Britain has a moral obligation to refugees from Afghanistan. We have to be doing much more to help them

Editorial: In 2015 at the height of the Syrian humanitarian crisis we launched a campaign to say ‘Refugees Welcome’ – we now repeat that message and call on the government to offer a home to more of those in peril

(Brian Adcock)

It is now apparent that the government’s “bespoke” Afghan refugee plan is wholly inadequate to the task. Days after the Taliban took over in Kabul, and the reality of Taliban rule belies the words of the regime’s spin doctors.

The reality on the ground for the Afghan people is of course very different. This is especially the case for those who were associated with the ancien regime and its western allies – and the Taliban makes no distinction between those western military, contractors, charities, aid agencies or anything else – all are potential traitors. Some of those who helped the British and others are already dead. More will follow.

That is why The Independent is once again saying “Refugees Welcome” and calling on the government to do much more to deal with the crisis. In 2015, as hundreds of thousands of people fled conflicts in the Middle East and Africa – most prominently the civil war in Syria – and applied for asylum in the EU, we took the government of David Cameron to task for its refusal to take more people in.

Our decision to publish the tragic image of Alan Kurdi – a young Syrian boy whose body was washed up near Bodrum in Turkey – was not taken lightly, but expressed the gravity of the situation. We said in an early-September editorial: “With each new development hands are wrung, heads are shaken, yet still there is no cogent solution in sight... Responding to the movement of so many desperate people is not straightforward. Yet it is clear that many ... existing policies are inadequate.”

Similar words could be written about the situation in Afghanistan today, which is a damning indictment of the position taken by Boris Johnson and his government.

In international law, under the terms of the 1951 European Convention on refugees, the obligation to offer asylum is absolute. In practice, the figure of 20,000 and 5,000 refugees per year to be accepted by the two UK Afghan resettlement schemes respectively is entirely arbitrary. It is based on a similar scheme aimed at helping those refugees from Syria previously mentioned – a scheme that was equally maligned.

Respected charities suggest that the real figure needed when it comes to Afghanistan, after two decades of western involvement, is far bigger, particularly if family members are counted (as they should be, given the Taliban’s habit of visiting retribution upon close relatives). Similar arguments apply with the same force to other western and Arab nations involved in the very broadly based military intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 – including the US. All need to be doing what they can.

As with Syria and too many other conflicts, it is the countries closest to the turmoil that will face the greatest of challenges to house and feed refugees, and to keep them safe and warm as colder weather approaches. Many of those in Afghanistan are fleeing to Pakistan and other nations. As well as taking a suitable number of refugees, geopolitical rivalries will need to be set aside in favour of cooperation to ensure these neighbouring states are supported to ensure claims for asylum can be sympathetically considered.

Inevitably, too, some refugees will find themselves trafficked to the west and smuggled in dinghies and in the back of lorries across the English Channel. The “official” channels may prove unreliable, and disrupted by the Taliban. Some will have a strong claim to asylum from their involvement with the British, others will be more marginal. They should be welcomed, and the fine charities devoted to their welfare deserve the strongest of support.