[Thousands are still at the
Taliban’s mercy in Afghanistan, and expert warns that ‘politically expedient’
initiative may now wither]
The Afghan Citizens Resettlement
Scheme (ACRS) was announced
to great fanfare in August as the Taliban took Kabul,
but four months on it has still not started. A senior Whitehall source with
intimate knowledge of the scheme said it had been delayed because it had not
received adequate support for it to launch.
Adam Thomson,
a former Foreign Office director for Afghanistan, said that, based on his
experience, it appeared evident that the scheme to resettle vulnerable Afghans
had been a cynical show of political opportunism that was now destined to fail.
“It looks like a politically
expedient announcement. With the media focus having gone elsewhere, the
government has lost political will, lost focus and lost implementation.
“It’s a tried and tested technique.
You announce something, you look good. Then somehow circumstances prevent you
from actually achieving your targets,” said Thomson, who is also a former UK
ambassador to Pakistan and Nato”.
Since the announcement of the
resettlement scheme on 18 August more than 100 days have passed with no
apparent tangible progress. Its website has not been updated since 13 September
and confirms the programme “is
not yet open”.
Last night, however, the government
issued a statement saying it was committed to the initiative and that the ACRS
was “one of the most generous schemes in our country’s history”.
Without offering a timeframe, it
promised “more details soon” on a scheme which was promoted by ministers as a
programme to help women, children and religious minorities at risk of Taliban reprisals.
Similar disquiet also surrounds the
resources and effectiveness of another government relocation scheme involving
Afghanistan – the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).
On Friday, a parliamentary answer
revealed that just 84 officials have been assigned to Arap, which was launched
in April and conceived to resettle people who worked for the UK in Afghanistan. The same
parliamentary response confirmed it had so far received more than 90,000
applications, with more arriving each day – a caseload that suggests each
official is dealing with or has processed more than 1,000 applications.
When the Home Office was asked how
many officials had been assigned to the resettlement scheme, it would not
provide a figure. Similarly, no indication of resources relating to the scheme
has been provided, although a Whitehall source said if they had wanted to get
the scheme up and running quickly they could have recruited volunteers from the
civil service.
The Whitehall source, who has
knowledge of the ACRS, said: “The resettlement scheme was a ticket for people
to rebuild their life but it’s just not been resourced appropriately.”
Thomson added: “As far as I can
tell there’s no cross-Whitehall coordination mechanism that brings together
FCDO [the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office], the Home Office and
the MoD to actually make sense of Arap and launch ACRS.”
A spokesperson for Adam Smith International (ASI),
which delivered UK government aid programmes in Afghanistan between 2002 and
2018, said the failure to open the resettlement scheme had compounded
eligibility issues with regard to Arap and had left hundreds in grave danger.
“Almost none of our former staff
have had any update or information about their applications since the
evacuation finished. The ACRS scheme is not yet open. This has left hundreds of
our staff from UK projects in a desperate situation in Kabul, without hope and
without information,” they said.
Only about 20 of ASI’s former staff
out of more than 230 who applied for resettlement via the Arap scheme have so
far been given the chance to relocate to the UK.
The government said: “ACRS is one
of the most generous schemes in our country’s history and will give up to
20,000 further people at risk a new life in the UK. We are working across government
and with partners such as UNHCR [the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees] to design and open the scheme amidst a complex and changing picture.
We are committed to working in step with the international community to get
this right.”
