UK will rescue those left behind in Taliban controlled Afghanistan: Dominic Raab

Guards who safeguarded the British Embassy in Afghanistan were among those unable to escape the country in time as the Taliban denied many of them permission to enter the Hamid Karzai Airport, according to The Mirror. Britain ceased its airlift operations on August 28, rescuing roughly 15,000 people from the Taliban controlled state, since Mid-August. Speaking to press reporters recently, British Defence Minister Ben Wallace announced that 13,000 Afghans were airlifted while another 3,000 were repatriated in April under Downing Street’s Arap scheme. 

Raab announces mission to evacuate those left

On Thursday, the country’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab met British MPs and updated them on the country’s mission to rescue those left behind in the conflict-hit country. While he confirmed the rescue operation to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Raab stopped short specifying how many guards were left in Afghanistan or what kind of difficulties they faced. According to a report published in The Guardian, international security company GardaWorld said that it has recruited 200 Afghan natives as guards at the British diplomatic office.

Last week, the UK rescued three Afghan families whose contact details had been left behind at its embassy in Kabul and was seized by the Taliban, Washington Post reported. In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the Islamist insurgents are leaving no stone unturned to hunt down Afghans who aided foreign troops in the past. Amidst exacerbating conflict and chaos, UK embassy officials mistakenly jeopardized the lives of at least seven Afghan natives by leaving their contract documents and applications behind. But, on Friday, Downing Street confirmed that they were rescued in time.

As embassy officials rushed to leave the war-ravaged nation, they accidentally left behind crucial documents revealing the details of at least seven Afghans who worked on British Diplomatic missions, according to The Times of London. As Taliban patrolled the compound, they found the documents which contained details of a senior embassy staffer, details of other employees along with resumes of people who had applied to be interpreters at the embassy, scattered on the floor. This directly put under threat the lives of the seven natives and their families, who Taliban had declared to be “traitors”. Later the British daily revealed that some of them had already been resettled in Britain.

Image: AP