Latest news with #AfghanArmy
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The Afghan heroes left behind while bogus asylum seekers flock to Britain
Jamaluddin, not his real name, worked 'shoulder to shoulder' with British troops fighting the Taliban. A former colonel in the Afghan army, he is now living in hiding in a village north of Kabul, in fear of his life and attempting to stay one step ahead of the Taliban forces trying to hunt him down. His name was on the list of Afghans applying for asylum in the UK, whose details were leaked inadvertently, and with catastrophic consequences, by a British soldier working out of Special Forces headquarters in central London. Speaking by mobile phone, Jamaluddin is, by turns, petrified and furious. Not just at his abandonment by the British Government, but by a chaotic system that refused him asylum while allowing thousands of Afghans who falsely claimed they worked with British troops, and their families, into the UK. 'Among those evacuated, maybe only 20 per cent were genuine people who worked with British forces in Afghanistan and whose lives were in danger,' says Jamaluddin. 'They left behind colonels, commanders and deputy commanders of battalions while their drivers, cooks, gardeners, masseuses and shoe polishers were evacuated and are in Britain now.' There may be some hyperbole in his claims. He can be excused for that. But his claims are grounded in truth. The Government, behind the scenes, acknowledges that the 'vast majority' of the Afghans it has let in under various official resettlement schemes made bogus claims. 'Complete chaos' 'People who never said hello to a Briton and cannot even speak English are in Britain now,' says Jamaluddin. 'We had a driver who used to steal bullets and grenades that the UK and others gave to us and sell them to the Taliban – he took him and 150 of his family members with him to Britain. He is not a good person. He was evacuated during the chaos that was created after we heard about that leak. 'There are also people who took 70, 40, 50 family members with them to Britain: mother-in-law, fourth cousins. I know someone who took his sister's husband's brother's son's in-laws. It's complete chaos.' Official Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures disclosed to The Telegraph show that one single 'principal' allowed into the UK because of ties to the British military brought 22 dependents with him. That is a very big family. It is not hard to see how extended families even bigger than that may have slipped through the net. Jamaluddin says: 'People who had higher ranks added hundreds of people, friends and relatives to the list and took them out. I also know lots of people who had not even fired a single bullet but are in Britain now because they said they were in the army, and Britons fell for it. 'I cannot get my head around it. In one base, there was a guy whose job was to serve tea for people who would visit the base or clean tables. He is in Britain now, but the deputy commander of the same base is now hiding in Afghanistan. 'There are many of us who worked shoulder to shoulder with British forces still here, while our drivers and cleaners with a bad background are walking around London.' The mess has been exposed – and certainly highlighted – in the wake of a two-year court battle between the MoD and a number of newspapers, including The Telegraph. A super-injunction prevented the media from reporting the leaking of the spreadsheet, containing the names of nearly 24,000 Afghans who claimed to be working with British troops and were entitled to relocate to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap). Ministers 'panicked' Jamaluddin was one of the minority of people on the list whose claim for asylum was genuine. The data breach occurred in February 2022 and fell quickly into the hands of the Taliban, but journalists first learnt of it 18 months later in August 2023. The super-injunction – the very existence of which could not be reported – covered up the MoD's blunder, but also the extraordinary scramble to put in place a secret scheme to get Afghans on the list out of their home country and to the UK, seemingly regardless of whether their asylum claim was bogus. According to official documents, which were only revealed once the injunction was lifted on Tuesday, more than 16,000 Afghans were relocated to the UK because of the data breach. About 25,000 more are waiting in the wings. The cost of the data breach was put at £7bn but later revised down, although the financial cost has become something of a muddle. The Government estimated needing at least £20,000 per year per eligible person, with additional costs for health and education, to rehome them. The evacuation was done in secret. Parliament was not told, and neither were communities in places like Bracknell in Berkshire and Larkhill Army Camp in Wiltshire, which accommodated many of the Afghans. On average, each principal applicant brought with them seven family members. Some many more. Inside the MoD, the problems of rehousing large numbers of people secretly were vexing. One former official told The Telegraph: 'There were families made up of mid to high teen numbers. We certainly found that the many two, three and four-bed houses we had in the defence estate were often inadequate for the need and explored whether we'd need to knock two houses into one.' Another former senior official insisted that the MoD had wanted to keep the evacuations to married couples and their children, but the courts 'kept forcing us to accept much wider family members'. Baroness Cavendish, a Tory peer and former adviser to David Cameron, claimed that ministers had been seemingly 'panicked by the number of family members arriving'. Writing in the Financial Times, she said that in 2023 'several central and local government officials told me that the size of Afghan family groups was making it very difficult to find them places to live'. Godsend for bogus claimants One MoD paper, now reportable, that was circulated in March 2024 and became a part of the super-injunction court bundle, showed that before the leak officials were only allowing 10 per cent of additional family members to come in with eligible principals. In other words, Afghans trying to bring extended family into the UK were thwarted nine times out of 10. But after the leak, the ' increased risk ' left officials estimating that 55 per cent of extended family would need to be allowed in. The leap was huge. For bogus claimants, the data breach was a godsend. Suddenly, they could get to the UK and at a far swifter speed; ministers were alarmed that the Taliban were tracking them down. But the rush also meant genuine claimants have been left behind. Jamaluddin cannot understand it. 'Ah, brother, for the sake of God, what kind of process is this?' he says from his hideout. 'What kind of justice is it? What kind of human right is it? What kind of democracy is it? 'Everyone, I think, should know about it – how the real people were left behind and criminals were evacuated. You may want to laugh, but it's our reality.'
New York Times
23-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Migrants Deported to Panama Ask: ‘Where Am I Going to Go?'
When the first buses of newly freed migrants arrived this month in Panama City from a detention camp at the edge of a jungle, three people were visibly ill. One needed H.I.V. treatment, a lawyer said, another had run out of insulin and a third was suffering from seizures. Confusion, chaos and fear reigned. 'What am I going to do?' one migrant wondered aloud. 'Where am I going to go?' These are questions being asked by dozens of migrants deported to Panama last month by the Trump administration, part of the president's sweeping efforts to expel millions of people from the United States. At first, Panamanian officials had locked the group of about 300 people in a hotel. Then, those who did not accept repatriation to their home countries were sent to a guarded camp at the edge of a jungle. Finally, after a lawsuit and an outcry from human rights groups, the Panamanian authorities released the deportees, busing them back to Panama City. Now, the remaining migrants — from Iran, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere — are free but stranded in a country that doesn't want them, many sleeping in a school gymnasium made available by an aid group, with no real sense of what to do next. Interviews with 25 of the deportees offered a revealing look at who is being pushed out of the United States by the Trump administration, and what happens once they arrive in Central America. The region has emerged as a key cog in the deportation machinery President Trump is trying to kick into high gear. But Washington's decision to send migrants from around the world to Central America has also raised legal questions, tested governments seemingly unprepared to receive migrants and left people marooned in nations where they have no support networks or long-term legal status. Most of the migrants in Panama said that when they arrived in the United States they told officials they were fearful of returning to their countries, but were never given an opportunity to formally ask for asylum. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an email that the migrants had been 'properly removed' from the United States. She added that 'not a single one of these aliens asserted fear of returning to their home country at any point during processing or custody.' 'The U.S. government coordinated for the welfare of these aliens to also be managed by humanitarian groups in Panama,' she said. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has sent hundreds of migrants from around the world to Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador, though it is unclear if the U.S. government plans to continue doing so. 'Whether there will be more planes from the United States or not, I honestly don't know,' Panama's president, Raúl Mulino, said this month. 'I'm not very inclined to do it, because they leave us with the problem.'' Those now stranded in Panama include Hedayatullah Zazai, 34, a man who said he had served as an officer in the Afghan Army, working alongside U.S. Special Forces and American consultants. After the Taliban took over, he fled to Pakistan, he said, then Iran, then flew to Brazil and trekked through South and Central America to get to the U.S. border. The deportees also include Iranian Christians who said they were under threat at home, and several Afghan women from the Hazara ethnic minority who say they face persecution under the Taliban. Another deportee is Simegnat, 37, an Amhara woman traveling alone from Ethiopia who said she had been targeted by her government because her ethnicity led the authorities to suspect her of working with a rebel group. She said she fled after her home was set on fire, her father and brother were killed and the police told her she would be next. 'I was not a person who wanted to flee my country,' she said. 'I owned a restaurant and I had a good life.' 'We are humans, but we have nowhere to live,' she said of the Amhara people. She and several of the migrants, fearing for the safety of relatives back home, asked not to be identified by their full names. Most of the migrants described crossing the Mexico-U. S. border early this year, being held for about two weeks in detention, then shackled by U.S. officials and put on a plane to an unknown destination. Some said they had been told they were headed from California to Texas; most said they were never given an opportunity to formally ask for asylum. One 19-year-old woman from Afghanistan said U.S. officials had permitted her parents and five younger siblings to cross the border into the United States. As the only sibling over 18, she was separated from them, detained and flown to Panama, she said. Some said they owed hundreds or thousands of dollars to people who helped them fund their journeys. 'If I go back to Ethiopia without their money,' Simegnat said, 'they would kill me.' Panama has given the deportees 30-day permits that allow them to stay in the country for the time being and has given them the option of extending their stay to 90 days. While Panama has an asylum program, migrants have received mixed messages about the likelihood of receiving long-term legal protections in the country, they said. Another option is for individuals to find another country that will take them. But that would require a case-by-case legal effort, said Silvia Serna, a lawyer who is part of the team that filed a lawsuit that called Panama's detention of the migrants at the hotel and border camp was illegal. Ms. Serna said she had been interviewing the migrants to see what assistance her team could offer, but cautioned that it might be very hard for people to find welcoming countries. In interviews, three of the Iranian deportees said they planned to turn around and head back to the United States and were already negotiating with a smuggler. A fourth had already left for the U.S. border. One is Negin, 24, who identified herself as a gay woman from Iran, where openly gay people face government persecution. 'At least if I'm lingering idly,' she said, 'I'll be inside an American detention camp and on American soil.' The smuggler quoted one woman a price of $5,000 to get her across the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, and $8,000 to secure her a visa and put her on a plane to Canada. For now, most of the group is staying at a school gymnasium-turned-shelter outside Panama City run by two Christian charities. The migrants sleep on thin mattresses and eat meals from plastic foam containers. A group of them went door to door at various embassies this week asking for help, but said they had been rejected at every one. Elías Cornejo, who works with one of the aid groups, Fe y Alegría, was unsparing in his criticism of the new U.S. administration. 'We think that the policies of the Trump administration are part of a machine that grinds the migrant like meat,' he said. 'And that obviously is a serious problem of inhumanity.' A smaller group of deportees, mostly families with children, has been staying at a hotel in Panama City paid for by UNICEF. Among them is a married couple, Mohammad and Mona who are Christian converts from Iran. One night, as their 8-year-old son broke down, both parents leaned over him, stroking his face. 'He doesn't go to school and life has become repetitive for him,' Mohammad said. The couple had considered re-entering the United States illegally, they said, and eventually decided they could not put their child through more suffering. They are holding out hope that a lawyer on Ms. Serna's team can persuade the Trump administration to grant them entry as persecuted Christians. If that doesn't work, Mohammad said, he was considering staying in Panama and was already looking for work. Not far from the hotel recently, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, 27, another Iranian Christian, entered a white-walled church and knelt in a pew. Ms. Ghasemzadeh became something of a leader of the group after she posted a video online from detention at the Panama City hotel, pleading with the world for help. She said that a priest had offered the migrants group housing north of Panama City, where they would be welcome to stay as long as they were in the country. The houses have kitchens, and they would have no curfew, she added. She was mulling over the offer. 'I don't know what will happen next,' Ms. Ghasemzadeh said. 'I don't know my next step. At the moment, we are in God's hands.'
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In negotiations with Russia, Trump is repeating his ‘complete disaster' peace deal with Taliban
Donald Trump is elected U.S. president after criticizing a war abroad and calling for its end. He negotiates a deal with an adversary of the United States under heavy sanctions, cutting an ally out of their own country's peace talks. The disastrous deal is viewed as a surrender to the opposition, prioritizing ending the conflict quickly over supporting U.S. allies or long-term stability in the region. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's what happened in Afghanistan during Trump's first term in office, and what Ukrainians and their partners fear may be happening to them now. When Trump began promising on the campaign trail to end the war in Ukraine, U.K. parliamentary member Mark Martin saw 'loads of similarities' to how Trump ended the war in Afghanistan. 'The deal wasn't a deal, it was a capitulation,' said Martin, who served in Afghanistan and wrote An Intimate War, a book on the conflict. 'And that's what Trump's trying to engineer here (in Ukraine).' In February 2020, Trump's team signed an agreement with the Taliban, ending two decades of U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan government at the time — a partner of the U.S. — was excluded from negotiations. The subsequent withdrawal of U.S. troops, despite the Taliban's failure to adhere to its side of the agreement, was a key factor in the shocking takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in 2021. Though no comparison is exact, 'what's the same is the core instinct of the American leadership — to reach out to the enemy and just give away the family jewels,' said Martin. Since taking office, Trump and his staff have alarmed Ukrainian officials with their negotiating stance towards Russia. Immediately, officials appeared to undermine Ukraine's negotiating leverage by saying NATO membership was not an option and restoring Ukraine's borders was 'an unrealistic objective.' An especially concerning development was a February meeting in Saudi Arabia between U.S. and Russian officials, to which Ukraine and Europe were not invited. Earlier this week, Trump said that it was 'not important' for Zelensky to be present during the negotiations. Of course, the United States had troops deployed in Afghanistan for two decades fighting a Taliban insurgency alongside Afghan Army troops, while Ukraine is fighting a land invasion by a sovereign nation without any U.S. boots on the ground. The deal with the Taliban also centered on ending U.S. involvement, not the entire conflict. However, the U.S. agreement signed with the Taliban in Doha was the only other peace deal Trump negotiated and is instructive in what his isolationist rhetoric looks like in practice. Many experts see clear parallels with the way peace talks are unfolding today. The lesson for Ukrainians, warns Martin, is clear: 'Don't rely on America. Find other allies.' Trump had railed against the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan on social media and called for a withdrawal as far back as 2011. By the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, almost 2,400 Americans had died serving in Afghanistan since the initial invasion in 2001. Trump began his efforts to directly negotiate with the Taliban in 2018 and appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as his special advisor tasked with facilitating talks. Meeting in Qatar, Khalilzad and Taliban representatives opened up peace talks, though they excluded the Afghan government at the Taliban's demand. 'The Afghan government was completely excluded. They were cut out,' said Tim Willasey-Wilsey, a visiting professor at War Studies at King's College and former British diplomat. 'This is the same playbook (in Ukraine). Zelensky is out and Europe is out.' John Bolton, Trump's national security advisor at the time of the Doha deal, was also frozen out of the Afghanistan talks once Trump realized Bolton didn't support his plans for a quick withdrawal at the expense of stability. This precedent bodes poorly for those hoping that U.S. officials who oppose Russia, like State Secretary Marco Rubio, might steer Trump away from siding with Moscow, Willasey-Wilsey added. Already, Keith Kellogg, Trump's current special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, was absent from recent U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia. There has been no indication from the Trump Administration that he will attend future rounds, and some experts argue he is actively being sidelined due to his relatively pro-Ukraine stance. In February 2020, during Trump's previous presidency, the Taliban signed a deal with the United States in Doha, Qatar. The U.S. promised to withdraw its troops within 14 months and signaled it would lift economic sanctions, while the Taliban agreed to not attack U.S. troops, eventually open talks with the Afghan government, and to prevent terrorist groups from operating in Taliban-controlled territory. The deal signed in Doha had secret agreements that were not publicized, leaving Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confused about exactly what the U.S. president had promised his foe. 'All Trump wanted was to say, 'I got out of Afghanistan.' The details didn't really matter.' Meanwhile, the Taliban violated its pledges almost immediately. It escalated violent attacks and maintained ties with terrorist groups. Rather than holding the Taliban accountable, the Trump administration continued with its pledge to withdraw troops. 'It's very easy to say (the two wars) are not similar. Of course, it's very easy to draw distinctions. But in terms of the general behavior of Trump towards negotiations, I think it's very instructive,' said Willasey-Wilsey. 'All Trump wanted was to say, 'I got out of Afghanistan.' The details didn't really matter,' said Willasey-Wilsey, calling his negotiating tactics a 'complete disaster.' 'We've got such short memories. It was only four years ago. But we should have remembered how this man operates,' he added. 'It's a bit of a condemnation of all of us that we weren't really ready.' Trump's successor, Joe Biden, inherited the Doha deal and decided to see through the U.S. commitment. Within weeks of Biden's announcement in April 2021 that the war in Afghanistan would end and a full withdrawal was on track, violence surged and the Taliban began to rapidly conquer huge swaths of land — culminating in a deadly and chaotic evacuation of more than a hundred thousand people from the main airport in Kabul. The poorly planned withdrawal has remained a stain on Joe Biden's legacy, but many in the U.S. and abroad have forgotten the role of Trump's negotiation priorities in laying the groundwork for one of Washington's worst foreign policy failures in recent history. Many from Trump's administration distanced themselves from the deal in the aftermath, and critics have seen it as an effective surrender. Should the Ukraine deal similarly fall apart, Trump may again try to blame anyone but himself, said Willasey-Wilsey: 'If the thing goes horribly wrong in two or three years' time, because Putin kicks off again, and if the guarantees are hopeless, which they will be, he'll blame Biden, he'll blame the Europeans.' Trump blamed Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris for the 'humiliation in Afghanistan' as recently as last year. Yet a review led by the U.S. National Security Council found that Biden's actions were constrained by the Doha deal, and placed the blame on Trump. 'The (Afghanistan) deal itself was highly flawed,' said Philippe Lefevre, associate director of the University of Surrey's Centre for Britain and Europe. 'It gave everything to the Taliban with no real response back. The Taliban immediately reneged on the deal. There was no ability or mechanism for the U.S. or NATO forces in Afghanistan to hold them accountable.' 'That is the same fear here' in Ukraine, added Lefevre, 'that you will be giving (Russian President Vladimir) Putin everything he wants. He can promise whatever he wants. But if he reneges — and my belief is he wants to renege — what can you do?' Both the Taliban and Putin have a track record of human rights violations, noted Lefevre, and have undermined their credibility during negotiations. Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, for example, was a blatant violation of the Minsk Agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 after Russian military offensives in Ukraine's Donbas. In his negotiations, Zelensky has tried to protect against potential violations of a future agreement by maintaining that any ceasefire must come with security assurances. Zelensky recently provided U.S. officials with a list of more than two dozen times that he says Russia violated ceasefires negotiated between 2014 and 2022. Even Khalilzad, who negotiated the deal in Doha that led to Afghanistan's collapse, has chimed in on the issue. In a post on X on Feb. 18, Khalilzad wrote that 'credible security guarantees to deter future Russian invasions' and 'a peace-keeping force' are necessary for a permanent end to the war in Ukraine, perhaps drawing on his experience with Afghanistan. Zelensky has maintained that Ukraine will not accept any deal negotiated without its participation. And, since Trump is seeking an end to fighting involving Zelensky's forces — rather than just a withdrawal of U.S. troops — Zelensky's involvement can't be ignored as easily as in Afghanistan. Either way, Trump officials have made it clear that they want a deal quickly and have suggested that one is already 'close.' A press secretary for the administration said it could arrive as soon as this week, while Moscow said it is open to a ceasefire only if the agreement 'suits' Russia. One of the biggest differences between Afghanistan and Ukraine may also be one of the biggest hopes for Kyiv to avoid repeating the mistakes in Kabul, according to Lefevre: the role of other European countries. 'Europe has a much larger ability to manage this withdrawal, has a much larger interest in successfully bolstering Ukraine during this potential withdrawal, and could and should help Ukraine push back against some of the worst aspects of the negotiations,' said Lefevre. Among the most egregious aspects, he said, is the discussion to transfer Ukrainian mineral rights and natural resources to the U.S., which is 'clearly one-sided.' The U.S. has reportedly pressured Ukraine to give up $500 billion of its natural resources as repayment for American aid to Ukraine, which was given without the expectation of repayment. Zelensky has thus far refused, noting that the proposed agreement fails to provide any security guarantees and vastly outweighs the $100 billion provided by the U.S. Kellogg has said that Europe will not be directly included in peace negotiations but its interests will be taken into account. So far, Europe has vocally called for Ukraine's and its own inclusion in peace talks, is continuing to provide aid, and is reportedly forming a plan to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine. 'It's not an inevitability that there is a withdrawal like Afghanistan, but it is up to Europeans to make sure that's the case,' said Lefevre. 'The Europeans must be far more prepared to go it alone. We were not prepared to go it alone in Kabul.' Read also: How Ukraine has pushed back and held the line against Russia for 3 years We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
