Afghan Asylum Seekers Will be Allowed into UK Without Passports

TOPSHOT - Afghan people climb up on a plane and sit by the door as they wait at the Kabul
Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The British government will scrap border requirements for passports for Afghan asylum seekers attempting to flee to Britain, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Monday.

As Taliban forces have captured the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday amid a disastrous withdrawal of American and British forces, the UK will ease immigration restrictions for Afghanis who assisted the allied forces as translators or contractors.

“We are processing as fast as we can, and where there are rules that we need to change, we are changing those rules,” Wallace said in comments reported by The Telegraph.

“Today I’ll be speaking to [Home Secretary] Priti Patel about how we can deal with Afghan passports. Right up until the day before yesterday, the Afghans wouldn’t let Afghans leave without their passport.

“If they’ve already been through our checks, we know who they are, we need to see if we can make sure that we adapt the rules to get those people out as soon as we can.

“We will cycle them out from Afghanistan to a Middle East country and then back to the United Kingdom, so we can keep the flow of aeroplanes, in and out.”

It is believed that the British government will attempt to rescue between 1,200 and 1,500 people out of Kabul airport, which has been taken under control by the United States military as they attempt to evacuate thousands of American staff and citizens from the country.

The British evacuation plan is set to run until August 31st. However, that presumes that Western forces will be able to keep control of the critical airport. So far, the UK has already resettled some 3,300 Afghan staff and their families.

As thousands attempted to reach the airport at least five people were killed. Early reports suggest desperate people clinging to the leading gear of departing aircraft fell to their deaths.

Last week, Breitbart London reported that 600 British troops were sent back into Afghanistan to help “assist British nationals to leave the country and support the relocation of former Afghan staff who risked their lives serving alongside us”.

It is believed that there are around 4,000 British nationals and Afghanis eligible for asylum currently in Kabul and in need of rescue. It is not known exactly how many Afghanis in total throughout the country will be eligible to seek asylum in the UK.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace admitted on Monday that it is unlikely that all those who assisted the British forces will be rescued.

Noticeably tearing up, Mr Wallace said: “Some people won’t get back, and we will have to do our best in third countries to process those people.”

When pressed on why he felt the failure so personally, the Defence Secretary said: “Because I’m a soldier.” Adding: “Because it’s sad. And the West has done what it’s done.”

Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted that the situation in Afghanistan is “getting more difficult”.

Johnson said that the priority of his government “is to make sure we deliver on our obligations to UK nationals, to all those who have helped the British effort in Afghanistan over 20 years, and to get them out as fast as we can”.

Concerns have been raised, however, of British nationals defecting to the Taliban, with security services claiming to have intercepted phone calls in Afghanistan with British sounding accents indicating that they have taken up arms to fight with the enemy.

Ben Harris-Quinney, the chairman of the oldest conservative think tank, the Bow Group, described the move to wave passport requirements as “madness”.

“This is absolute madness. Well over a million immigrants entered the UK last year [and] Afghanistan is a terrorism hotspot. Why would we want to let them in, especially without records or documentation? The British public continues to pay heavily for the idiocy of our Government,” Mr Harris-Quinney wrote.

The chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, warned on Monday that another 9/11 style terror attack could come as a result of the Taliban retaking control of the country.

“I would not be surprised if we see another attack on the scale of 9/11, almost to bookend what happened 20 years ago, as a poke in the face to the Western Alliance to show how fruitless our efforts have been over the last two decades,” Ellwood said.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.