Failed attempt to evacuate Afghans who were guarding the British Embassy | Afghanistan

[ad_1]

A last-ditch attempt to evacuate all British embassy guards on one of the last trips from Afghanistan failed, leaving them increasingly fearful about their future.

International security company GardaWorld, which employed about 200 Afghan employees on contract to protect the British Embassy in Kabul, arranged 10 buses to collect its former employees to take them to the airport before dawn on Thursday.

A clear passage was negotiated with the Taliban, allowing buses to pass through checkpoints, and the convoy arrived safely but was not allowed to enter the airport gates.

The guards and their families remained on buses outside the airport from 7 am until about 6 pm when explosions were heard on the other side of the airport perimeter, forcing the operation to be abandoned.

“We were very optimistic and hopeful that this would not happen and that these people would be devastated – and rightly so,” said Oliver Westmacott, GardaWorld’s head of operations in the Middle East.

Dozens Killed in Suicide Bombing at Kabul Airport, Afghanistan – Photo Report

The guards said it was a terrifying experience, especially for the kids. A woman went into labor on a bus during the long wait, and had to be taken to the hospital.

Although US officials have been cooperative and willing to allow buses into the airport, entry permit does not appear to have been made by British officials processing evacuation visas.

“Despite government spokespersons confirming at the end of last week that British Embassy security personnel would be given clearance to leave, it later became clear that there was a huge number of people trying to get out and that embassy security personnel were trying to evacuate,” a source close to the evacuation attempt said. The British are not at the top of the list.”It was a bandwidth problem.”

After hearing the explosion, the guards left the two buses and ran away from their homes on their own. The Taliban were shooting in the air to keep people away from the airport. One of the guards said, “We had to run 500 meters and then find cars to take us home.”

They were devastated by the failure to get them out of the country in the final hours before the airport was closed to people trying to flee.

“At the last minute, the UK government and GardaWorld really wanted to be the protagonists of this tragedy but unfortunately it didn’t happen,” said one of the guards. “But they could have done it better with better management, days ago, when there was no rush. Our lives are full of tragedy now, we live in fear.”

He said there were now concerns that their safety would be further jeopardized by the evacuation attempt, because personal information had been shared with the Taliban in order to organize a safe passage to the airport. “Our normal lives will now be greatly restricted. Now that they have complete information about all of us.”

Many said the emergency evacuation attempt was organized too late, weeks after they first tried to highlight their concerns that the UK government had abandoned them. Many applied for the UK’s Emergency Evacuation Scheme, the Afghan Resettlement and Assistance Policy (Arap), when it was first announced in May, but were told in July that they were ineligible as they were not direct embassy staff, but were hired Contract by GardaWorld outsourcing. Their contracts were terminated this week, days after the UK embassy was closed.

After the guards’ predicament was highlighted in the media, the government took an unexpected turn last Friday and its spokesperson said: “We will assist all Afghan security guards contracted through GardaWorld to protect the Embassy. They will be granted the right to enter the UK and we are now working from During the difficult logistics of getting them out of Kabul.”

At first, GardaWorld hoped that the Department of Defense would assist with the evacuation, but when it became clear that this was not going to materialize, the company made its own attempt to get its former employees out of Afghanistan, in an operation similar to the one it undertook last week to evacuate all of its expatriate employees. Sources said US officials worked successfully with GardaWorld to facilitate the evacuation of guards who played similar roles at the US embassy in Kabul, and said the UK’s process of removing people was less organized and not well resourced.

Westmacott said the company would continue to try to help its former employees leave. “Our message to our people is that the Arap process is ongoing, and our people need to be patient to wait for those approvals,” he said.

An FCDO spokesperson said: “The scale of the evacuation effort in Kabul is huge and we have now helped more than 12,200 people leave Afghanistan since August 14.

“We will continue to do everything in our power to fulfill our obligations to remove eligible British and Afghan nationals from the country while the security situation allows.”

[ad_2]