US pledges to investigate Afghan pilot’s case as UK stalls on offer to help

The White House has made an extraordinary intervention in the case of an Afghan pilot threatened with deportation to Rwanda by pledging to look into his case as the UK government continues to stall.

The air force lieutenant, who flew combat missions in support of UK and US forces and was praised by his supervisor as a “patriot to his nation”, fled to the UK in a small boat after the fall of Kabul because it was “impossible” to find a safe and legal route.

In Britain, dozens of military chiefs, celebrities and politicians from across the political divide have pledged their support to The Independent’s campaign to allow him to stay, including the former head of the British army General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former head of Nato George Robertson, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, and former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

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But the government is dragging its heels in making a decision on whether to grant him asylum.

Now, in a dramatic turn of events, White House spokesperson John Kirby, who is the strategic communications coordinator for the US National Security Council, has promised to investigate whether the man would be eligible for asylum in America, in a move that puts further pressure on the UK to act.

When asked by The Independent whether US president Joe Biden believed that Afghan veterans who fought alongside coalition forces should be deported, citing the case of the Afghan pilot in the UK, the former US Navy rear admiral said: “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, so we’ll have to look into it, to check it out.”

Military chiefs say the UK has a duty to help the airman instead of forcing him to seek refuge elsewhere, and that the US intervention should “increase the pressure on the UK government to do the right thing”.

The pilot’s details have now been sent to the White House, and officials are looking into how the US Department of State can help.

Mr Kirby said the Biden administration is committed to resettling Afghans who fought alongside coalition forces to the United States.

“We continue to work to bring our Afghan allies out of Afghanistan and into the country. We continue to believe down to our marrow that that’s a responsibility and an obligation we take seriously – it’s not stopped and it’s not going to stop,” he said.

Mr Kirby said the US had already welcomed more than 100,000 Afghan refugees and stressed that the Biden administration would “continue to do everything we can to help the brave Afghans and their families get out of Afghanistan”.

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“We encourage anyone who wants to try to seek asylum in the United States to use those legal pathways, and those legal pathways are open, of course, to former Afghan allies. We’ve established these legal processes ... the programme is called Enduring Welcome, and so it still exists. So for those Afghan allies that want to claim asylum in the United States, there are existing processes to do that,” he said.

The Afghan pilot applied for sanctuary in the US days after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, and his details were sent directly to the US embassy by his former American supervisors. He said he heard nothing back and was forced to flee Afghanistan in fear for his life.

The pilot says he is one of many Afghan forces personnel who have been “forgotten” by the US and British forces they served with, and believes that the promise of “friendship and cooperation” has been abandoned by leaders in both Washington and London.

The airman has so far been told by the UK Home Office that his asylum claim could be dismissed because he passed through a number of European countries to get here. He has been threatened with removal to Rwanda, and UK defence ministers have said that he, along with other members of the Afghan air force, would not qualify “in principle” for help.

Lord Dannatt, the former head of the UK armed forces, responded to the latest development, saying: “Right-thinking people in the US, like those in the UK, can see the justice in supporting this Afghan pilot to receive asylum in a safe country like the UK or the US. Sending him to Rwanda would be an outrage.”

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Lord Robertson, a former defence secretary and a former general secretary of Nato, said: “It is truly sad and demeaning for our country to see the US picking up our obligations to people who bravely served us. Hopefully, a sense of decency and embarrassment will force a change of policy.”

And Alf Dubs, a child refugee who fled the Nazis before the Second World War, said he hoped the willingness of the US to investigate the case would “increase the pressure on the UK government to do the right thing”.

Lord Dubs added: “[The pilot] is here in the UK and we have a responsibility to him. It shouldn’t matter how he got here – there aren’t enough safe and legal routes for Afghans to seek safety. We’re treating someone who helped our military and mission in Afghanistan very shabbily.”

Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, chair of the defence committee, said: “This is spilling into White House press conferences when it really should have been handled behind the scenes in the UK.”

Mr Ellwood expressed his hope that the apparent intervention in the US would mean that the pilot’s case would be dealt with quickly by the government and the Rwanda threat removed.

Admiral Alan West, now Lord West, who was chief of the UK naval staff from 2002 to 2006, said the UK has a moral duty to look after the pilot, and urged: “We cannot send him elsewhere and he cannot go back to Afghanistan – he is under huge threat.”

Steve Smith MBE, CEO of charity Care4Calais and a former British army colonel, said that the pilot has “been abandoned all over again by the UK government”.

He said: “He worked alongside UK and coalition forces but was left behind as the Taliban seized control of the country, and now, having made it to the UK, our government thanks him for his service with the threat of deportation to Rwanda.

“The prime minister and defence secretary both asked for the pilot’s details. They’ve had them for weeks and neither has acted. It’s a damning indictment of the government’s disrespect towards Afghan refugees that the White House is now pledging to look into the case due to their inaction.”

A government spokesperson said: “Whilst we don’t comment on individual cases, we remain committed to providing protection for vulnerable and at-risk people fleeing Afghanistan, and so far have brought around 24,600 people impacted by the situation back to the UK.

“We continue to work with like-minded partners and countries neighbouring Afghanistan on resettlement issues, and to support safe passage for eligible Afghans.”