A ticket to Rwanda was no way to repay our debt to this Afghan pilot. We are better than that

More than 150,000 members of the British Armed Forces served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 as part of the UN-authorised and Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. Not a single day of this long campaign would have been possible without the support, skill and courage provided by our Afghan partners on the battlefield – from young soldiers to seasoned officers.

We all thought that it was the right thing to do, to try and create an opportunity for this war-torn, impoverished and broken country to become a safer, more prosperous, educated and more tolerant place for all its people. The cost to the UK in blood was 457 killed and many more left with life-changing injuries. At its peak, the military operation cost taxpayers £4bn a year. These are significant bills, but more than 240,000 Afghans were killed over the same period. Afghanistan is a country that has not known peace for more than 40 years.

The campaign ended badly in the chaotic evacuation of two years ago – and the opportunity we had sought to create was swept away as the Taliban returned to power. The reimposition of an extremely conservative interpretation of Islam has undone much of the progress made, especially in vital aspects such as female education and employment. The reality today, for millions of Afghans, is life in extreme poverty to the point of starvation – with no sense of how improvement will come.

One of the very important things we can still do, however, is look after the people who fought side by side with us. We – our government on our behalf – said that we would bring out all those people we had served with. They had staked their lives and livelihoods on our efforts succeeding and they are people the Taliban will neither forgive nor forget. In the chaotic circumstances of August 2021, we did not get out everyone we made that pledge to – and we still have not.

So, when a former pilot of the Afghan Air Force makes his own way to our shores illegally, the debt we owe is not diminished by the method of travel – not least since we failed to provide it. Illegal entry to the UK is certainly a problem, but once the facts of this case had become clear, a ticket to Rwanda was not only the wrong answer, it also made our promises look hollow and it diminished the sense of fairness and honour we lay claim to as a country. We are better than that.

I applaud the decision of the government to offer this pilot asylum – and The Independent for successfully taking up his cause with their campaign.

He will not be the last of the people we owe to make their own way to our shores. Given the alternatives, we must expect the Afghans whom we left in jeopardy to exercise all the resolution, initiative and resilience they have to get out and join us. Those who are here already – and those who have yet to come – deserve every support to make a new life here, thriving as citizens.

General Sir Richard Lawson Barrons, KCB, CBE is a retired British Army officer. He was Commander Joint Forces Command from April 2013 until his retirement in April 2016