I used to be in the armed forces and on my last Afghan det in 2017 I worked for the unit that managed the Ministry of Defence locally employed civilians (LECs). I personally know some of those who were desperate to get out due to fears for their safety.
I’m retired now so I only saw from the outside how it was being handled as one of the LECs who had become a good personal friend was literally on the run with his family (wife and four children including a baby) for their lives after some neighbours had told the Taliban he’d used to work for us.
It was chaotic and I understand that was to he expected really as we hadn’t got any plans in place for such a huge evacuation. I personally, via the official route set up, informed the MOD of the specific threats (as did others) to my friend and his family and we never even got a response, neither did they ever reach out to him to try to find out if he and his family were safe.
Luckily, after several days of desperate emails to ministers, MPs and former colleagues, we found a friend who was able to facilitate getting the family onto the airport. Even then it took several attempts with a friend and I sat on WhatsApp day and night trying to get the family to where they needed to be due to the changing situations at the entry gates. They’re now in Manchester safe and well.
My big worry is the same as it was in 2017 when I worked on the ‘intimidation policy’ that was supposed to help current and former employees who believed they were under imminent threat by insurgents, how many of these guys have been found and killed? The government will say there’s no evidence of that but unless you look for the evidence you won’t find it. People whose intimidation cases were closed due to lack of evidence (it was on them to prove that they’d been threatened due to their UK employment, good luck doing that!) were never checked on again just to make sure they were still alive. There was an arrogance to the policy that I didn’t like, it was like ‘we’ve investigated, you haven’t provided enough evidence so we don’t believe you and so your case is closed’. I expect the same is happening here, the MOD will have the contact details of pretty much every one of our former employees but is very unlikely to be doing welfare checks.
I still get messages regularly from one of our former LECs, a mechanic who worked for us for years servicing various military vehicles in Kabul, and despite trying many times to contact the UK Government via the channels he’s supposed to, he gets no responses. I’ve sent his details to various MPs and also the Commons Defence Committee and weeks later he’s still heard nothing. I’ve run out of things I can do to help now and that feels pretty awful.
You did more than Raab.
You did great, you should feel proud that your persistence got a family out to safety. Well done.
2 comments
I used to be in the armed forces and on my last Afghan det in 2017 I worked for the unit that managed the Ministry of Defence locally employed civilians (LECs). I personally know some of those who were desperate to get out due to fears for their safety.
I’m retired now so I only saw from the outside how it was being handled as one of the LECs who had become a good personal friend was literally on the run with his family (wife and four children including a baby) for their lives after some neighbours had told the Taliban he’d used to work for us.
It was chaotic and I understand that was to he expected really as we hadn’t got any plans in place for such a huge evacuation. I personally, via the official route set up, informed the MOD of the specific threats (as did others) to my friend and his family and we never even got a response, neither did they ever reach out to him to try to find out if he and his family were safe.
Luckily, after several days of desperate emails to ministers, MPs and former colleagues, we found a friend who was able to facilitate getting the family onto the airport. Even then it took several attempts with a friend and I sat on WhatsApp day and night trying to get the family to where they needed to be due to the changing situations at the entry gates. They’re now in Manchester safe and well.
My big worry is the same as it was in 2017 when I worked on the ‘intimidation policy’ that was supposed to help current and former employees who believed they were under imminent threat by insurgents, how many of these guys have been found and killed? The government will say there’s no evidence of that but unless you look for the evidence you won’t find it. People whose intimidation cases were closed due to lack of evidence (it was on them to prove that they’d been threatened due to their UK employment, good luck doing that!) were never checked on again just to make sure they were still alive. There was an arrogance to the policy that I didn’t like, it was like ‘we’ve investigated, you haven’t provided enough evidence so we don’t believe you and so your case is closed’. I expect the same is happening here, the MOD will have the contact details of pretty much every one of our former employees but is very unlikely to be doing welfare checks.
I still get messages regularly from one of our former LECs, a mechanic who worked for us for years servicing various military vehicles in Kabul, and despite trying many times to contact the UK Government via the channels he’s supposed to, he gets no responses. I’ve sent his details to various MPs and also the Commons Defence Committee and weeks later he’s still heard nothing. I’ve run out of things I can do to help now and that feels pretty awful.
You did more than Raab.
You did great, you should feel proud that your persistence got a family out to safety. Well done.