why she is wanted by the Taliban, who have since banned women from working in the judiciary or appearing in court by themselves.
She secured a particularly high-profile conviction against a Taliban member who cut out the tongue of his own wife. Another Taliban member, who she prosecuted in absentia for beating his wife, sent threatening messages to her after the Taliban takeover vowing revenge.
After the Taliban took over Kabul, Naailah and her family fled. Later they heard from neighbours that Taliban members had searched their home and demanded information about her whereabouts.
Despite acknowledging that human rights defenders and women in the public sphere were particularly at risk, the Home Office has refused Naailah’s request to be considered for resettlement under the ACRS scheme.
Naailah had also applied to be resettled under the government’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme, but had her application rejected despite the government saying it would show discretion when considering cases of people who worked with them indirectly.
More than 125,000 ARAP applications – including duplicates – had been made as of November last year, but as of May this year just 11,398 people had been resettled.
“We fear that at any moment there could be a knock at our door and they will find us,” Naailah said.
Afghans have also struggled to reunite with family members who were unable to reach evacuation flights as Kabul descended into chaos.
Rashid’s* four young nieces and nephews haven’t seen their parents for two years. Their mother was recovering from a caesarean birth in hospital at the time of the evacuation flights.
Their father, Rashid's brother, asked him to take them to safety, not knowing that it would be impossible for him to follow them.
Since August 2021, Rashid has been living in temporary accommodation in the UK with his wife, their four children and four nieces and nephews.
The government promised in September 2021 that it would help reunite evacuees with relatives left behind in Afghanistan, but two years on there is no route to do so.
Lawyers at the Afghan Pro Bono Initiative are helping Rashid apply for visas for his brother and sister-in-law but the process is slow and complicated because it requires making a request outside of the immigration rules. They told openDemocracy they have received hundreds of similar requests for help to reunite family members.
The delays have taken a toll on Rashid’s nieces and nephews, the youngest of which is seven.
“I took them to see the doctor because they keep waking up at night and asking to see their parents,” he continued. “But there’s nothing a doctor can do, they just need their parents back.
“Their parents are suffering everyday that they cannot see their children, that they cannot hug them, and most days they cannot even speak with them because it is so difficult to communicate from Afghanistan.”
He added: “The Home Office is taking so long, I don’t know what can I do in this position.”
Rashid’s wife has had PTSD and epilepsy ever since her parents and other family members, some of whom worked for the previous Afghan government, were killed by the Taliban in a car bomb explosion in 2020.
As a result, Rashid cares for both his wife and the eight children. It means he can’t work, despite obtaining the necessary licences to work as a taxi driver or security guard.
His family are due to move out of the hotel where they have stayed since August 2021 and into a rented property this month. Rashid is eager to leave the hotel, but is uncertain how he will be able to cover the rent and bills.
“I'm struggling a lot now and it’s probably going to be worse soon. I don’t know what to do,” he said.
The Department of Work Pensions will not provide him child support for his three youngest children because of the two-child benefit cap it brought in 2017.
With no safe and legal route to the UK, his brother and sister-in-law have contemplated trying to reach the country irregularly. More than 12,000 Afghans have entered the UK by small boats since the Taliban takeover, making them the highest nationality of those making the dangerous crossing.
Rashid said they decided against making the journey, partly out of fear they could leave their children orphans and partly because they still had hope that the UK would live up to its promises.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
*Names have been changed to protect identities
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