Defence Committee
Oral evidence: Locally employed interpreters
Tuesday 7 February 2017
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 February 2017.
Members present: Dr Julian Lewis (Chair); Douglas Chapman; James Gray; Jack Lopresti; Johnny Mercer; Mrs Madeleine Moon; Mr John Spellar; Bob Stewart; and Phil Wilson.
Questions 1-108
Witnesses
I: Thomas Coghlan, Middle East and North Africa, K2 Intelligence, and former Times journalist; Colonel (Rtd) Simon Diggins OBE, former British Defence Attaché in Kabul; and Rafi Hottak, former interpreter for British Forces in Afghanistan.
II: Rt hon Mike Penning MP, Minister of State for the Armed Forces; and Jonathan Iremonger, Assistant Chief of Staff, J8 at Permanent Joint Headquarters.
Witnesses: Thomas Coghlan, Colonel Simon Diggins and Rafi Hottak.
Q1 Chair: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this special session on policy towards locally employed interpreters. On this first panel, we have three people giving evidence, one at very short notice indeed. I invite each of you just to say a sentence or two to introduce yourselves, starting with Colonel Diggins.
Colonel Simon Diggins: Thank you very much. My name is Simon Diggins. I am a career service officer. I served from 1978 to 2014. I was a defence attaché in Kabul from July 2008 to 2010, and I retired from the Joint Forces Headquarters in August 2014.
Rafi Hottak: Good morning. My name is Rafi Hottak. I am one of the former interpreters for the British forces. In 2007, I was blown up by an IED; I suffered 160 stitches all over my body. I am currently studying accountancy here in the UK.
Thomas Coghlan: I am Tom Coghlan, formerly of The Times newspaper. I am now with a business intelligence company called K2, where I am director for the Middle East and North Africa. I lived in Kabul between 2004 and 2009 as a journalist and reported extensively from Helmand.
Q2 Chair: I take it that you are associated with Deborah Haynes, who unfortunately, due to health issues, cannot be with us today.
Thomas Coghlan: Yes, I am a former colleague of Deborah on the defence desk at The Times, and I covered a lot of the early reporting on the Afghan interpreters issue.
Chair: Thank you all very much. Colonel Bob Stewart will start the questioning.
Q3 Bob Stewart: Welcome, everyone; it is very nice to see you. Rafi, I would like to start with you. I have read your written submission—quite quickly, but I have read it. In a way, you answer the questions I am about to ask, but can you just outline for the Committee the dangers that you feel interpreters have to work under—both before and now, when the British are still in Afghanistan but not with much impact?
Rafi Hottak: While interpreters were working with the forces in Afghanistan during their occupations they suffered the same risk and dangers as any other British soldier on the ground, regardless of whether their role was in operations or one of the bases. They will be targeted only because of the role they play. Soldiers who have been to Afghanistan know how crucial the job of an interpreter is for them.
The enemy looks at the interpreters as the eyes and ears of infidel forces. Originally they categorised us in the same category as the infidel forces, but then they went a step forward and said, “Okay, they are showing them the ways. No operation can be conducted without the help of an interpreter.” There have been operations where searches have happened where the soldiers have gone into people’s houses, and people have been killed in the operations, and interpreters have been associated with all those operations. The risk for a British soldier is only when they are deployed in Afghanistan. The day they come out, the risk finishes. But for an Afghan interpreter the risk is there until either the day he is dead, killed by the Taliban, or he is moved to a safe location somewhere.
Q4 Bob Stewart: Are interpreters like yourself dressed exactly the same as British soldiers on patrol?
Rafi Hottak: The dress code did change in 2008 when the number of dead Afghan interpreters rose. It was only because the Taliban were targeting the interpreter because they knew that with the interpreter there would always be a superior officer.
Q5 Bob Stewart: So in other words you were disguised as part of the patrol. You were not wearing blue, for example, like journalists.
Rafi Hottak: The disguise was not—
Bob Stewart: I don’t mean disguise; I mean that you looked like you were part of the control and you could not be identified easily.
Rafi Hottak: Not easily, but yes we could have been identified because of the way we were dressed. Our body armour was not similar to that of the soldiers; we had a small plate with blue body armour and the soldiers had proper gear.
Q6 Bob Stewart: This is the same mistake that has been made traditionally by the British Army: interpreters are not dressed exactly the same as the soldiers. Thanks for that. We have got to push on. Could you explain the dangers that interpreters faced? Is the danger the same in different parts of Afghanistan? If you come from the north to interpret in the south and you go back to your home area in the north, for example, are you still under threat there?
Rafi Hottak: The issue with the threat for the Afghan interpreter is only because of his job. Once you start working for any of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, you are seen as shaming the family and betraying the community, society and the Afghan code—
Q7 Bob Stewart: Is that the view throughout Afghanistan?
Rafi Hottak: Yes. The view is throughout the country. I can give you examples of interpreters at family weddings who have been looked down on. The way it has come across to them is, “You have brought shame to our tribe by working with the infidel forces.” The person’s family might not be part of the Taliban group, but society’s perception is not good.
Q8 Bob Stewart: That is in the north just as much as, say, in Helmand in the south.
Rafi Hottak: Yes, exactly. It is all over the place.
Q9 Johnny Mercer: To talk about targeting, I spent a little time in your country as one of the Joint Fires guys with the satcom on my back, so I had that really distinctive antenna. On the ICOM all the time there was this constant personal, not banter, but threat towards the interpreter and me. Would it be fair to say that it is a very specialised threat that the interpreters come under? It is almost taunting, in a way, if I remember it correctly.
Rafi Hottak: Yes. The interpreters had distinctive features when out on an operation: first, they had a radio, constantly listening to the chatters of the enemy; secondly, their dress code was slightly different from that of the soldier; and thirdly, they did not have a weapon. So from far away you can identify the interpreter.
Q10 Johnny Mercer: But also, Rafi, you sort of build up a reputation, don’t you? I remember that the Taliban would recall my interpreter’s name. They began to learn his name and my name—he would call me Johnny—and they used to taunt us. My job was to bring in the artillery, the jets and so on, and they would taunt us together, saying they were going after us personally. Is that a similar experience to what you had?
Rafi Hottak: I myself did not face that exact situation, but other interpreters had the same experience, where the Taliban knew not only his name and where he was from, but what other jobs he used to do with the British forces.
Regarding myself, I will give you one example. I was in Camp Souter, recruiting interpreters to go to Helmand with the British soldiers. One day a member of the Taliban showed up at the front gate of Camp Souter, specifically asking for Rafi. The Afghan guard at the front said, “I am Rafi. What do you want?” He said, “No, I want the blue-eyed Rafi.” So I had to go out and ask, “What is it?” He said, “I am Mulah Dadullah’s brother.” I asked what that had to do with me. You do not know Mulah Dadullah, but those who have been to Afghanistan know that he was one of the savage, brutal commanders of the Taliban, who killed and butchered many innocent people. He was killed in a special forces operation. This man was the brother of Mulah Dadullah and he was there only to give information regarding another Taliban group, which had originally given us the information about Mulah Dadullah—so they were fighting each other now. This man was there specifically for me, because he knew who I was.
We Afghan interpreters are known individually by those groups and people, because of the roles we play and the job we have done. The day that I was blown up in Helmand—
Q11 Chair: Sorry. This is fascinating, but we will have to be more concise. I want to bring in the other commentators as well.
May I summarise a bit how far we have got? Everyone understands the enormous bravery shown by the interpreters at the time. The question really is: what are the UK Government doing to assist them in the face of the threat that they face now that the armed forces have gone? What concerns are there that they are not doing enough? The Government have two schemes in place, the ex gratia scheme and the intimidation scheme—we will be discussing those with the Minister later. What we really want to focus on is: what is the level of danger to the interpreters now, and how much at risk are they if they are refused requests to relocate to this country as opposed to relocating, for example, to another part of Afghanistan?
Before we get into that I would like to bring in Tom to tell us what he knows about the way in which the matter was handled in relation to Iraq. Could you give us a summary of what happened there, and how it was felt necessary to deal with the problem? I assure you, Rafi, that we will have plenty of opportunities to come back, but we must make slightly faster progress.
Thomas Coghlan: I will be brief, principally because my knowledge is not as great as my colleague’s, who cannot be here—Deborah Haynes, who did a lot of the reporting on Iraq. I think it was David Davis who said, in 2012, that the principle was established in Iraq that the UK had a duty of care to its interpreters.
In Iraq, quite clearly, it was established that British Army interpreters were targeted—they were killed—and that consequently the UK Government owed that duty of care and, as I understand it, offered a blanket offer of asylum in the UK if they wanted to take it. I am not sure what the proportion was who did take it; it was not everyone who was offered it. But the important point here—David Davis made the point in 2012—is that a principle was established. As far as I am concerned, the level of threat is not different in Afghanistan and the principle has been established.
Q12 Chair: Colonel Diggins, you feel that the system is not working as well as it should.
Colonel Simon Diggins: I do. My sense is that we have not been shown the requisite degree of empathy and understanding to the level of threat that our interpreters have had to put up with. I dealt specifically with a case that was brought to my attention by two military colleagues of mine who are still serving and felt rather constrained by this, in terms of bringing it to the senior officer’s attention.
This particular individual had worked with us and with the Americans. When the Americans left he had gone back to his province in the east of the country, where he then received night letters, and then had to leave his family. From there he moved to Kabul. He attempted to access one of the schemes that we had set up, but he fell outside the rather over-tight boundaries that were shown. He was then intimidated again in Kabul and eventually found himself as an illegal asylum seeker in this country.
The thing I would say to the Committee, if I may, is this: just put yourselves in the mind of that individual, who actually had to leave his home, his family and his young children because he felt that the only way he could possibly save their lives was by fleeing to this country, where I am afraid he fell foul of our asylum system. I do understand the system that the British Government put in place to try to deal with it, but in my view it is inadequate. It does not recognise the degree of danger that is there and, indeed, the continuing threat in Kabul.
I wonder if I can bring to the Committee’s attention the recent report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which was published only yesterday, showing the continuous increase in civilian casualties throughout Afghanistan, but particularly in the Kabul area. The FCO advice has not changed. This is a very dangerous country, and one to which we are advised not to travel.
As Rafi has quite rightly pointed out, people are known in Afghanistan; people know who you are. If you are a young Pashtun from the east who has, say, been working in Helmand as an interpreter and you then go back into the east and try and explain where you have been for the last four or five years, they know; and you may not be the highest thing on the target list of the Taliban—or, these days, Daesh-ISIS, who are also there—but you are indubitably a target and they will get round to you in due course. I believe them.
Q13 Chair: Does anybody have any idea of how many former interpreters have been killed in Afghanistan?
Colonel Simon Diggins: That is very hard to say. I do not have access to official information, but I can say that I look at some of the reports that come out in newspapers where people have been frightened and have been killed. There are reasonably credible reports from the newspapers of interpreters who have been killed. As I said, my sense is that it is not just what has happened to date; it is what might happen in the future. I think that is where we need to take a very broad view.
Q14 Chair: Rafi, do you have any knowledge about actual people who have been murdered as a result of being interpreters?
Rafi Hottak: Yes, I have two cases of interpreters. Their brothers were interpreters. That is why their cases were reported. Many interpreters are the only person in the family working, so a number of cases have not been reported, but some have been reported. I have a list of names that I can go through from different parts of Afghanistan. The scheme that was provided has only offered them relocation; some have been given a little money, others have been given nothing except the advice to relocate, yet they have been threatened, their house has been attacked, their family members have been killed.
In two cases the interpreter’s brothers have been killed. In two cases the brothers who were killed were interpreters. One was going from his home to meet a relative; he was taken from the car, shot twice and they found his body a few weeks later. Another interpreter has made it here to the UK, yet his brother, who was also an interpreter for the British forces, has been killed. There is a doctor from the north of Afghanistan, Dr Khalil Rahman, who worked with the British forces in Camp Bastian as a doctor. His family has been attacked and threatened, yet the only offer the embassy has given them is relocation, which proves that relocation fails in Afghanistan for many reasons. One is—
Q15 Chair: I will have to cut you short, because if we get into too much detail we will not get through the ground we have to cover. Can any of you say how you think what our Government are doing in the UK compares with the protection that Governments of other nations that have locally employed interpreters are offering?
Thomas Coghlan: We can certainly compare it to the US Government. I do not believe that any Government have done enough, but the US Government have so far resettled 52,000 former interpreters from Iraq and Afghanistan—this is an open source figure. Their requirement has been raised, but it was one year of service and it went up to two years of service in 2015.
Q16 Chair: That is an extraordinarily high figure, is it not?
Thomas Coghlan: Yes.
Q17 Chair: And the source for that?
Thomas Coghlan: I can provide that for you. It is open source; I think it was al-Jazeera that reported that figure, but I can check it for you. Of the other nations, I think the Danish Government followed the UK lead and basically adopted an almost identical posture to the UK. There have been protests in the past six months from French interpreters who claim that they have been abandoned, from Spanish interpreters who claim that they have been abandoned, and Germany made a conditional offer to interpreters but not a blanket offer. So I think it is fairly clear that across Europe, at least, the response has not met with the satisfaction of the interpreter community.
Chair: Thank you.
Q18 Johnny Mercer: Ever since the concerns about how we looked after our LECs in Afghan were raised initially and an email address was provided to report concerns for safety and so on, have you seen the system improve? Have you seen any improvement at all, or has that not got through on the ground?
Rafi Hottak: I did not get the question.
Q19 Johnny Mercer: About 18 months ago the British Government relooked at this issue and brought in a number of measures; one of which, for example, was an email address that was to be publicised in Afghanistan, on local radio and in local media, so that those who felt under threat could get in touch with the British embassy and access this resettlement programme. You have clearly never heard of this, have you?
Rafi Hottak: No.
Q20 Johnny Mercer: I think that answers the question. Thomas, you didn’t notice it either?
Thomas Coghlan: No, I didn’t. The response from the UK Government thus far has been fixated on the date of 31 December 2012, or whenever the arbitrary cut-off date is. Look, there is a very small British presence in Kabul. I am sure the people in the British embassy in Kabul are dedicated to trying to find out what the situation is for individual interpreters, but they don’t leave the embassy; nobody leaves the embassy—it’s too dangerous to go outside—so I do not have a great deal of faith in the ability of the UK Government to make decisions on individual cases.
Q21 Johnny Mercer: When I asked this question 12 months ago, they assured me that no UK interpreters had been killed as a result of their service. Is that your understanding?
Thomas Coghlan: There was an internal UK MOD document—I think in 2012—that spoke of at least five being murdered while on leave, so I don’t see how those two figures marry up.
Q22 Johnny Mercer: Rafi, you obviously have contacts elsewhere. Briefly, what is the experience for those who have fled Afghanistan? If they decide to leave Afghan and go south over the border through Baramcha or anywhere like that, what is the process like for them trying to claim asylum in the UK?
Rafi Hottak: When they feel that no help apart from relocation in Afghanistan is being provided to them, the only option they have is to go through Iran to Turkey with the people traffickers. There was a case in which an interpreter was identified in Iran, and he was killed as a result of his job. There are many who have already fled Afghanistan and are in a European country, trying to make their way to the UK. Unless the UK Government make the scheme cover all those interpreters, most of them will leave Afghanistan.
Q23 Johnny Mercer: I will come on to Simon in a second. Rafi, if the interpreter community feel they are under threat or if they get these night drops that we have heard about and so on, do they know where to go? Where would you go?
Rafi Hottak: To the trafficker. That is the easiest way they have.
Q24 Johnny Mercer: You wouldn’t go to the British embassy, or to this unit—LSU—that has been set up and that we have ploughed money into?
Rafi Hottak: Specifically on the unit, it is so difficult to contact. I will give you an example—the interpreter from Kandahar. He was attacked and his brother was killed. He couldn’t contact the LSU. He tried to get hold of anybody in the LSU a number of times, but nobody answered. He told me he was in his hiding place with his family, and that they were guarding each other. He asked what assurance there was that, if he made it alive from Kandahar, where he was hiding, to Kabul, he would be able to get hold of anybody in the LSU, and that they would look into his case. He asked why he should come out of that hiding hole.
Q25 Johnny Mercer: Okay, Rafi. Have a lot of your community heard of the LSU?
Rafi Hottak: No.
Q26 Johnny Mercer: Okay. Can I ask for your thoughts on those two key points, Simon?
Colonel Simon Diggins: I was aware of the email, because I had seen a letter that had been sent to, I think, some parliamentarians saying this thing existed. I have no idea how good or bad it is.
Q27 Johnny Mercer: So you heard of that from London. Did you hear of that from your contacts in Kabul or Kandahar?
Colonel Simon Diggins: No, I got that from London. On the point about asylum, one of the limitations of the policy that the British Government put in place is that people couldn’t apply with the criteria of being under threat if they had made an illegal asylum journey because of that threat. It is like catch 22—having decided you are at risk and not getting help, you arrive in the UK and go through the tribunal, and they say, “Sorry, you should have applied back in Kabul.”
Q28 Johnny Mercer: You served as a DA in Kabul from 2008 to July 2010. Looking from there to where we are now—it was obviously a very different place in 2005-06—has the offer improved, and is it anywhere near where it should be, with regards to our obligation to those people?
Colonel Simon Diggins: When I was there, there was no offer in place at all, because we weren’t clear what we were doing. The conversation about what we were going to do didn’t really start to emerge until 2010, when President Obama said we would actually be there until 2014.
Somewhere along that line, the coalition Government decided they were going to do something about it. Interestingly, I had actually raised the issue, because I served in Iraq from 2004-05 and I was very interested with what we were going to do with our interpreters there. Nobody was talking about it then because it was kind of open ended. I felt the issue ought to be raised, but nothing was done about it.
I only got involved in the negotiations for two reasons. One is that, right at the very end of my time there—June or July 2010—I was involved in an incident where one of our interpreters had been very badly injured—he was a triple amputee as a result of a patrol. The only thing the Government were interested in doing was making sure he didn’t come back to this country so he couldn’t be an asylum seeker.
I had to fight and eventually got him evacuated to India, where he got decent medical care, but even then there was an issue about what we were going to do with him. So when my former colleagues raised the issue with me about the individual I knew about, who had become a legal asylum seeker, I thought, “I need to get involved, because this is just wrong.”
Q29 Chair: Just for the sake of clarity, I should say this. There has been a couple of mentions of the qualifying date of 19 December 2012, when the drawdown was announced. We have to distinguish between the two schemes, because that qualifying date relates to the ex gratia redundancy scheme, under which I understand that, as of September 2015, which is some time ago and is when we had an initial letter on it from the Secretary of State, 170 former staff had been relocated to the UK, with 190 family members, but under the intimidation scheme, there is no particular date or cut-off date. So we shouldn’t get hung up on the question of this cut-off date: it relates to the redundancy scheme, not the intimidation scheme.
That’s the good news. What is not such good news is that under the intimidation scheme, as far as I know, there has been only a single case of an interpreter who has been allowed in. That figure may have risen slightly since the correspondence that I have here, and we will be asking the Minister about it, but it seems to me that the Government have been prepared to let in a significant number of people under the redundancy scheme, but they are not prepared to let many people in under the scheme that relates to a threat of intimidation, and that is where the investigative unit out in Afghanistan is supposed to come into play. Have you any comments as to why you think it might be that there is so much more resistance to operating under the intimidation scheme, as appears to be the case?
Thomas Coghlan: I wrote about this when the original scheme came in in December 2012. I asked a senior MOD official at that time about what seemed to be this inconsistency, and his response to me was, “What sort of message would it send if these people were bundled into the back of a Chinook and flown out of the country? It would say we don’t think there is a future.” I think that’s the kernel of what we have here. The policy is designed to reflect the British Government’s view that Afghanistan was a success, or a relative success, and that the Afghan Government are relatively stable; and it has very little to do with a duty of care to the Afghan interpreters.
Q30 Mrs Moon: I find that a very strange position to be in, because the Americans, you tell us, have taken in 52,000 interpreters, so have you any insight into why the Americans have, bizarrely, given the comments that we have had in recent days, been much more generous in their treatment of interpreters?
Thomas Coghlan: It’s interesting that America is a country that is instinctively more generous and more committed to the idea of loyalty to those who have served alongside its armed forces. That goes back to Vietnam and the Hmong people in Vietnam. It appears to be fairly consistent with the American forces’ “No man left behind” kind of approach.
Q31 Mrs Moon: Colonel, would you agree with that?
Colonel Simon Diggins: Yes, I think I would. They have got the experience of Vietnam behind them and they also, pace the nonsense of the last week or so, are an immigrant society and have had a more positive attitude. As I said, I was shocked in July 2010, when I dealt with the interpreter who had been badly injured, that the driving force behind the conversation I was having with officials back in the UK was all about stopping this individual claiming asylum. He had lost three limbs on a patrol with us, and they were more interested in making sure he didn’t claim asylum and establish a precedent that interpreters could come across to the UK, than in looking after somebody who had been badly injured while working with and serving with our soldiers. I think that scheme, that thinking, informs an awful lot of the pressure and the schemes that have been developed since then.
Thomas Coghlan: May I add briefly to that? We don’t really follow the political situation in Afghanistan these days, but it is, fairly consistently, moving in the wrong direction as far as Afghan Government control is concerned. We talked earlier about the number of civilians killed and injured in the last year; I think it was 11,000. At the height of British operations, in 2009, 6,000 civilians were killed or injured in Afghanistan. The latest US assessment of the Government control of the country is that the Afghan Government “controls or influences”—an important word—65% of the country. That was down from 70% of the country at the start of last year.
If you are an Afghan interpreter sitting in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, one of the cities still more or less under Afghan Government control, the perception is that around you the ground is gradually being eaten away and the threat is rising. The sense that, because Afghan interpreters have not been killed in huge numbers since 2012, means that they are any less under threat is wrong; the inverse is true. As Government control recedes, the threat rises.
Q32 Mrs Moon: May I just say that I personally do keep track of what is happening in Afghanistan? I chair the all-party parliamentary group on Afghanistan, so it is an area that I keep a close eye on. I agree that the risk is increasing for all Afghans; certainly for civilians it is a perilous existence at the moment.
May I ask Rafi? The British Government have said that all Afghans locally were employed as civilian personnel. If they relocated to the UK, it would be a negative impact in Afghanistan; it would create a brain drain. The locally employed personnel, such as yourself, were some of the brightest and best of Afghanistan and, therefore, to bring you out would give Afghanistan less chance of a successful and positive future. What is your response to that?
Rafi Hottak: First, a dead man is no good to anybody. The interpreters are at risk; they will be killed as soon as there is an opportunity for the Taliban or any other insurgent group such as ISIS or Haqqani. A dead person will not help any society, either here or in the UK or Afghanistan.
Secondly, the perception of them all over the country is that they have served the infidel forces there, that they are the eyes and ears of the infidel forces. If you move to a different location, they will still see you as a spy and ask, “What are you doing here?” You are flagged up in a society where you don’t belong.
A person from north Afghanistan, even if he is Pashtun, moving to another location in Afghanistan such as Jalalabad, which is mainly a Pashtun area, will be flagged there because you are not from the same tribe or people, with the same colour or accent of language. You will be flagged and seen as an outsider. “What are you doing here and what is your purpose?” The next thing is that they are not accepted by society like anybody else.
Q33 Mrs Moon: Basically, they would not have a role and a function within a new Afghanistan.
Rafi Hottak: No.
Q34 Mrs Moon: Because they are already outsiders. You have heard about the different ethos within America in relation to interpreters. Is that something that Afghan interpreters are very aware of? The chance of coming to the UK, as opposed to going to the US, depending on which country you work for, is greater with the US than the UK. Is that something you would be aware of?
Rafi Hottak: Yes. There are many interpreters. When I tell them that still the UK Government are trying to look into situations, where possible, they will try to help, they say, “No”. The Americans have taken anybody who has worked with them, regardless of their job role, not only the interpreters, also the civilian contractors. There are other groups of people they have taken with themselves as long as they were at risk. The UK is failing to even provide sanctuary to the Afghan interpreters who have served them.
Q35 Chair: On the question of the numbers allowed to the UK, the more up-to-date figure we have is that, as of December 2016, according to a written answer, one person came to the UK under the intimidation scheme but 350 and about 600 dependants came under the redundancy scheme. Again, it appears to be a much greater willingness to allow people in under a scheme that is other than related to the question of intimidation. Colonel Diggins, when you wrote to us, you made a rather interesting parallel to a policy involving escape routes from burning aircraft. Would you like to expand on that?
Colonel Simon Diggins: It goes back to the idea of the First World War, when the General Staff resisted for a long time the ability of airmen to have parachutes. The General Staff said no, that they would not commit to it, and it seems to me that that is where we are with the interpreter scheme.
Q36 Chair: Just for clarity, the General Staff thought the airmen would bale out early.
Colonel Simon Diggins: They thought the airmen would bale out early. In fact, they didn’t, there was absolutely no evidence for that whatever. In fact, they would commit themselves further, knowing that they probably had a chance staying there.
Back to the issue that Mrs Moon raised, about the brain drain, I have to say that I found it one of the more specious arguments that I have ever come across—after 35 years in the military, I have seen quite a few of those. My sense is that if you were actually generous and said to the interpreters, “The presumption is that we will give you the means to come to this country”, people would actually then commit to stay, because they know that they can get out. There is good evidence for that. I knew a number of senior Afghan generals and Ministers who had green cards, and they were willing to do that.
Q37 Chair: Your argument as I understand it is that if people know that there is an escape route, they are less inclined, rather than more, to quit early.
Colonel Simon Diggins: Absolutely, because they then know that their family can be safe. May I reinforce one point, Chair? On my tour after Afghanistan, I was in Djibouti working in east Africa. There is a rather strange little state called Somaliland—the ex-British Somaliland—and every single member of the Cabinet there had British passports, but they were sticking it out, because however difficult the place was it was worth their while and they knew that if it all went very badly wrong they could get out. There is a strong parallel analogy there.
Q38 Chair: Rafi, did you want to make a comment about this?
Rafi Hottak: I agree with the colonel on this issue. As long as you are aware of this, that there are people who will stand beside you and support you, you will stay there and try to make the best out of it in that country, but if you know that there is no escape route for you and that on any bad day they will leave you behind, you want safety for yourself and your family. Providing that safety now means that many of the interpreters will choose to serve there with the British forces before coming here.
Thomas Coghlan: I spoke to a number of interpreters last night, before coming before you, and there is a perception that somehow Afghan interpreters want to come to this country, that they are sort of angling in some way to do this. I think you have to remember that if you are a young interpreter you are probably fairly well educated, and in Afghanistan you have serious earning potential and a successful professional life ahead of you. If you come to the UK, you basically have to start at the bottom again. I do not see that there is a huge incentive to come and make pizza, as my friend last night said. That is not what they have in Afghanistan if Afghanistan is a stable place.
Q39 Chair: This is not like the cross-Mediterranean migration situation. These are highly skilled people who would not come unless they really felt threatened.
Thomas Coghlan: I think they have a realistic perception of what they are coming to, which is a very tough new start. Rafi is an extraordinary example of someone who has managed to conquer the challenges, but a lot of these young guys know that—
Chair: I am keen to come now to Jack Lopresti, who also served a tour in Afghanistan.
Q40 Jack Lopresti: I have two questions. First, Rafi, thank you very much for your service and sacrifice—your account is an amazing story and very inspirational. When you were recruited by the Brits to begin with, and your colleagues, what was the expectation for the length of deployment and any idea of support after we left? What was your understanding of what you were getting into?
Rafi Hottak: No interpreter started the job with this perception, “One day I will be going to the UK”, because our perception was this: the international community is here, so our country will rebuild and we will not need to run away anywhere. Coming to the UK was far away from our minds. The only thing that we were told—specifically in my case—was, “You will be sent to Helmand. We will look after you, we will feed you, we will take care of you and if anything happens we are always there for you.”
But that has proven wrong. I was injured, but they left me behind. Other interpreters were injured and they were given to the ANA which took them to the ANA hospital rather than the British forces hospital. There are interpreters who have been blinded, amputated and told, right in front of my eyes, “Okay, you are of no use, this is your package, £10,000”—which is a month’s salary—“you cannot be deployed back, please go home”.
Q41 Jack Lopresti: Given what we have heard, and this may be an obvious answer, will the events—our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and how we have looked after, or not looked after, our interpreters, as the case may be—affect future deployments, when we go somewhere else and try to employ local civilians or try to recruit interpreters? How much damage is this going to do to our future capability?
Rafi Hottak: There are interpreters currently. I would say six months back a number of interpreters told me, all of us will leave the job with them. I said, this is not a good idea. First, you are betraying your own people, because these soldiers who you have served so far need your help; you cannot build that country unless you keep helping them.
Secondly, with the British forces, yes, these soldiers you are helping are the only friends you have on the ground in Afghanistan. By leaving them you will put yourself even more at risk. Stay there, people like me who are here trying to help, we will do whatever we can, but at the moment the best thing will be to stay. Many of them are willing to leave the job. There have been cases where interpreters have left the job. Even in 2006 there were cases where interpreters left the job for numerous reasons: because of the way they were treated, because of the way some of the events occurred, they left the job.
Colonel Simon Diggins: To reinforce what Rafi said, I think it is bad for business, bluntly. We are going to be operating in many of those countries in the future. There is such a thing as an international translators and interpreters union and there are comments on its website about how they are treated. How we treated the Afghan interpreters will be a feature going forwards, so it is good for business if we look after them well.
Thomas Coghlan: I do not have any insight into whether people will volunteer in the same numbers in future or not, but in terms of doing the right thing, I have a very clear view and it is perfectly obvious.
Q42 Chair: Thank you very much to all three members of this panel, particularly Rafi for your service. We will be publishing your written evidence on the website and taking it into consideration when we do our report.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Rt hon Mike Penning MP and Jonathan Iremonger.
Q43 Chair: After some scene shifting, I welcome the Minister and his colleague. Will you both introduce yourselves for the record?
Mike Penning: I am Minister of State for the Armed Forces at the Ministry of Defence.
Jonathan Iremonger: I am Jonathan Iremonger. I am the senior civil servant at the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, responsible for financial support to operations and also the delivery of the LEC[1] redundancy and intimidation schemes. I have two teams out in theatre who run those schemes and provide financial support. I joined the headquarters in 2010 and was involved in the initial policy review of the intimidation scheme brought in in 2010, which led to the revision in 2013. I was involved in the policy review that led to the redundancy scheme and am responsible for the delivery of that.
Chair: Thank you. Madeleine will start our questions.
Q44 Mrs Moon: Minister, I wonder whether you can tell us how many locally employed personnel the UK has employed in Afghanistan since British troops entered the country in 2001.
Mike Penning: The exact figure is difficult because early people were employed earlier on under different contracts. It is around 7,000—of that, around 2,900 were interpreters.
Q45 Mrs Moon: Sorry, could you say that again?
Mike Penning: In total, 7,000 were employed in the different roles that were there—we do not know the exact figure because we just do not have the data—and of that around 2,900, I think that is the figure, were interpreters. We often look at this issue as though it is just about interpreters, but actually there were other people employed.
Q46 Mrs Moon: Indeed. What is our policy in relation to the family members of those who had been directly employed? Do we have the figures? Do we have the numbers for the total exposure of people we could be looking at?
Mike Penning: It is in my papers here but you probably know it off the top of your head, Jonathan.
Mrs Moon: I am awfully sorry but could you speak up? Whenever the door opens, we get this awful noise coming in.
Jonathan Iremonger: We do not have the figures. It depends a bit on how you define family. Afghan families are slightly different from UK families—there are extended families. We do not have figures for the precise numbers of immediate families, but we do inevitably have figures for the numbers of LECs who have been relocated to the UK under the ex gratia scheme and the number of families we have brought back to the UK under that.
Mike Penning: May I explain some of the logic behind that? I have just come back from Kabul and Afghanistan where interpreters helped me brilliantly while I was there. May I say at the outset that we could not have done what we did, and continue to do today, without interpreters? I praise them.
One of the interpreters spoke to me about whether he could apply to come to the UK because of his concerns. He has two wives by Shi’a marriage. I do not know the exact amount of children, but there were children on both sides. That is a very complicated way of trying to calculate what is family. They also have a family adoption system, which is not a legal adoption system—it is a way that people bring themselves, and cousins, back into the family. A definitive figure—I asked for this myself—is very difficult to get.
Q47 Mr Spellar: That may be true but presumably we have some criteria and some policy regarding that. What is our policy if someone is relocated to the UK? What is our definition and policy regarding family members?
Mike Penning: If it is a male, one wife, if it is a female, one husband, and the children of that wife or husband. We do not recognise dual marriages or multiple marriages.
Jonathan Iremonger: There have been small exceptions to that. We brought back four seriously injured people. One of those was a triple amputee. We agreed—or the Home Office agreed—that we would bring back his brother and his brother’s wife[2] to provide support. There is a little bit of flexibility at the margins, but generally it is immediate family in terms of one wife and children.
Q48 Mr Spellar: So it is immediate family, but what about parents?
Jonathan Iremonger: We do not bring parents back. The Iraq scheme did bring expanded families back, but that became very difficult to define and the numbers became very difficult to relocate in the UK. When it reviewed the options for the Afghan scheme, the Cabinet Office decided that expanded family was not something we could sensibly administer.
Q49 Mrs Moon: If you have just come back, Minister, what is your assessment of the increased risk to the locally employed personnel now? We have left, we have walked away and perhaps we have, to a sense, put Afghanistan behind us, but the impression is—I chair the all-party parliamentary group for Afghanistan—that the war is still being fought and our presence still has serious repercussions for those we have left behind. Has the risk increased or decreased for those who we previously employed?
Mike Penning: I was there last week. We have in excess of 500 British military troops, along with the rest of the NATO operation there; I think we would all praise what they are doing in a difficult situation. There was no indication of an increased risk.
Interestingly enough, as we are coming to the end of the contracts, there is no shortage of people applying to work with us, either within these schemes or in employment at the Embassy or other places, for instance. They live out. It is a difficult situation; what we class as normal in Afghanistan is difficult, but there is no indication from what I have seen, and no indication was put to me by the interpreters while I was there, that the situation is deteriorating, or that it is worse since we drew down.
Jonathan Iremonger: I would not disagree with the previous witness who spoke of the Afghan forces ceding control in marginal areas and some of the country areas. They have rationalised on the main population areas, but they still have substantial control in those areas, and the security there is reasonable. We certainly do not have evidence that former LECs are being targeted in any substantial way. There are very small numbers, and those are the numbers that we relocate in-country, or in extremis, back to the UK.
Q50 James Gray: I think what we have done recently is rather good, so the following is not aggressive. None the less, can I pick you up on one answer you gave a moment ago, Minister? You said that, even if somebody is married—perfectly legally, under local law—to one, two, three or four people, our policy is to allow them to bring only one of those wives back with them. How on earth does that person differentiate? Do they have to choose which ones he leaves behind or what?
Mike Penning: I know it sounds crude and difficult, and it must be very heartbreaking, but they choose. It is a really difficult thing. As I understand it, the marriages are not recognised under UK law. The person I talked to had two wives, and he fully understood what the problem would be. Interestingly enough, even though he raised it with me, he knew what the situation would be.
Q51 James Gray: If that is the case, he has been allowed to come here because he is under threat. He has been allowed to bring one wife with him and is leaving the other wife behind. Presumably, that puts her under a very extreme threat. She is now a woman on her own in Afghanistan; her husband has left her because he is under threat because he has been working for the British Government. That woman, on her own in the middle of Helmand, is surely a major target for the Taliban, is she not?
Jonathan Iremonger: For the particular family in question, he was not somebody who was applying under the intimidation scheme.
Q52 James Gray: He might have been; that chap was not, but he might have been.
Jonathan Iremonger: He was eligible under the ex gratia scheme.
Q53 James Gray: He might have been. Let us talk about someone who applies to come here under the intimidation scheme and is required to bring only one of his two wives with him. Does that not mean the remaining wife is under particular threat?
Jonathan Iremonger: In many cases, the intimidation claims are not just about wives and children—it is about broader family. Obviously, there are limits to who the UK can bring back in any particular set of circumstances. Our judgment is, on the basis of the evidence of intimidation from Haqqani and the Taliban, that it is not the LECs particularly who are targeted.
Generally, I have to say that the LECs, while they are serving us, a lot of the threats say, “Unless you stop working for the UK or the Americans or whoever, we will attack you; if you cease working for them, we will not attack you.” That is often the evidence. From our experience of former LECs who have worked for us and who we still have contact with—there are 500 or 600 of those—once they cease to work for us, the Taliban do not generally target them.
Q54 James Gray: So you are confident that the abandoned wife who is left behind in the middle of Helmand province is going to be safe as houses? Is that right?
Jonathan Iremonger: It is not a situation we are happy with, but we do not recognise multiple marriages under UK law.
Q55 Mrs Moon: How do you stay in touch with people? You said you are in touch with several hundred. How do you maintain contact with people we have previously employed to know what is happening to them?
Jonathan Iremonger: Generally speaking, we try not maintain contact, because that can flag to the Taliban or Haqqani that they used to work for us. The ones we maintain contact with are the ones who are on our education option, our training option. There are just over 100 of those. There are also the ones who we are processing visa applications for, of whom there are 300 or 400. Because of the time it takes to do the checks for visas, many of those are in contact with us for a period of 18 months—or sometimes more for large families. Our contact with those gives us some sort of measure for the extent to which families in general are under threat. They are a fairly representative sample.
Q56 James Gray: I am glad that we have that useful contact. Can you explain to us, Mr Iremonger, how much time you have spent in Afghanistan and how many interpreters you have met?
Jonathan Iremonger: I thought you might ask that question—I am not sure it is a fair one, but I will answer it. I have been in my current job for six years. Generally speaking, I visit my teams once every three months. That is what it said when I first joined. There are limits on my ability to go out there because I am senior—I am what is called a VIP, and the UK has a ration on the number of VIPs, so I sometimes struggle to get out there, but on average I visit my teams there once every three months.
I have met LECs out there at Bastion, at the garrison up at Lashkar Gah, at Souter, at KAIA, which is currently our headquarters, and at Qargha, where we have the Afghan National Army Officer Academy. I have probably met 15, 20 or maybe 30 and I have got to know some of them moderately well, although not as well as some colleagues on the Committee who have worked with them directly—but enough to get some feel for it. It is not ideal. I would not claim to have the same level of knowledge as some of your colleagues, but I know them enough to get some sort of feel for their concerns and motivations.
James Gray: Sure. That’s fine.
Q57 Mr Spellar: What options are available for Afghans who are formally employed by the UK in Afghanistan if they fear for their safety? How do they make that contact?
Jonathan Iremonger: If they fear for their safety, they can get in touch with us. That does not have to be physically—there is a phone line. I know it was claimed that phone calls into the phone line were not answered. My experience generally and the checks I run suggest that that is not the case and the phone calls are followed up. The phone number is quite well known and understood. At least 400 claims have been made, which is a fairly substantial number from our total population of 2,900 former interpreters, and it is mostly interpreters who apply.
Q58 Chair: Sorry, may I interject there? I was going to ask you about some statistics. Out of the numbers of interpreters in particular who have applied, how many have applied in total and how many have applied on the grounds of intimidation?
Jonathan Iremonger: I need to check my precise figures but there are about 2,900 interpreters. I should say that some of those are people who have been recruited and have then left really quite quickly. A number fail initial tests and a number, when they discover what the job is about, decide it is not for them. There is a number who find, when they apply, that maybe their families do not like what they are doing and discourage them. So, of the 2,900 maybe half are longer-term interpreters.
Q59 Chair: I do not want to get too far away from John’s line of questioning—I will come straight back to him, but I think this is the time to raise this issue. The point I am trying to get at is this: there have been some hundreds of applications that have been granted to people under the redundancy scheme to come here. However, as I understand it, there has only been a single application—maybe that has gone up a bit—from someone who has applied to come to the UK under the intimidation scheme. We are most worried about the intimidation scheme, because our main concern has to be that people who helped us are now being left to dangle and twist in the wind. It is quite extraordinary that we have apparently only allowed a single case—a single person and possibly his family—into the UK under the intimidation scheme, even though we have allowed several hundred to apply. Even if you cannot give the statistics to us today, we will be asking you for them.
Mike Penning: I will write to you.
Jonathan Iremonger: I can give you figures. There are 840 LECs—interpreters and others—who are eligible under the ex gratia scheme for one offer or another. In terms of the numbers of people who have applied under the intimidation scheme, there are about 400, of whom about 30 have been granted money to relocate in Afghanistan and of whom one or two—depending on how you define one who is a Foreign Office LEC—have been accepted for visa applications to come back to the UK.
Q60 Chair: How many of those who applied under the intimidation scheme wanted to come to the UK? How many asked to come to the UK and how many were turned down?
Jonathan Iremonger: Probably the vast majority wanted to come to the UK. It is probably unfair to say “turned down”. What we do is look at what is required to manage the threat against them. In some cases, their concern is quite generic—it is about instability in Afghanistan, or about a desire for a better life somewhere. In some cases, it is an absolutely specific threat, which we will address. In some cases it is met by changes in work pattern—we may change their base—and in some cases it is met by relocation to another part of Afghanistan, often Kabul from somewhere in Helmand or the eastern provinces. In a couple of cases, we have looked at relocation to the UK.
Q61 Chair: We heard a picture painted by the previous panel of significant numbers of people in fear of their lives and wanting to come to the UK. Unless they are painting an exaggerated threat picture, in specific terms, of some hundreds of people and their families, isn’t it extraordinary that only a single, or possibly two, cases have been granted under the intimidation scheme to come to the UK? That is an extraordinarily low figure, isn’t it?
Mike Penning: I must admit that, when I first started this job—I have been in it for several months, and, by the way, I struggled to get to Afghanistan, too, because getting out there is quite complicated at times—I was very conscious of the figures. Just like the Committee, I had heard some stuff and read some stuff in the press. I dug as deep as I possibly could, not least with the Assurance Committee, which we have independent people on.
If I can, I will explain how I am enhancing it with independent people. I am not in any way saying that everybody who applies is saying that economically they would be better off here, so we could do this. It is fully investigated by trained officers to see whether the intimidation is there. At the same time, we have to be very conscious of making sure all the checks are done, because it is a very difficult environment to get the information from.
Q62 Chair: What figures do you have of former employees of the British forces who have been murdered in Afghanistan?
Jonathan Iremonger: We are aware of two claims of former UK LECs who have been killed as a result of employment. We know one or two who have died in other circumstances—road traffic accidents and that sort of thing. Of those two, one was the case that Rafi mentioned of the LEC who was killed in Iran. We don’t have any verification of that case, but we have had the report.
The other was the brother of an LEC. Again, we weren’t able to investigate that, although there were some questions about the credibility of the LEC who made the claim. Indeed, he was the LEC who applied for a visa back to the UK. We granted him the right to come back to the UK[3], and when his case was investigated his evidence was not found reliable, and he was refused a visa on the basis of security issues. Those are the only two cases I am aware of. As I say, we keep track of maybe 400 or 500 former LECs. Generally speaking, if there were a major threat to life or of serious injury, we would have seen some sort of incidence of injury or death among that population, and we haven’t.
Chair: Phil Wilson wants to come in briefly, and then we will go back to John, who has been waiting patiently.
Q63 Phil Wilson: For the interpreters who get in touch with the Intimidation Investigation Unit, apparently you use a traffic light system, from what I understand. Since 2013, 200 people have contacted the unit. One has been evacuated to the UK, seven have been relocated within Afghanistan, and the remaining 192 have been told to change their phone numbers or find a different way to get to work. In this country, someone might be told to change their route to work, but I would have thought it is a completely different kettle of fish in Afghanistan. How long do the people on the green traffic light, so to speak, stay on it? What do you do to monitor them?
Jonathan Iremonger: Basically, we ask the LECs to contact us when they are being intimidated. If we think they are under immediate threat, and we have done this, we will relocate them immediately to a safe house while we investigate their case. We will put them in an apartment somewhere in a safer district of Kabul. We will then investigate their case and examine their evidence, and we will relocate them. The figures you have are earlier figures. Our figures show that about 400 people have applied under the intimidation scheme, of whom 30 have been relocated in-country. We pay money to relocate them and establish new employment.
Q64 Phil Wilson: How many have come to the UK? Is it still only one?
Jonathan Iremonger: It is one, and there is one whom we granted leave to apply for a visa, but he was turned down after investigation of his—
Q65 Phil Wilson: So 90% of them are told to change a phone number? That is the only security?
Mike Penning: It is more than just changing a number.
Jonathan Iremonger: It is more than that. To go back to the earlier question about to what extent Afghanistan is safe, Kabul is generally not an unsafe place for LECs. We have a lot of LECs employed there, and our experience is that those people can work at the work locations that we have: the college up at ANAOA, the base we have at KAIA and some other places in the centre of Kabul. Our experience is that people can work there relatively freely, untargeted.
There are deaths in Kabul. Most of those are by IEDs—they are quite random—and most of those IEDs are targeted against big Government bodies like their security services, their army establishments and their Ministries. LECs, in our experience, are not generally targeted in Kabul.
As for relocating people, we think that generally speaking it is safe. That is part of the broader policy of trying to keep intelligent, capable people in Kabul, because that is what Hamid Karzai asked us to do when we were setting up the scheme. We have tried to lean into that, with the intimidation scheme as the fall-back—the safety net, if you like—if they are not safe there.
Q66 Mr Spellar: You heard the comparison made in earlier evidence between the UK’s policy and that of the United States in particular. How would you say our policies compare with the policies of the other ISAF nations?
Jonathan Iremonger: I think our policies are different. To some extent, that is because of the way in which we have leaned into Hamid Karzai’s desire that we should try to keep in Afghanistan the ones who could reasonably stay there.
The training option is unique among NATO nations, as far as I am aware. We have 100-plus people on that. Some of them are the LECs themselves, but we have opened it up to wider families. If you are an old-ish LEC and you have a daughter or wife who wants training—we have cases of that—then we will provide training to the broader family instead of the individual. That is five years’ training, with five years of salary paid. They are doing courses like medical training, legal training, training as mechanics and language courses—those sorts of things. No other NATO nations do that.
For most other NATO nations, if they have a relocation scheme, it is on the basis that it is not safe for the person to remain in the country. Our ex gratia scheme is not based on that. We will move people. There are between 400 and 500 people who are eligible to come to the UK, not conditional upon intimidation, and then over and above that we have an intimidation scheme where, in extremis, we will move people to the UK.
I would say that our scheme is relatively generous. I would have to look at the American figures to see whether proportionately they had more. The American armed forces, at their peak, were very, very big: they had over 100,000 people there, and for a longer period than us they had large numbers. I would need to go away and do that calculation to see whether they are more generous, but generally I think we are more generous than some nations.
Mike Penning: Some have worked for us as well as for other nations in Afghanistan. Some have been accepted to come here and have chosen, for instance, to go to Australia—Australia is particularly popular—if they qualify under their scheme.
Jonathan Iremonger: But certainly, for example, the Danes have turned some people down who worked for the Danes and for us, and we have relocated them.
Q67 Mr Spellar: I am slightly intrigued why the redundancy scheme only applies to interpreters who were still in the employ of UK forces on 19 December 2012, rather than those who had worked with UK personnel from 2001 onwards. What is the reason for that?
Jonathan Iremonger: The scheme that was introduced based on the announcement of drawdown on 19 December 2012 was seen as, in a way, recognising our debt to those people. The Government took the position that we should reward those who had stayed with us through to that point and recognise our debt to them—and also, to some extent, take account of the fact that once they left our employment, there would be a period when they might struggle to find employment.
To those interpreters who had worked on the frontline, we granted the right to apply for a visa to come back to the UK. More widely, we offered the training package or the finance package—18 months’ pay—as a reward. The majority of the people who had left before had almost certainly worked for very short periods; there was a substantial number who worked for longer periods; and they mostly left of their own accord, although some cases were disciplinary or of people being dismissed for security reasons.
There was a small number who did very good service for us—but do not misunderstand me: anyone who served on the frontline was extremely brave and gave us extraordinary service. None the less, they decided to leave for their own reasons, and the Government scheme was not designed to recognise a debt to those who had left of their own accord before 19 December 2012 when drawdown was announced.
Q68 Mr Spellar: That is a statement of the facts. What I am really asking is, why not, given that they served us during that period?
Mike Penning: That was the decision of the Government of the day. It is not about passing the buck back from where I am, but that was their decision—
Q69 Mr Spellar: With due respect, the British Government are responsible for the British Government and, in particular, that was a Government led by a Conservative Prime Minister—
Mike Penning: John, I didn’t say anything about party politics. I just said it was an issue—
Q70 Mr Spellar: No, I am trying to say that it was the Government of the day—
Mike Penning: Drawing it into party politics is not—
Q71 Mr Spellar: It is an ongoing Government of the day and therefore I am asking a question, quite legitimately, as to why the decision was made not to extend back to those who had served us during the previous period and who were just as likely to be suffering from some of the problems as those who were currently serving.
Jonathan Iremonger: The Government wanted to define the level of responsibility. I am not the Government so it is not my choice to decide the policy, but their assessment was that the people to whom we owed a particular debt were those who had stayed with us until 19 December 2012 when we announced drawdown. We did not owe the same debt to those who had left before of their own accord or because they were dismissed for disciplinary or security reasons. That was the decision taken. I could tell you why it was. It is not for me to judge whether that was a reasonable policy or not.
All I would add is that for everyone who left pre-19 December 2012, if there was an intimidation risk against them, we would address their cases in those circumstances. Without doubt, the security situation in Afghanistan could change and we keep it under review. When we look at intimidation cases, we absolutely recognise that what was safe six months ago might not be safe now. In which case, we will adjust our policy in terms of our liability for the safety of these people to reflect that.
Q72 James Gray: You say you will change the intimidation policy as things change. What are these things called the Locally Engaged Civilians Assurance Committee and indeed the military legal adviser? What are they?
Mike Penning: I will do the committee first. Perhaps you will come back to ask me about the second part. It is a committee that I chair, which is supposed to be impartial and to scrutinise some of the decisions—not whether the decision was right or wrong, but whether the rules have been interpreted correctly and whether in the main we need to tweak it.
When I first came on to the committee—we are not sitting in our own destiny here, because other Government Departments are involved, especially the Home Office, as you can imagine with the visa situation and asylum; and Baroness Coussins was on there, and she is doing excellent work—I was not happy with it, and nor was she, I think, so I suggested that we expand the committee and bring some independent people in. For instance, I have invited the Bishop of Colchester—probably for obvious reasons, given where he represents—and Lord Stirrup to join us. Both have accepted and will join the committee at its next meeting.
The other thing that we are doing is looking at three test cases—so each one on the committee was given three. I have expanded that to allow Baroness Coussins and any other member of the committee to go to the headquarters and to look through the files, so I am not cherry-picking in any shape or form, whether it is right or wrong.
Q73 James Gray: Leaving aside individual cases—I can well understand that function of the committee—the question really is, to what degree does the committee have the ability to influence policy? In other words, supposing, for example, the security situation in Afghanistan got significantly worse—let us imagine, for the sake of argument—would the committee have the ability to change the intimidation policy?
Mike Penning: Certainly the committee would, through me, give advice, and then it would be for the Government to change the policy, thus myself and the Secretary of State, along with the Prime Minister.
Q74 James Gray: It is advisory.
Mike Penning: Absolutely, it is an advisory committee.
Q75 James Gray: What about the military legal adviser? What do they do?
Jonathan Iremonger: Can I add a little bit on the question of security? Each time the Minister’s assurance committee meets, it reviews the security situation in Afghanistan. It gets a report from the Foreign Office representative on that committee about what the developments have been since the last time the committee met. It keeps that under review and looks at whether there are any questions about the policy that need to be raised to Ministers or to the Cabinet Office, who own the policy still, about whether the scheme is still fit for purpose.
In terms of the legal adviser, the assurance committee is part of a more developed system of assurance, if you like. When we first introduced the scheme, we wanted a degree of independence on it. To some extent that is provided by the police investigation being undertaken by specialised, qualified police investigators. Originally that was from the Ministry of Defence police. Now it is from—or has been until recently—a series of metropolitan police forces around the country. They are specialised investigators and they provide a degree of professional independent perspective.
We also wanted to bring other outside independent views to bear, so we have had a Dane on our committee, originally a Danish lawyer. Recently they were not able to supply a lawyer. We now have one of our lawyers in to make sure that our decisions are sound out in theatre, but the Dane provides an independent perspective again.
Then, after we had done about a couple of hundred cases, we employed an independent barrister to look at the case decisions we had got and to look at whether our decisions were sound or not. He came back and said that there are about five of the 200 where procedurally—not fundamentally—the approach wasn’t quite right. We went back, reviewed and changed our approach to the cases.
So all the way through we have tried to bring independent assurance to this, to make sure it is not just us sitting marking our own homework—that there are independents who can hold us to account. The ministerial committee is kind of the capping of that. It is the most recent, high-level, if you like, assurance check that we have.
Mike Penning: One of the interpreters who has been relocated back here, Qari, was massively injured in Afghanistan and was relocated here with his wife and brother. That is the gentleman my colleague was alluding to. He lives in Colchester and sits next to me on the committee. He has input and sees all the papers and everything that is done.
Going back to the security situation, as the Ops Minister, I review and see those every day, so if there was any need, I could change that very, very quickly.
Q76 Chair: We did hear from Rafi in the earlier session about a triple amputee who was offered a package of money and then sort of basically sent off to fend for himself. You are saying basically that if a triple amputee who had been grievously wounded in the service of our country did wish to come to this country, that would be looked at sympathetically.
Mike Penning: We have, and will continue to do so. Not only did I meet some of the officers that that particular individual interpreted for after his injuries, he then applied to come here and came with his wife. Because his injuries were so bad, in the exceptional circumstances, his brother was given permission to come here and look after him as his carer. As I say, he sits on that scrutiny committee with me. He is a very independently minded young man, a very intelligent man and is a great asset to the committee.
Jonathan Iremonger: Can I add to that? He was one of the first cases that I came across when I joined my current job. There was him and a double amputee and subsequently a chap who had lost his sight in both eyes.
It is absolutely not the case that we abandoned him. Initially he was treated in the UK medical facility. There were limits on the ability of that unit to treat him because of its capabilities. We paid for him to go down to India, as we did with the blind chap, to have specialist treatment down there. We then brought him back. He was eligible for relocation. The triple amputee worked at the embassy for a while. We have since relocated him. There was a large financial award, which was very substantially more than the £10,000 mentioned.
When we brought him back to the UK, we paid for adjustments to be made to his house. We brought his brother back to provide care. We have remained in touch with him. One of the reasons for bringing him on to the ministerial committee was a concern on our part that he might be quite isolated back in the UK. He was very bright and capable and we wanted to keep him engaged in perceiving that he had a useful function in life and show that we still cared about him. It was a small thing, but it was one thing we could do.
Chair: Thank you for that. Johnny wants to come in briefly with two other things.
Q77 Johnny Mercer: Briefly, Jonathan, how many people work in the LSU in theatre?
Jonathan Iremonger: The number has varied over time. It is partly based on workload. In the LSU, it is probably about four or five. I don’t own the LSU; that’s the employment branch.
In terms of the bits that do the intimidation scheme and the ex gratia scheme, I have two people in the British embassy in Kabul who do the visa applications for the ex gratia relocation scheme and also the finance and education options. The number has varied. Sometimes we have had two inspectors out in theatre to do the intimidation investigation. We have drawn that down to one recently, because the case load dropped off. Then we have an interpreter; we had the Danish lawyer for a while; and we have some supporting civil servants who provide the secretariat and the decision-making capability.
Q78 Johnny Mercer: Are you confident that the funding streams for that particular operation are secure for the time being and that we can continue to provide the current levels?
Jonathan Iremonger: There has never been any question: I have had the flexibility to vary the manpower as I have needed to. As I say, there has been no pressure on me to change that manpower to reflect financial pressures.
Mike Penning: That was one of the first questions I had when I came into the job. I went straight out and talked to the team. I asked them, “Can you backfill? Have you got enough?” Interestingly enough, because I was the Police Minister before, I knew about the police officer and I knew about the change from the MOD Police. It’s interesting to see it from the other side. It was two, then one. If we need to, we can put in more.
Jonathan Iremonger: Indeed, I have tended to over-man that, to keep a little contingent capability, because I realised that while there may be only a trickle of intimidation cases at the moment, if something changes, I may need to step that up, and my ability to respond really quickly—I can’t just deploy somebody in a week, so I need a little bit of spare capacity.
Johnny Mercer: Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you. We now go to Phil Wilson.
Q79 Phil Wilson: How many Afghans who were formerly employed as interpreters by the UK have been granted asylum in the UK?
Mike Penning: Can I answer that question, having been in the Home Office? It’s a figure we don’t know. You cannot apply for asylum till you enter the UK, so you cannot apply for asylum from out in Afghanistan. The Home Office do not supply us with the figures. One of the things I have asked is whether that can be done. So I don’t know. Perhaps the Committee would like to write to the Home Office, and perhaps you might get some up-to-date figures.
Q80 James Gray: It is a straightforward written PQ, isn’t it?
Mike Penning: It is not quite that simple, not least because of some of the reasons why they may have been turned down—not just for straight asylum, but on security reasons. So we’re not fully in control of our destiny.
One of the things that I wanted to get across to the Committee today is that we can do everything we could possibly want to do and bring people back, but sometimes it is not fully in my destiny. An example is the Home Office visa situation. For security reasons, they are not granting visas. That has nothing to do with asylum—not granting visas. There are people who have arrived here. They may even have been helped under our scheme, but they decided to come here, got here and then applied for asylum.
Then, of course, there are the issues about how we look after them when they are here. One of the biggest problems I have is finding local authorities willing to take on families and house families of, say, 12 or larger. I have no accommodation in my constituency that would take 12 people in a family in that way. They would have to knock two houses through or whatever, but lots of local authorities do not want to or cannot—
Q81 Chair: I just want to make sure of something. I am probably misunderstanding this, but earlier you were talking about people coming with only one or two dependants. Is it because you are talking under the terms of asylum that they are being allowed to bring—
Mike Penning: There are—
Q82 Chair: How come it would be such large families?
Mike Penning: There are families that are larger, even with one spouse.
Q83 Chair: Yes, right. So you are talking about a couple with a lot of children.
Mike Penning: Yes.
Jonathan Iremonger: Exactly that. We will relocate spouse and immediate family. Generally speaking, the immediate family is probably two to five. In a small number of exceptional cases, it is very large; it can be up to 12. When we try to find a local authority to locate those people, it is quite difficult. Effectively, we have to fund over our original allocation for an individual family, to enable that, but we are happy to do that. That’s kind of our commitment, and we will provide the funding required to enable that to happen.
Chair: Back to you, Phil.
Q84 Phil Wilson: Obviously, this is a controversial issue—a sensitive issue. I would have thought it would help the Government if they had a number. The question was not about the number of interpreters and family members; it was just about the number of interpreters—
Mike Penning: Who have got asylum.
Q85 Phil Wilson: Just the individual interpreters. We haven’t even got a figure for that, and I would have thought it would help the Government, in their position on this issue, to say, “This is how many we have awarded asylum to.” If you cannot do that, it is going to continue to be the thorny issue that it is.
Jonathan Iremonger: The Ministry of Defence has been consulted on a relatively small number of the asylum cases. In my time, I can think of three, four or five—that sort of number—where the asylum tribunal has come to us asking for evidence to support the fact that this person was employed by us and the circumstances under which they might have come under intimidation or not. Asylum tribunals do not have to apply to us for evidence and, in many cases, they don’t.
There is also a slight complication in the sense that we know of a small number of Afghans who have applied for asylum here who in fact were LECs but applied under a different name, for reasons that I am sure they thought were sensible, but we would never normally have picked up anyway. I could not give you a definitive figure. I am not sure whether the Home Office hold the figures centrally but they would be the people who could tell you, if anybody could.
Q86 Phil Wilson: It is amazing, really, that we haven’t got the figures. There have been several high-profile cases of interpreters who worked for the UK being granted asylum in the UK and across Europe. Has the restrictive nature of the scheme available to these individuals increased the likelihood of them turning to people smugglers to get into Europe? We find out and have heard press stories of interpreters being found among refugees in Calais, for example.
Mike Penning: I asked that very same question. Some of those people who have been granted asylum since they came through whatever means got them here would almost certainly have qualified under the scheme, subject to the security checks and the other issues. Some of them have been quite public about it that they made their own decision to make their own way here to do that.
All I can say is that the scheme is robust—it has to be—but if people have got here and they have been granted asylum under the asylum system, we have quite rightly to accept that. That is right and proper. We can see from the figures that a vast majority of them are dealt with under the two schemes, which is right.
One of the reasons I have enhanced the scrutiny Committee is for that confidence. Anyone who knows Jock Stirrup would know he would not have come on to the Committee just to be there; he wants to be part of it and make sure it is right, which is why I invited him to do so.
Q87 Phil Wilson: It has been suggested that having a scheme that would allow an interpreter to apply for the right of relocation, no matter when he worked for the UK forces, might encourage those who were planning to leave Afghanistan actually to stay, by providing them with a definite escape route if things get difficult. Do you think that might be the case?
Jonathan Iremonger: I would say that is not the case. Certainly, all of those we have offered relocation to have taken it at that point in time. There is a very small number of people currently employed who have indicated a wish to stay on, in spite of the fact that they are entitled to relocation, but would ultimately want to relocate. They are just putting off their relocation because the units for which they are working and the relationships they have are good relationships and they want to stay in them for a bit longer.
The nature of the relocation scheme is such that we have to move them within the timescale and we will do that. My experience generally is that those entitled to relocation will want to take that up as quickly as possible, because they are uncertain about our ability to sustain that.
I think that they believe that the sooner they get to the UK, the sooner they can establish an economic way of life in the UK and the sooner they can bring their families so their families can integrate. They want to take that opportunity. If their children are going to grow up in the UK, they might as well start doing that sooner rather than later.
Mike Penning: From my point of view, I met some people last week in two separate locations. Some of them had worked for us for a considerable amount of years and some were relatively new. The vast majority of them will come under the scheme, not least for many of the reasons we have heard.
Kabul and Afghanistan are still in a very unstable situation. Some are going to take redundancy and then take a new contracted package to carry on working, because we do need interpreters to carry on. Some will go and work for some of the others out there as well as part of the coalition.
One of them even changed his mind while we were chatting. I was not encouraging or discouraging him. I just said, “What’s best for your family?” As we chatted away, it became plainly obvious. There will be some issues to do with security. For instance, there was an interpreter—it would be wrong to mention his name—who had worked for us for about 12 years whose security pass was due to be renewed. When they did the security checks on him—it is not done by us, interestingly; I think it’s done by the Turks—he failed them very severely and now will not qualify.
Q88 Chair: As we are talking about individual cases, you will be aware that just as The Times ran its campaign on behalf of Iraqi interpreters, the Daily Mail has run a strong campaign on behalf of Afghan interpreters. Possibly the most disturbing report is the one on 2 May last year about a 29-year-old Afghan, Nangyalai Dawoodzai, who committed suicide in Birmingham when he was told that his asylum request was going to be rejected.
It is perhaps unfair to ask you to answer on this specific case now, but if there’s anything you can say about it now—otherwise, could you write to us about that case, and say whether you feel that his case was, in fact, handled fairly and appropriately. There is a list of several other cases in the same article, so I refer you to it. But are you able to say anything about the interpreter who killed himself?
Mike Penning: I can’t, not least because that was an asylum tribunal decision. What I do need to look into, and I will look into it—I give that assurance—is what we were involved with prior to that. And I think that’s right and proper.
Q89 Chair: The fact that someone should have been so depressed and dismayed—he wasn’t being sent back to Afghanistan; he was being sent back to Italy, I believe. But the fact that someone should have got into that state does suggest—doesn’t it?—that he’d been failed, to some extent, in this country.
Mike Penning: Where we have failed, if we have failed, we need to put our hands up and say so. Those who have known me in different ministerial Departments before will know exactly where I am on this situation. Individual cases? Let me look and let me see obviously what the legal situation is in some cases, because we have some cases still running through different parts of the judicial system. But I assure you that I will write. What I would also ask, probably, is my counterpart in the Home Office to join with me in looking at—
Q90 Chair: Are you able to co-ordinate with them?
Mike Penning: I am.
Q91 Chair: And if you are, would you particularly look at that article—there are about half a dozen names, but principally the one who committed suicide. There are a number of other cases referred to. That would be very helpful—
Jonathan Iremonger: Could I just make one comment there? It’s really difficult for us to give you individual details of individual cases, because the information that we get is effectively confidential—
Q92 Chair: Yes, but with respect, Jonathan, we’ve been discussing all sorts of individual cases when it suited you, so I think we should be able to discuss the ones that don’t—
Mike Penning: Let me be as open as I can possibly be, with the lawyers jumping all over me, Julian.
Jonathan Iremonger: But generally speaking, I haven’t talked about named cases; I’ve been quite careful not to.
Q93 Chair: Well, then, don’t name him; just say “in the case of an individual who committed suicide”. We’ll join the dots.
Jonathan Iremonger: We can only give you generic advice.
Q94 Chair: I should think a little more “specific” than “generic” would be appreciated.
Jonathan Iremonger: Okay. We’ll see what we can do.
Q95 Jack Lopresti: Minister, what is your current assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan?
Mike Penning: The security situation in Afghanistan is difficult. I mean, I had, as you can imagine, close protection: three vehicles, and that sort of thing. But that’s the job, and actually our armed forces are doing brilliantly well out there in that situation.
What actually surprised me when I was there is the openness—the complete openness—of people walking, say, within the embassy and other parts of the coalition establishment. For instance, we got back quite late. The plane—we got snowed in—and the people working in the embassy stayed, because they knew I was coming. Then they went home, into Kabul, and then came back in the morning. And the interpreters are in that situation.
I mean—“Would we be comfortable living within that environment?” is probably the answer. And that would be really difficult for us, I think—
Q96 Jack Lopresti: Are you aware there’s been an explosion today at the High Court in Kabul?
Mike Penning: Yes.
Jack Lopresti: With several fatalities.
Mike Penning: But they are particularly targeting high-profile—I mean, we’ve had a particularly difficult weekend, especially down in Helmand.
Q97 Jack Lopresti: So do you think the security situation will worsen as the drawdown from NATO forces continues?
Mike Penning: We have no plans to draw down. Actually, there’s a possibility that we might uplift, because of what we are being asked to do. I have not been formally asked, but I might as well be honest with the Committee that that is a possibility. The two-star Generals—the American administration—that I met when I was there were committed to being there. I met my counterpart in the Afghan Government and assured him that we were there, continuing with the job.
Q98 Jack Lopresti: So do you think the situation will improve there?
Mike Penning: Well, we are coming towards the start of the fighting season, as it is termed, so that will be difficult. My gut feeling is that until we get to a situation where they feel that there is, for want of a better word, a stalemate, so that they have to get around a table and sort it out, it will have its peaks and troughs. They particularly target high-profile individuals, because that is what they are looking for.
Jonathan Iremonger: To add to that, the question of whether it could get worse or better is an open question.
Q99 Jack Lopresti: You must have a view on it, surely?
Jonathan Iremonger: The point for us is that we keep the security situation under review and when we look at intimidation cases, we look at them against the situation at the time.
Mike Penning: I asked this question not just because I was coming to see you, but when I was in Afghanistan I asked the interpreters themselves. They do not feel more at risk today than they did yesterday or last month.
Jonathan Iremonger: If it gets worse, they can come back to us to raise their intimidation concerns and we will look at their case again.
Q100 Jack Lopresti: Do we have a contingency capability to reinforce our people there very quickly if we needed to?
Mike Penning: Yes.
Q101 Jack Lopresti: Great. Okay. Given, in my opinion, how shabbily we have treated our Afghan interpreters, do you think on future operations that will severely impede our ability to recruit locals to do the interpreting job for British forces?
Mike Penning: I would probably have assumed that but actually, because we pay very well and it is a good contract to have with us, even under the new schemes going forward, we have no shortage, interestingly, of people who want to work with us as interpreters and in the other trades.
Jonathan Iremonger: Yes—I wouldn’t say we treated them shabbily, obviously. I don’t think that is their judgment and certainly our experience around the world and in Afghanistan is that there is no perception that we are not somebody they are happy to work for.
Q102 Jack Lopresti: Do you think there is a responsibility to manage expectations, given how well the Americans treat their interpreters and how many have been taken back to the States? We can argue about our treatment of ours, how shabbily they have been treated, but we have sat and listened to cases. Do you think we have a responsibility to say that we will not just give you an open-ended ability to come back to the UK?
Jonathan Iremonger: Well, we employ people on a contract and they understand what that contract delivers. There may have been an expectation, certainly among Afghans, a lot of whom looked across at Iraq to see what we had done there and assumed that something like the same package would apply.
I remember meeting an Afghan in Bastion at the passenger handling facility who said, “I am expecting to come to the UK at the end of my time”. So there is an expectation, which is not about anything we put in the contract. I could not comment in 2011 about what the final package was going to be, but they had an assumption.
Mike Penning: We have a capability to enhance the package: it is quite a flexible thing. Rather than the Committee just getting an update, I get the update. The interesting thing is what our coalition partners are going to be doing in Afghanistan itself, which is probably beyond our power of prediction, particularly with the Trump Administration. Let us see what they will do.
The Americans indicated to me that they thought there would be an uplift: they did the drawdown, now there may be an uplift situation. What their policy will be for their interpreters and other employed staff is for the Americans to decide. Ours is more generous than some others but not perhaps as generous as the Americans, as you alluded to.
Q103 Jack Lopresti: Apart from taking on locally employed interpreters, do UK military forces or NATO maintain a pool, within the Foreign Office or perhaps the MOD, or a capability of training our own interpreters and being able to deploy them?
Mike Penning: The Foreign Office does have interpreters, as does DFID, but they tend to employ locally, under a set short-term contract. The difference with this is that we employ them within the system. You could not hold the amount of redundancy in the system to do it. You could not just hold them and employ them. Of course, we do use companies and other organisations to do it.
The one thing you need to do is to be able to communicate when you get there, so when we went into Afghanistan we needed a huge number of people to help in this area, with journalism and other things as well.
Jack Lopresti: My understanding from locals when I was briefly deployed there was that they thought we were going to be there for a much longer duration and we would look after people who risked their lives on our behalf.
Q104 Chair: For the sake of clarity, I want to raise two points. Is it the case that the collective Government view is that the situation in Afghanistan is or has been regarded as less dangerous than it was in Iraq, and that is why there is this differentiation in treatment between the two lots of interpreters?
Jonathan Iremonger: That is certainly the case. In Iraq between 2005 and 2007, it was clear that a lot of our locally employed civilians were being specifically targeted by Shi’ite or Sunni groups. We do not have exact figures for how many were killed, but it was somewhere between 20 and 30 that we know about, including 17 working in police interpreting. In Afghanistan, it has never been that level of threat. We certainly think that the order of risk—
Mike Penning: I went to Iraq several times, and to Afghanistan as well. It feels—particularly on the ground today, from my interpretation of it—very different from Iraq. It is an IED today, and sadly there will be more, but the way they target as compared to Iraq seems very different.
Q105 Chair: If the situation did change radically for the worse, then you would reconsider some of these criteria.
Mike Penning: Yes, of course we would.
Q106 Chair: Finally, you mentioned the possibility of our being asked to increase the numbers of forces. Can you assure us that you will announce it in the House at the earliest opportunity if such a decision is taken?
Mike Penning: It was an assumption that I made after conversations with the coalitions. One of the things I always want to do is be as open as possible. If I am sitting here thinking, “I may have to do an uplift. There may be a possibility”—I will probably be shot when I get back.
Q107 Chair: No need for that; you have always been very good at announcing these things, and I want to ensure that that would happen in this case.
Mike Penning: The other thing is that we do not yet know—the Americans are going through a review of their foreign policy and their military deployments—where they are. They are nearly halfway through their 30-day review.
Q108 Chair: I feel it is only fair to give you the last word, Minister. Perhaps you would like to say a word about the Government’s attitude to those locally employed civilians, especially the interpreters, and the service they have given our armed forces.
Mike Penning: My view is like our servicemen’s: they were alongside us in really difficult times, and it is our job to ensure that we can be as helpful and as alongside them as possible. I am more confident than when I took the job on, simply because of what I have been able to go out and see operationally. Is it perfect? Has it been perfect? No, but I am sure the Committee will come up with some ideas as to whether we can make it better.
At the end of the day, as I said to Qari—he was sitting next to me the other day—he has given so much, and we should be able to help him. That is why we went beyond what we would normally do under the scheme to help people like him.
Chair: Thank you for that. The session is concluded.
[1] Note by witness: Locally Employed Civilian
[2] Note by witness: The Home Office agreed to bring back the LEC, his wife and his brother (not the brother’s wife)
[3] Note by witness: He was granted the right to apply for a UK visa