The government owes a debt to contractors stranded in Afghanistan

Britain owes these people a debt of gratitude for furthering our aims in Afghanistan and we must not let them down, writes John Baron

The government’s warm words about providing sanctuary for those who helped Britain are ringing increasingly hollow (AFP via Getty)

In the tearing haste of Operation Pitting, the government devised schemes to enable Afghans who had worked closely with Britain to leave Afghanistan; however, a significant number fell between the cracks.

One such group were the around 200 Afghans who had worked as contractors for the British Council. Though employees of the British Council were included in the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, guidance was less clear for the contractors, and the vast majority did not make it out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.

As chair of the British Council All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), we began to be contacted by the contractors directly, as well as by those in the UK working on their behalf. I first raised their plight in November 2021, when I alerted the defence secretary that the contractors had described lives in hiding, moving from house to house, all the time being hunted by the Taliban.