We cannot abandon our responsibilities to the Afghan people

Editorial: Afghan journalists and media workers should be given sanctuary along with those who worked with the British military

Afghan security officials inspect the scene of the assassination of Dawa Khan Menapal in Kabul (EPA)

A day after The Independent joined other British media organisations to warn the prime minister and the foreign secretary that Afghan journalists were in danger, we are saddened to report the assassination of Dawa Khan Menapal, the head of the Kabul government’s media department.

The killing confirms the urgency of our plea to the UK government to follow the example of US president Joe Biden, who has given Afghan journalists and media staff with US links the right to seek refuge in America.

The British government has rightly acknowledged that this country owes “a huge debt of gratitude” to local interpreters and other staff who worked alongside UK troops in Afghanistan. But the offer of sanctuary is open only to Afghans who worked with the British military, and media workers are not currently able to apply.

This needs to change if the UK is to stand by its obligations to the Afghan people. The western media and the free media in Afghanistan are seen by the Taliban as an extension of the western military presence in the country over the past two decades, and their staff need our protection too.

As we said in the letter: “The numbers concerned are small, perhaps a few dozen people including family members, yet their work in illuminating the realities of Afghanistan to the British public has carried an exponential impact.”

Our argument is separate from the debate about the rightness and timing of the withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan. The Independent supported the operation to remove the Taliban in 2001, and accepted that this meant a sustained programme of development aid that would have to be backed up with military support for some time. It may have been a mistake to extend the British deployment in Helmand in 2006, but it was right that British forces should have tried to help the Afghan people for many years after the initial intervention.

That could not have gone on for ever, and so the military presence in Afghanistan would have to have been wound down at some point. Whenever that had happened, however, it was bound to leave obligations to be fulfilled by the British government to those Afghans rendered vulnerable by their association with the west.

It is impossible to know whether an earlier, later or more gradual withdrawal would have been better in the long run. All that can be said is that the consequences so far of the recent US-led pullout do not augur well. As we report today, the Taliban are continuing to advance across large areas of the country, and local sources are reporting the capture of Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province on the border with Iran.

This news, together with the news of Mr Menapal’s murder, emphasises the urgency of the situation. Journalists, and those who have helped western journalists, are acutely vulnerable. Just as translators and guides for the military have been given access to a UK visa programme, so should translators and “fixers” for British journalists. Any foreign correspondent knows how valuable local fixers are – the people who make arrangements for journalists and without whom the outside world would be less well informed. But in conflicts, such people can find that they are targets.

As we said in the letter: “There is an urgent need to act quickly, as the threat to their lives is already acute and worsening.” Our duty to these media workers should be honoured now.