The Home Office must face facts – sending people back to Afghanistan leaves them open to an uncertain fate

A casual observer, on reading the new Home Office guidance on sending refugees back to Afghanistan, might assume that the country had been miraculously transformed into some sort of liberal paradise, and that the western mission there, far from ending in humiliating retreat, had indeed rebuilt the nation.

According to notes issued by the immigration office, deporting asylum seekers back to Afghanistan presents “no real risk of harm” – which will be news to anyone who has followed reports emanating from the country over the years.

It is run, after all, by the Taliban, whose reputation goes before them. Living there, or trying to, presents a real risk of harm to anyone, including – if reports are to believed –the various warring factions within the Taliban’s own leadership. It is unlikely, at any rate, that any of the British civil servants making such life-and-death decisions will be asking Thomas Cook to arrange a ten-day adventure break in Helmand province.

Even an Afghan with a weak case for asylum, who had had no contact with western forces, would find themselves immediately falling under suspicion the moment they reached Kabul – surveillance, arrest, torture and summary execution might well follow swiftly.

Any woman, by definition, will lose their human rights if returned to the country, and anyone from the “wrong” racial or ethnic group will be persecuted – as well as anyone who is LGBT+. That is the well-attested reality of life under the Taliban.

The Home Office guidance states that it is “open to the question as to whether there continues to be a situation of international or internal armed conflict” – and that, “should indiscriminate violence be taking place, it is only in some areas of Afghanistan, and is to a far lesser extent following the Taliban takeover”.

It is certainly true that Afghanistan is quieter than it was, but there is still fighting and unrest, and the constant threat that the country will implode. The presence of various groups of terrorists only adds to the instability. Besides, as bears repeating, it is governed by the Taliban.

It is hardly the first time that the Home Office, complacently and carelessly, has sent people back to countries where an uncertain fate awaits. But Afghanistan presents a special problem because of the recent presence of British forces – in the eyes of the Taliban, an occupying force.

Anyone coming back to Afghanistan from the UK is at risk of losing their life, whatever the claims to the contrary. That very obvious fact begs the question of why the Home Office appears to possess such a chilling indifference to the fate of those it deports.