The withdrawal from Afghanistan which ended the 20 year military campaign there was a huge success if you were a stray cat or dog off the back streets of Kabul. Not so successful if you were one of the Afghan translators, or others who assisted the occupying forces, who have been left behind. There was no excuse for not evacuating all these people and their families, we had ample warning about the impending withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not the impulsive last-minute warning from ‘sleepy’ Joe Biden but the one issued months earlier by his illustrious predecessor Donald Trump in February 2020. If we do not move quickly and find a way of getting the remaining people who risked their lives to help us out of Afghanistan there will be very few of them left. There are credible reports that the Taliban—equipped by the withdrawing forces with a very helpful list of names and biometric data of the ‘collaborators’ along with some state of the art weaponry—is going door-to-door and executing them. An additional group of people are in extreme danger according to former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, approximately 400 Afghan Christians left in the country who are all considered apostate and thereby facing execution.
While we fail to evacuate identifiable individuals and leave them to a fate which is certain death we simultaneously agree not only to evacuate but to accommodate 20,000 Afghan refugees in the UK. Why? Who are these people? How many assisted us in any way and what will the consequences be? Clearly, anyone in clear and present danger and who claims asylum should be considered seriously under international law but—and I say it again—20,000? How will they be selected and why will they be chosen over the millions who will be left behind to suffer at the hands of the Taliban? By all accounts we have not even managed to evacuate all our own citizens. And where are we going to put these people? We already have a massive housing shortage in the UK.
There has been a surge of generosity among the British people offering to house Afghan refugees in their homes. But how many and for how long? I may be wrong, but I imagine that the majority of those offering to accommodate Afghan refugees are of a middle class persuasion. After all, these are the people who are likely to have the spare rooms and the inclination to do this. But have they looked at the facts regarding the people of Afghanistan? According to Rod Liddle in The Spectator, 99 per cent believe in Sharia law, 85 per cent believe adulterers ought to be stoned to death and 79 per cent believe apostates should be executed. What could possibly go wrong?
I can see the crushed avocado sandwiches dropping from middle class jaws and mighty spillages of oat milk when a refugee family promotes this view over brunch. Do we want people with these views imported en masse into the UK? They will not even have much in common with most British Muslims many of whom reside in the UK precisely to get away from the extreme and repulsive aspects of Sharia law in their own countries of origin. It is simply impossible that we are going to be able to select the 1 per cent who shun Sharia law, the 15 per cent who would not stone adulterers and the 21 per cent who would not execute an apostate. Moreover, how many ‘sleepers’ will be infiltrated into the UK under cover of humanitarianism by any and each of Al-Qaeda, ISIS-K or even the Taliban themselves? As far as we know the Taliban have no ambitions for slaughter within the shores of the UK. But what if they decide to seek and destroy former collaborators among the Afghan diaspora? And how long before the various tribes, in time-honoured fashion, start fighting among themselves on our streets?
The situation is certainly conflicting. Conditions in Afghanistan are undoubtedly worse because of our invasion and occupation. We do have a responsibility for the innocent people whose lives we have ended and disrupted, at least our government does and especially the war criminals who perpetrated the invasion; specifically, one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. I have no solution to offer but I do think that one of the wrong solutions is to establish another significant minority community in the UK consisting of people whose views not only differ but demonstrably conflict with the values of most of the population. We have no choice; we were not consulted. But we can urge our government to put integration and not ‘multiculturalism’ at the heart of this programme of resettlement. Only time will tell if this gamble has worked.
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