The rapid withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan saw former Afghan British Army translators in danger of Taliban revenge attacks.
The Daily Mail was well aware of the risks translators faced and set up its ‘Betrayal of The Brave’ campaign back in 2015. The news brand was seeking to get safe relocation of Afghan translators who had felt abandoned by the UK government after having risked their lives to help the army serve during the conflict.
The campaign enjoyed repeated success, with vulnerable Afghan translators winning the right to come to the UK in 2015, 2018 and in 2021.
As well as those still in Afghanistan, the Daily Mail spotlighted those translators that had already relocated to the UK but had had their requests for their families to join them denied. In the summer of 2021, the news brand was successful in securing the widening of eligibility criteria, enabling the families of those translators to join them in the UK.
We welcome the arrival today of former Afghan interpreters and their families. We still have concerns though… 35% of all interpreters were terminated. This seems extraordinarily high and we do not believe that all of them can have been dismissed for reasons that would justify exclusion.”
Colonel Simon Diggins, a former British defence attaché in Kabul and a co-founder of the Sulha Alliance representing Afghan translators, told the Daily Mail
