16-07-2025
‘My husband was on the Taliban's kill list. Thank you Britain for saving us'
Four months ago, the Mohammadi* family were at home in Afghanistan when they received an email that was as chilling as it was businesslike.
The father of three young children opened his laptop and clicked on the message, which declared it was from the Home Office of the British Government.
The email said he was on a list of those whom the UK had chosen to bring to Britain amid fears for their safety following a data leak.
For four years, the family had kept secret the fact that the father had worked with the British Army shortly after it began its protracted battle with the Taliban in 2014.
As a trained English teacher, the father's skills made him invaluable to British officers eager to gain local intelligence about the whereabouts of enemy commanders.
Like so many Afghan interpreters employed by the Army, he saw the arrival of the foreign forces as an opportunity to drag Afghanistan out of the grips of the oppressive regime imposed by the extreme religious intolerance of the Taliban.
The parents, in their late 20s, believed they could work with the UK soldiers to contribute to forging a better Afghanistan – as well as earning a regular income – and, importantly, were assured their safety would be guaranteed.
But, when the last remaining British troops ignominiously flew out from the Afghan capital in August 2021, the Mohammadis had no choice but to live in fear and harbour their secret.
On Wednesday, those fears were quite literally thousands of miles away.
Speaking as she returned with her three children to a Home Office hotel in Bracknell, Berkshire, the interpreter's wife placed the palm of her hand on her heart and said: 'We arrived in the UK a month ago. We were flown from Kabul to Pakistan and then on to London.'
She spoke in broken English (momentarily laughing as she explained that it was her husband, who was in his hotel room, who was fluent).
'We are grateful [to be here],' she said, placing a hand on her son's head.
She continued: 'The Taliban is very dangerous, very dangerous – we were scared for our safety.'
The interpreter's wife, who did not want to be fully identified, in part because she had been told not to talk to journalists by hotel security guards, said she felt safe in England.
She was blissfully unaware that her family's arrival, along with thousands of others, was at the centre of a political storm.
'We are grateful, thank you, thank you,' she said as she made her way back into the hotel and a security guard looked on.
According to court documents, Afghans have been sent to Bracknell in Berkshire, Preston in Lancashire, Aberdeen in Scotland, and Cardiff in Wales.
Others were sent to West Sussex and Yorkshire, while plans were afoot for hotels to be opened up to them in the North East, East Anglia and the East Midlands.
In Larkhill, Wiltshire, a cheerful Afghan mother said: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'
If there's one word that sums up the attitude of Afghan families relocated to the UK under the scheme designed to protect those who served the British Army, it is gratitude.
But there is another word that encapsulates the impact of those new arrivals on the families of British Army personnel already living at Larkhill Army base in Wiltshire: resentment.
Or as one mother, also taking her children to school, put it: 'When they arrived they got help with everything. Accommodation, doctors, learning English, free transport. But we don't get that for free. We have to pay for everything. It's just unfair.'
Hard-pressed British Army families feel their burden has grown heavier since the arrival of the Afghan interpreters and their families under the Government's resettlement scheme.
Some say they were moved out of existing Army accomodation to house them. Others report longer waiting times at the Larkhill Health Centre because of the influx of new patients.
Some of the friction is undoubtedly cultural. Or as one young Welsh mother, married to a British Army squaddie put it: 'The Afghan men and boys stare at us because we're different to their women.
'We're not covered up, maybe we don't wear as much, especially in summer, but so what? We're always told to respect each other's differences, but they don't seem to respect us.
'I've even had the teenage boys on the pavement block my path. Why do they do that? It might only be a minority of the Afghans behaving this way but it's not nice.'
Her friend, who is married to a Fijian soldier, was keen to emphasise it was not a question of race but of what appeared to be two-tier treatment.
Two-tier treatment?
She said: 'I'm married to a black man. He's served his country and put his life on the line, yet he's struggling to get British citizenship. Just stuck in the system.
'Why is that? It's the same with the other Commonwealth lads. They've served this country, but they don't seem to get any extra help or benefits, not like the Afghans.
'When they first arrived they all got welfare visits to make sure they were OK and did they need anything. We didn't get any of that. Why?'
For Briony Slatter, a 26-year-old Army wife, the presence of Afghans and their families is just another unwelcome strain on an already difficult daily life.
'I've got huge concerns about the influx,' she said as cradled her young daughter in her arms outside Larkhill Camp's bustling convenience store.
'The way the Government moved them here is not integration. It's putting us against each other.'
