Hundreds promised UK resettlement are still stuck in Afghanistan, says David Cameron

Hundreds of people who have been promised sanctuary in the UK are still stuck in Afghanistan more than two years after the Taliban takeover, Lord Cameron has said.

The foreign secretary told MPs in a letter that fewer than 700 people eligible to come to the UK under a scheme for vulnerable refugees are still in the Taliban-run country. There has also been one case of an Afghan, who had been granted UK relocation and was waiting in Pakistan, who was deported back to Afghanistan by the Pakistani authorities, he revealed.

The Independent has previously revealed that an Afghan interpreter who served with the British army was deported back to the Taliban from Pakistan while waiting for his application for help to be processed. In this case, the UK government agreed to grant his relocation only after he had been forcibly returned to Afghanistan. He later managed to return to Pakistan.

Foreign secretary Lord Cameron has oversight of one pathway of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, which is specifically for British Council teachers and contractors, embassy security workers, and young scholars on the Chevening programme.

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Despite promising to bring 1,500 people to the UK on this route, the government has dragged its heels and left many hundreds of these Afghans stranded in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Chair of the foreign affairs committee, Alicia Kearns, raised concerns about the schemes with Lord Cameron in a December letter, writing: “The government is far below its targets in processing and resettling eligible Afghans to the UK; why is this the case? And what are you doing to ensure the processing times are significantly accelerated?”

Lord Cameron replied saying that two flights had been charted to bring the Afghans from Pakistan to the UK in December. The first plane, which arrived on 13 December, brought 246 people, he said, and the second took off a week later. “Almost all of the most vulnerable undocumented” Afghans will have left Pakistan by the end of December, Lord Cameron promised.

But he admitted that hundreds still remain in Afghanistan, and yet others in Iran.

The Independent previously revealed that British diplomats had warned the government that Afghans eligible for sanctuary in the UK but trapped in Pakistan and Iran could not be kept safe.

The government was forced to start bringing the Afghans over from Pakistan after the authorities started deporting undocumented Afghans from the country. Prime minister Rishi Sunak – along with the home secretary, defence secretary and foreign secretary – was facing multiple legal challenges from Afghans left in limbo over the government’s failure to relocate them.

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Lord Cameron said that “plans are in place” to bring the rest of the 1,500 Afghans eligible for relocation under the Foreign Office pathway to the UK. But stressed that it will be “difficult to predict” how quickly those in Afghanistan can be brought to safety.

He told Ms Kearns: “It depends partly on them securing the necessary Afghan documentation for the Taliban to allow them to leave, and partly on securing visas from third countries such as Pakistan to allow them to cross the border”.

Referring to those trapped in Iran, he added that FCDO staff at the Tehran embassy were working to get them out “as quickly as we can”. Two other Afghan pathways for UK resettlement are also being operated by the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.

Tory MP Ms Kearns said: “Two years since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban – and up against a hard and fast-approaching deadline from the Pakistani Government – it appears we are finally seeing some movement in the right direction.

“There are still serious concerns over the danger that eligible Afghans – including those who put their lives at risk for the UK – will be deported back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This would be a betrayal of the promises we made to them and would place them in substantial peril.”