‘Keep your promise‘: Afghan pilot urges Rishi Sunak to honour pledge to save abandoned allies

Exclusive: Air force lieutenant expected a ‘warm welcome of British officials’ when he arrived in UK on a small boat last year but was instead told he would be deported

The Afghan pilot threatened with deportation to Rwanda has called on Rishi Sunak to “keep the promise” the government made to its Afghan allies who fought alongside British troops.

The emotional plea comes as thousands of heroic Afghans remain trapped under Taliban rule two years to the day Kabul fell.

Speaking in an on-camera interview for the first time, the pilot told The Independent he had expected the “warm welcome of British officials” when he finally arrived on the Kent coast last year.

Instead, he was served with a notice of intent informing him that the Home Office planned to deport him.

The Afghan pilot called on government to help his family flee Afghanistan in his first on-camera interview (The Independent )

The air force lieutenant, who flew 30 combat missions against terrorist threats, said he and his colleagues were given assurances by their superiors that they would be guaranteed safety due to their work.

But the help never came. Instead, his personal details and those of other war heroes were left in their offices for the Taliban to find. Fearing for his life, he fled Afghanistan after his wife urged him to run before he was killed.

“She [my wife] said, ‘you have to leave. You have to leave and I will be here. So, I will put you in God’s hands, and God will bless you. So go’.

The pilot called on the prime minister to act now and honour the commitment the government made to those who helped Britain.

He said: “Again, I want to ask, kindly, for the officials, the prime minister, to keep the promise of friendship and cooperation that you made to the Afghan people, especially to Afghan forces.

“I fought against the Taliban, and I left my family, and I hope that the British government help with my family to get them out from Afghanistan.”

Sign The Independent’s petition calling for UK to support Afghan war heroes who served alongside Britain

Click here

Senior military figures, politicians and charities have backed The Independent’s campaign for the pilot to get asylum in the UK. Dozens have expressed outrage at the Home Office’s threat to deport the pilot to Rwanda but there has, so far, been no movement on his case in the UK.

US officials have pledged to look into whether he can be offered sanctuary in the States, with President Biden’s spokesperson saying they wanted to “make sure that we take care of the folks who helped us during the longest war in this country”. But there is no timeframe for a decision.

His case has brought others to light, including that of an Afghan colonel who fought alongside British troops in Helmand province and an intelligence analyst who played a “key” role in helping the British military in Kabul. Both have been threatened with deportation after fleeing to the UK on a small boat because they could find no other legal way to come here.

It comes as around 18,000 applications for Afghans who say they worked alongside British troops are still waiting to be processed under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap). And 3,400 Afghan men, women and children who have already been approved for relocation under the scheme remain stranded in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The airman fled to the UK on a small boat (Getty/The Independent)

Veterans minister, Johnny Mercer, today pledged to make resettlement schemes for Afghans in the UK “work properly”, as humanitarian groups branded them too slow. But the government has failed to provide details of how it will do that and refused to say when it would restart flights to bring those still stranded overseas back to the UK.

A UK government spokesperson said: “The Arap scheme was established for a defined cohort of Afghans who had worked directly for, or with, the UK armed forces. We have already relocated more than 12,200 Afghans under Arap and continue working to bring all those people eligible to safety in the UK.

“We understand the desire of Afghans now seeking to leave their country, however, we cannot support all former members of the Afghan security forces, who number in the hundreds of thousands.”