The partial breakthrough came after a campaign led by MPs and former staff colleagues who were horrified at being left behind and exposed to Taliban retaliation for teaching the values of diversity and openness. There are an estimated 180 British Council contractors still in Afghanistan, 85 of whom are classified as ‘very high risk’, while another 90 or so are considered to be at ‘high risk’. Many of them are in hiding, fearing for their lives as the Taliban impose an increasingly repressive rule on the country. But almost 11 months after being left behind during the emergency evacuation, British Council staff still have no clear date by which they will withdraw from the country or a means to do so, according to Joe Seaton, former employee of the British Council. who worked alongside many of them in Afghanistan. The UK initially decided to prioritize full-time British Council staff living in Kabul and referred to the 180 teachers who deliver courses in the field as contractors, even though their physically isolated position arguably made them more vulnerable and visible. In a concession, Lord Ahmad and Lord Harrington, the two chief ministers, announced in mid-June that these contractors working in the sector would be able to apply to come to the UK with their families. They were initially told they would have to wait until mid-August for cases to begin processing. Ministers have pledged to Conservative MP John Baron that their cases will be dealt with on a rolling basis once they reach the Home Office. Seaton said: “We are finally making some progress but there doesn’t seem to be any clear arrangements yet on how to get them out. This is a basic question. How long will it take to get them out? Every day is another day in grave danger, and so far, all government efforts to process former British Council staff have been very slow and inconvenient. The government must massively speed up the processing of individual cases.” He again urged the British Council to give the government a paper list of their former employees so that those processing applications would have a list at hand. “I have given the British Council lists of contractors on several occasions as they did not have the information,” he said. Travel to Afghanistan is always dangerous, but Taliban checkpoints will be a challenge, said Seaton – who knows many of the trapped officers from his time as director of the British Council in Afghanistan. He runs two WhatsApp groups through which he stays in almost daily contact with the employees. He described their mood as “upbeat, but worried it might be another false dawn.” Following campaigns by Seaton and others, the Home Office announced in June that it would allow British Council contractors, GardaWorld staff and former Chevening Scholars to come to the UK with their families, as long as the total number of refugees they submit application in this category to the Foreign Office did not exceed 1,500. It was initially reported that unless they were at risk of death, their claims would not begin to be considered until August 15 – the deadline for applications for the scheme. All their claims required security checks. Home Secretary Victoria Atkins also initially insisted they would have to apply online, although she admitted this was “challenging” in parts of Afghanistan. The Foreign Secretary in a subsequent statement to the Lords appeared to suggest that no further formal requests from British Council staff would be necessary. He has announced separately that the government will only take in another 2,000 Afghans this year under its revised Afghan resettlement program. There are said to be more than 9,000 Afghans in UK hotels waiting to be housed and another 15,000 on the Afghan border, mainly in Islamabad. The British Council said: “We have a full and comprehensive list of our former colleagues and have shared this list with the relevant government agencies. We know that our former colleagues are living in increasingly desperate conditions as the situation in the country continues to deteriorate. Relocation programs in Afghanistan are managed by the UK government. We have been pressing for progress with senior contacts within the UK Government to ensure the timely consideration of our former colleagues’ relocation applications.”
