Afghanistan: FCDO Responses to Members

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I thank my right hon. Friend for congratulating the officials who have been working so hard on this. I note that it is surprisingly common to be thanked by Opposition Members in private, and less so in public, but I will take the thanks wherever it comes. With regards to engagement, I can assure him that we are engaging multilaterally and with countries in the region. We will explore all routes for helping Afghans evacuate, whether that be land crossings or the re-establishment of air corridors.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Like many Members, I have an awful lot of cases. I have 150 cases that I am dealing with. I will not rehearse all the details, but they include prominent women’s rights activists who have death warrants already issued on their heads by the Taliban. I have veterans of the Afghan national army, and I even have the wife of a British national who has a two-month-old baby and is stuck in Kabul. I have another chap whose family have already been butchered by the theocratic fascists of the Taliban, and he is now in hiding, awaiting instructions from me or the Government on how we will get him out. I genuinely want to know what conversations the Minister is having, and whether they are being accelerated, with people such as our friends in the Pakistani Government to ensure that they have the money and support to be able to get as many people as possible safely over the border. It is clear we will not be extracting anyone directly out of Afghanistan any time soon, but we have friends there. If we can support them, we can get people out of Afghanistan and process them there to get to safe haven in our country.