Afghan troopers who fought with British troops now need to be part of Army

Javid Ahmed had jumped from a Chinook helicopter with his SAS comrades and swept silently through a Taliban compound in eastern Afghanistan, spiriting away the Islamic State money-man they had come looking for.  

‘The Americans often do operations like this with noise and bluster, but British special forces are usually gone before the enemy knows what has hit them,’ says Javid, 32. ‘We found our man hiding with a group of women and recovered $15,000 and some telephone sim cards.’

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. On the way back to the Chinook, with the cloak of darkness slowly lifting, Javid realised they had been spotted and were about to come under fire.

‘There was an SAS officer next to me, and I pushed him to one side and I fell to the other,’ he says. ‘The bullets whizzed between us and we were both safe – though I had broken my radio in the fall. Later, the officer came and shook my hand. He thanked me for saving his life and gave me a new radio he had bought for me. It was one of the proudest days of my life.’

That was in 2019. Fast forward five years and this elite special forces lieutenant is working in fast-food takeaways in Birmingham, serving chips and delivering pizza, waiting on tables and trying to make ends meet with temporary jobs on zero-hour contracts.

He is one of around 15,000 Afghan soldiers and interpreters to have been welcomed into the UK following the return to power of the Taliban in 2021, except that, when it comes to employment, the British welcome hasn’t been so warm.

There are government training and language courses for them, but they are struggling to find work that offers the levels of dignity and comradeship they found while fighting with, or interpreting for, the British military – a military that had spent many millions of pounds training them.

‘I had been processed in Islamabad [Pakistan] and told by a British official that I would be able to join the Army when I got to the UK,’ says Javid. ‘I wanted to put my skills to use with my British comrades. I was devastated when I found out that I couldn’t.’

What Javid and other elite soldiers and military-trained interpreters discovered – and are still discovering – was that it has been a long-standing stipulation that, for security reasons, service personnel have to have British citizenship, which can only be applied for once they have lived in the UK for five years.

‘By then,’ Javid points out, ‘many of us will be too old and our fighting skills will be gone. It seems like such a waste of talent and loyalty. I loved my British friends and comrades but I’m not allowed to serve with them.’

A waste indeed – and at a time when soldiers are in hopelessly short supply. According to the MoD, the number of military personnel in the UK Armed Forces was 183,130 as of January 1 this year – 7,040 fewer than the year before and the lowest since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

Recruitment has slumped, not least because it was put in the hands of the outsourcing company Capita in 2012 in a £440 million deal that resulted in the closure of dozens of Army recruitment centres all over the country.

In 2019, around the same time Javid was saving the life of his SAS comrade, a Parliamentary committee described the Army’s decision to outsource recruitment as ‘naive’ and Capita’s performance as ‘abysmal’.

Inevitably, growing numbers of military observers and politicians are asking why, when army recruitment and numbers are so desperately low, we are wasting such a precious pool of willing talent.

Among them are highly trained specialists from the Afghan 333 and 444 units, whose skill and bravery came to be admired by their British colleagues.

‘We have a numbers problem in the Forces at present and these highly trained Afghans could help solve that problem,’ says Major James Bolter, a veteran who oversaw Afghans who worked for and with UK troops. ‘They would need to go through some kind of tailored training programme with their discipline tightened, but this could easily be done.

‘I would be very much in favour of a change of policy to let them join the Army. Some ex-Afghan National Army would fit in very well, while those with specialist training could be of interest to Hereford [SAS] and other elite units.’

Under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which was introduced in 2021 following the Mail’s award-winning Betrayal Of The Brave campaign, former soldiers and interpreters receive indefinite leave to remain. After five years they can apply for a British passport.

In the meantime, life for many has been tough. Former Major General Mirahmad Azimi, 42, his wife and four children are squeezed into a two-bedroom flat in west London, while he works as a receptionist at a car showroom – a job for which he is staggeringly over-qualified.

He used to oversee 9,000 National Army units, 33 specialist units and three military training centres. He studied at Sandhurst in 2009 and before Kabul fell, he was in the UK for a leadership and management course at the Defence Academy of the UK – a seat that was subsequently withdrawn. Now, in common with so many of his countrymen, he wants to take his skills into the British Army.

‘We are all grateful for the evacuation and the opportunity to settle here, but we want to use our skills as soldiers,’ he says. ‘Many times we saved the lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan because every time we went on operations, I would tell the British forces to stay behind and say: ‘Let the enemy kill me, my soldiers, not you. You’re here to support me; I am here to protect you.’

‘My men and I would like to continue that comradeship but we feel we have been left out in the forest. After 20 years of co-operation this feels unacceptable – it isn’t the way friends treat each other. Meanwhile, we are working as delivery men, cleaners, dish-washers, taxi drivers or part-time receptionists.

‘In our culture, this is unacceptable, for our wives, children, everybody. Many of my comrades are ashamed to say what they now do for a living. They want to serve with the British again. They are trustworthy, trained and experienced, and we know each other and each other’s cultures and the way we work. But to be told we need to be British citizens first is frustrating and disappointing.’

The MoD says it can’t make exceptions – but it has already done so by making the Afghans a unique cohort under the ARAP scheme. To fail to acknowledge that no other nationality has fought for so long, and so recently, with the British not only seems wrong but is also to waste a precious resource.

And it serves just to frustrate heroic men like Rafi Hottak, a 37-year-old frontline interpreter who wants to join the Army.

While the need for Pashto-speakers has reduced now the UK has left Afghanistan, many British veterans support their former translators joining their ranks as combat soldiers.

They highlight how the interpreters, who risked their lives beside UK troops, have been repeatedly tested under fire and understand combat operations and military tactics. Many were weapons-trained and displayed great courage in the most testing conditions, as Rafi did.

While out on foot patrol in Sangin, Helmand province, in 2007, he was seriously injured when an improvised explosive device (IED) was triggered near the marketplace. He and a British Army captain were the intended targets.

‘The captain took the full brunt of the blast and he was killed on the spot,’ says Rafi. ‘I had lacerations all over my body and nearly lost my left hand. Then there was a firefight and there was concern that our soldiers could accidentally shoot one another so I was asked to tell the Afghan soldiers to cease fire. I gathered myself up and with the last of my strength I shouted to stop shooting. And then I collapsed.’

After major surgery, Rafi continued working for the British Army but he had to leave when the Taliban found out and began threatening his family. He claimed asylum in 2011 but his application was rejected a year later, in spite of numerous character references from serving officers. One of the reasons was that his English was ‘too good’ for an Afghan – even though he was an interpreter. Eventually, the rejection was overturned and he applied to join the Army, only to find out about the citizenship rule.

‘It actually takes more than five years to get a passport,’ he said. ‘It took me seven. By the time I was able to apply for the Army, I was too old. I don’t want that to happen to the men able to serve now. They were trained by the best. It would be a waste if they were not allowed to serve.’

Rafi retrained as an accountant and now has his own firm in Birmingham. Others have eked out a living, but not the one they want.

Abdul Bari, 33, worked as a frontline interpreter for nearly four years at the height of the conflict. He now lives with his wife and three children in the West Country, working as a translator. Among his roles – many of them dangerous – he interpreted for the Electronic Warfare Unit and the Brigade Reconnaissance Force, a unit that went deep into Taliban territory to draw fire and engage with the enemy. During one mission, Abdul rescued a British officer from a vehicle that had been blown up by an IED. He stretchered the officer, who had broken his back and legs, to a Chinook through a field that was suspected of having been mined.

‘It was dangerous but everyone was prepared to take risks for their brothers,’ he says. ‘It is one of the reasons I have such respect for the British Army and its soldiers. To be a soldier in the British Army would be an honour.’

The Sulha Alliance, a UK charity that supports interpreters and others who worked for the British military in Afghanistan, says it would back the calls to allow trained Afghans to join the Army.

‘We are aware of interest among the former interpreter community to serve in the British Armed Forces,’ says Peter Gordon-Finlayson, an Afghan veteran and one of the charity’s founders. ‘Many interpreters associate Britain with the experiences that they had of British soldiers while serving together in Afghanistan.

‘Much of the British military culture is therefore familiar, and the camaraderie and sense of purpose of the military is often at the heart of what they hold dear about Britain. There is a clear natural fit.’

The potential supply of willing recruits is not only from the Afghans settled in the UK, but also from their comrades stuck in Afghanistan, many in hiding from the Taliban while their ARAP requests are processed.

Mohammed Nasir, 32, is one of these. A former soldier with the 333s, he is in hiding in Kabul with his wife and three children. He worked with UK Forces in the Logar province but was forced to resign because Taliban fighters threatened his family. Two months after the return of the Taliban, he was arrested and tortured because of his links to the British.

‘They bound my hands and hooded me, then began to beat me as they asked questions,’ he says. ‘When they didn’t receive the answers they wanted, their men used an electric stick to give me shocks and a stun gun on my neck to cause pain. It was a terrifying ordeal. I feared for my life.’ If allowed into the UK, the first thing he would like to do would be to reunite with his former British Army comrades.

‘We were trained by the British, we fought beside the British and it would be an honour to be able to join the British Army,’ he says.

‘I think it would be a logical step because it would use the skills and experience we have to benefit the UK while allowing us meaningful and respectful employment, where we could support ourselves and, through our work, integrate with British society.’

While some observers say spreading the Afghans throughout the Army would be a positive step in terms of diversity, others argue the most effective use of them would be as a single Afghan brigade, similar to the Gurkhas.

Tom Tugendhat, the Shadow Security Minister, who fought in Afghanistan, says of the Afghan soldiers: ‘In combat with the British Army they showed their bravery and loyalty time and time again. Over the years a number of highly talented members of the Afghan Army have relocated to the UK legally. If they want to serve Britain and help keep our country safe, and if they meet the MoD’s criteria, they should be welcomed into the British Army.’

Perhaps the last word should go to Khalid Asghari, a 29-year-old former captain in the elite General Command of Police Special Units, which fought side-by-side with British special forces.

As well as having degrees in Law and Political Science as well as Policing, he spent more than a year studying at Sandhurst and the Defence Academy of the UK, and he has fought with, and interpreted for, UK special forces in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

He now lives alone in Windsor and works as a receptionist at a hotel near Heathrow. ‘I’m in touch with more than 300 officers and special forces,’ he says. ‘Most of them are working as delivery drivers, in cheap restaurants and in chicken and pizza shops earning £6, maybe £10, an hour. They are not using their skills and this is very shameful for them.

‘Please, just give us a chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with our British comrades again.’

• Some names and details have been changed to protect identities of personnel whose families in Afghanistan are at risk of Taliban reprisals