Tens of thousands of Afghans are still waiting to hear if they will be relocated to Britain, 17 months after the Taliban takeover.
New figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) show that there are still 71,149 applications waiting to be processed under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP).
The scheme was designed for Afghan citizens who worked for or with the UK government in the country.
A recent wave of revenge attacks in Afghanistan has left many of them in further fear for their lives.
Charities have warned that people who helped deliver UK-funded programmes are falling through the cracks in the government’s resettlement schemes. Afghans are also in danger while they wait for months for a decision on their ARAP applications, they say.
In response to a freedom of information (FOI) request, the MoD revealed that in November its staff were only just looking at applications made in January 2022, meaning those applicants had faced at least an eight-month delay.
Further FOI figures show that more than 127,000 applications to the scheme have been received since April 2021. An estimated 71,149 applications are still to be processed, but the MoD said the vast majority of these are thought to be ineligible or duplicates.
Charity workers and former civil servants have warned that the eligibility criteria are far too restrictive, leaving British aid workers in Afghanistan at risk of abandonment.
As of 21 December 2022, around 10,900 applicants, not including their family members, had been found to be ineligible for ARAP, with 2,780 confirmed eligible.
Around 4,300 additional people (principal applicants and their family members) are thought to be eligible for sanctuary in Britain under the scheme. The MoD said that more than 12,000 people have been brought to the UK under ARAP.
An MoD spokesperson said: “Our priority, as set by ministers, is not simply processing a volume of applications, but finding and relocating those Afghans who meet the ARAP criteria through direct service with the British armed forces.
“There are fewer than 1,000 interpreters and other staff yet to be allocated a place on the scheme. Our priority is finding them and bringing the individuals and their families to the UK.”
One person affected by the delays is a former DfID (Department for International Development) employee in Kabul. Fatima*, who is currently living in Dubai, applied for ARAP relocation in June 2021, but her application was rejected as the MoD incorrectly concluded she had been a contractor and therefore didn’t qualify.
After further delays, she was told in February 2022 that her application had been successful. However, her ARAP visa has now been paused while the British embassy awaits Home Office approval.
Another person who is awaiting a response to his ARAP application was told by the MoD that he would need to go to the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get his children’s birth certificates and his marriage certificate validated.
Zehrah Hassan, advocacy director of the charity Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), condemned the backlog, saying that the “disgraceful ARAP figures reveal our government has slammed the door shut on vulnerable Afghans”.
“People who have already risked their lives – working as interpreters, teachers and aid workers – will now face the impossible choice of risking persecution in Afghanistan, or making their own perilous journeys here and facing criminalisation,” she added.
Mark Davies, head of campaigns at the Refugee Council, said: “It is unacceptable that so many Afghans are caught in the backlog of applications to the ARAP programme, leaving them desperately unsafe in Afghanistan.”
Conservative MP John Baron is calling on the government to ensure that former British Council workers and their families in Afghanistan are brought to safety in the UK.
He told The Independent that the backlogs seen in the ARAP scheme are being replicated in the separate, broader route, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), which was set up for those who stood up for UK values including democracy, women’s rights and freedom of speech.
Some British Council workers were accepted under ARAP, but teachers who were contracted by the British Council were told that they did not qualify, despite being at equal risk of persecution. They were instead told to apply for ACRS.
Joe Seaton, former deputy director at the British Council in Afghanistan, said that there was “no consistency and no explanation” for the teachers being rejected by the ARAP scheme.
He said: “All the teachers continue to be baffled by the fact that the British Council managers and office staff received ARAP approval (together with a small minority of teachers), while the vast majority of teachers received ARAP rejections.
“The teachers all met the original ARAP criteria when the scheme was first launched, yet almost all of them were rejected.”
He called on the foreign affairs select committee to investigate why “so many eligible and at-risk Afghans were excluded” from the ARAP criteria.
Problems are also plaguing the alternative ACRS scheme, with The Independent revealing in December that only four people have so far been resettled in the UK on the second ACRS pathway.
Referring to the delays with the ARAP scheme, Mr Baron said: “There are parallel backlogs with ACRS. The good news is that within the last few weeks, 47 [British Council contractors] have finally been told they can make for the border and cross to the relative safety of a third country, pending their onward journey to the UK.
“The bad news is that around 45 are still waiting for this news, and about a further 100 have not heard anything at all from the government since they completed their initial applications to the ACRS last summer.
“We will continue to campaign to clear the bureaucratic blockages which are delaying the processing of the contractors’ applications and preventing them from getting to safety.”
Defence minister James Heappey told parliament that, as of November 2022, there are 327 principal applicants to the ARAP scheme with confirmed eligibility for relocation to the UK who are still in Afghanistan.
*Fatima’s name has been changed
