Labour’s asylum system leaves thousands of Afghan refugees in limbo

Britain’s failure to resettle Afghan refugees puts them at risk (Photo: WikipediaCommons)

The United States and Britain left a trail of destruction in Afghanistan.

The British state is still failing the people whose lives it tore apart as nearly 30,000 Afghan asylum seekers are left waiting to hear if they can come to Britain.

A report on Wednesday by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that 37,950 people had come to Britain from Afghanistan under various resettlement schemes. But there are still 29,655 waiting for an outcome.

The NAO said that the arrangements for dealing with relocation applications are “chaotic” and take “much longer” than necessary.

In 2023, about 8,000 Afghans, half of them children, were living in hotels in Britain as “bridging” accommodation.

They were given just three months’ notice to leave by the Conservative government, a decision that the NAO says drove people to homelessness.

A British soldier accidentally leaked details of Afghans applying for relocation in 2022. Some of those whose names were shared worked alongside British forces during the 20 year occupation of the country, making them obvious targets for Taliban reprisals.

An additional resettlement scheme—the Afghan Response Route (ARR)—was set up for the people affected by the leak. But because the details of the incident were kept secret until last year, communication about the existence of the ARR was restricted within the government.

The US and Britain invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the guise of bringing democracy and women’s rights. But the bombing was never intended to bring liberation. It was part of a broader project to dominate the Middle East and its oil reserves.

The Western occupation was built on brutality. British soldiers committed atrocities such as the murder of four teenagers in the village of Loy Bagh in 2012.

British forces held Afghans indefinitely and without charge at its secret prison at Camp Bastion and routinely handed over prisoners to the US where they would be tortured at Bagram airbase.

When the West’s puppet regime collapsed in 2021, the Taliban retook control. By that time, Afghanistan was one of the world’s poorest countries, sanctions on the new regime plunged people further into poverty and hardship.

Now, nearly five years on, many Afghans who want to leave face a bureaucratic nightmare. It leaves them at risk of violence in their home country and homelessness if they come to Britain.