Nearly 100 Former British Council Staff Still Hiding in Afghanistan, Reports Say

LONDON (Sputnik) - Nearly 100 former Afghan employees of the British Council are still in hiding in Afghanistan after having been refused the right to emigrate to the UK, The Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

According to the media outlet, which cited former British Council Afghanistan English manager Joseph Seaton as a source, the staff employed to teach British values and the English language had applied to go to the UK under the government’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy set up earlier this year, but their applications remain unprocessed and without response months after they were submitted.

Seaton claimed that those left behind are living in constant fear of their lives as they were hired by the British government to teach values such as diversity, inclusion and equality, which the Taliban* oppose.

The report comes after a former British diplomat turned whistleblower said that the government’s chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan led to people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban.

In a written statement to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Raphael Marshall, who was deployed by the Foreign Ministry in Kabul, wrote that “fewer than 5%” of the 75,000 to 150,000 Afghans who applied for evacuation before the Taliban takeover in August received help from the British government.

*Organization is under UN sanctions over terrorist activities