SEVERAL thousand Afghans who worked for the British mission remain stranded in Afghanistan well over a year since the fall of Kabul, a damning report by MPs has said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted to the Commons defence committee that around 4,600 people eligible for relocation to Britain under a resettlement scheme have yet to be evacuated from the Taliban-controlled country. 

The committee’s report today urges ministers to detail what action is being taken to ensure their safe passage to Britain. 

Its chairman, Tory MP Tobias Ellwood said: “The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a dark chapter in UK military history.

“For the Afghans who co-operated with the UK, and the British troops who served in the country, the nightmare is far from over.

“They are at risk of harm as a direct result of assisting the UK mission. We can’t change the events that unfolded in August 2021, but we owe it to those Afghans, who placed their lives in danger to help us, to get them and their families to safety.”

The MoD told the committee that 6,600 people had been relocated by last November under the government’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). 

The scheme applies to Afghans who worked for British forces, whose lives were plunged into danger in the run-up to the withdrawal of US and British troops in August 2021, swiftly followed by the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan. 

The report found that the scheme should have been “much further advanced” by the time the need for the evacuation became urgent. 

The report identified an “obvious lack of effective co-ordination” across government departments handling the evacuation of Afghans, resulting in “real and painful human consequences for those who reasonably expected to be evacuated but were not.”

Of the 4,600 people eligible for relocation under ARAP, some have settled elsewhere, the report notes.

As many as 72,269 applications are still awaiting a decision, though the MoD claimed a “vast majority” of these were likely ineligible for resettlement.  

The government later launched the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme to resettle up to 20,000 Afghans in Britain. This scheme has also received criticism over delays and stringent eligibility criteria. 

The report also calls on the government to conduct an “open, honest and detailed review” of military operations and political decisions throughout the two decades of Britain’s occupation of Afghanistan.