Afghan families face ‘despair, fear and desperation’ as they are split by resettlement schemes

The UK is failing to bring Afghan allies to safety through its dedicated resettlement routes, endangering the safety of thousands of people, lawyers and refugee caseworkers have said.

One Afghan pilot said his wife has been left “suffering mentally and emotionally” as he is separated from her by the process.

A coalition of 150 lawyers and charity workers have called on the new government to not forget Afghans still seeking safety, saying: “We ask that the promises made are now upheld.”

They said in a letter that the scheme’s failure “puts lives at risk and causes immense despair, fear and desperation”.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson pledged to bring 20,000 Afghans who championed British values, such as women’s rights activists or other vulnerable people, to the UK through a dedicated Home Office scheme. However just under 2000 Afghans have been relocated to the UK under two relevant schemes following Operation Pitting, the Western evacuation of Kabul in August 2021.

In a letter published on Friday, and shared with The Independent, barristers and solicitors called on the new prime minister to “provide safe and legal passage to the UK” for at-risk Afghans, noting that many vulnerable Afghans are being forced to take small boats across the Channel because there is “no alternative path to sanctuary”.

Data for the year ending March 2024 showed that 5,662 Afghans made the perilous crossing from France, up from 554 arrivals in 2020.

The letter criticises the government’s resettlement schemes for being “mired by delays” and criticised “severe errors in data accuracy”.

“Shortcomings in the IT system have led to breaches of applicants’ data and impacted data quality and processing efficiency, which in turn have caused delays, decision-making errors, and unresolved applications,” they write.

Promised pathways for Afghan womens’ rights activists and LGBTQ+ people have failed to materialise and a pledge to reunite families separated during the August 2021 evacuation has also not been fulfilled, signatories say. The letter continues: “Trust in the resettlement schemes is seriously undermined by the lack of transparency and delays in the government’s decision-making.”

The Independent has consistently reported on failings in the Home Office, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence-run Afghan relocation schemes. Numerous cases have been documented of people who were wrongly rejected for help despite fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with British troops.

Afghans who have been granted sanctuary in the UK have spoken about how their families have been abandoned in perilous situations because of delays to applications or because a pathway does not exist to bring them to safety.

One former Afghan pilot, an air force lieutenant who was granted asylum in the UK after a five-month-long campaign by this newspaper, has been waiting seven months on a request for his wife and young child to join him.

His family have fled to Iran but are now living on borrowed time as their visas have run out and they face going back to Afghanistan. He said: “My family is facing a lot of problems, they don’t have a proper place to live and don’t have access to a doctor, because they are living illegally. Their Iranian visas expired and they need to extend them but it is impossible in Iran. My wife is suffering mentally and emotionally and she is completely hopeless.”

Shabnam Khan Dawran, a prominent Afghan journalist who was evacuated in August 2021, told The Independent how her family have been targeted by the Taliban while they hope for relocation.

Despite her father suffering arrest and attack at the hands of the Taliban as a result of Dawran’s journalism in the UK, there is currently no safe route for him to come to Britain.

MPs called on the Home Office in May to act faster to help reunite Afghan families and said the government was failing to deliver on its promises.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock has previously criticised the Tory government for turning “operation warm welcome into operation cold shoulder” by failing to follow through on their promises to Afghan refugees.

The Home Office was contacted for comment.