Does Briton have a moral duty to take in as many Afghan refugees as possible?

FarNorth

Blinko

We do of course. Whether that will be taken into account when people turn up on our shores in dinghies is another matter...

They shouldn't have to be in dinghies - the UK should be helping them now.

Those who will have been prioritised, of course will be on flights. But others may well escape later, and trek for hundreds of miles, and yet turn upon our shores. Compassion will be required for all.

Parsley3

PippaZ

MerylStreep

The Taliban have called for an amnesty. They are asking for women to join the new government.

Interesting.

It is interesting, isn’t it. The present Taliban are a new generation and will want to hold onto power. They may well be open to compromise as they will need to keep the support of their allies China, Russia and Pakistan. However, in the meantime the UK should provide humanitarian help to those souls who need it.

My worry is that it's taken the West many, many centuries to stop seeing women as chattels and marrying off children. It's also less than a 100 years since the Equal Franchise Act (1928) was passed in the UK.

The USA did not go into Afghanistan to promote regime change. As Bidden said in his speach:

We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.

We did that. We severely degraded al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and we got him. That was a decade ago.

Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.

It needs the Afghan's to decide to make the changes they chose for themselves.

Shirlb

Where are they going to live? This country can’t cope with the people already here wasn’t that the reason for brexit?

Wow. A first! Someone admitting that was the reason for Brexit!!!

Britain went to war in Afghan between 1830 to 1840 and was sent home with it’s tail between our legs then. Nothing has changed.

Define toy YES! especially the interpreters.

I think there has to be an international effort to help Afganistan, we can't expect the US, UK and small number of other countries to stay in a place where they have tried for 20 years to help train people to protect their country and build schools. I do wonder where all the expert GRANS have come from. Gransnet seems to have become a bashing site lately. Even presenters on daytime shows think they know more than the security services. I'm trying to find threads from sites where people have been saying we're wrong to come out as we have been saying it for a while now. We can't do this on our own especially. Its easy to say soldiers (and civilians) who have been helping to try and protect the normal Afgan people have done so in vain but I personally think every soldier and civilian who has helped and sadly died have been very brave and do not think they have died in vain. They have died trying to make a difference and we should be very proud of them all. Do we really want our people to stay there forever as we cannot westernise the Afgan people. They have to want it themselves but so many within their communities want the life they have even though we as westerners don't agree they should have to live in what we call suppressed societies. There are so many countries all over the world where there are awful things happening but their leaders stay in power and sometimes all we can usually do is get upset that these things are happening. I do think we should help the people who have helped us while in Afganistan and then in the future help more people but without increased housing, GP services, schools, community projects it's quite hard at the moment. I am a Gran and can see every day the things we get annoyed about, eg spending billions on things we don't agree with, but however upsetting we find these things I think we have to find a way to start these projects ASAP to help UK residents, immigrants and asylum seekers. Maybe big local companies can help in their own communities? Hope all you grans are well and keeping safe and good to see some real comments amongst a lot of negatives.

PippaZ

MerylStreep

The Taliban have called for an amnesty. They are asking for women to join the new government.

Interesting.

It is interesting, isn’t it. The present Taliban are a new generation and will want to hold onto power. They may well be open to compromise as they will need to keep the support of their allies China, Russia and Pakistan. However, in the meantime the UK should provide humanitarian help to those souls who need it.

MaggsMcG

We should take our fair share but send the dinghy people back to France. I read an article on Internet that 90% of the people in Afghanistan want Shari Law. So maybe they will be happy. The rest of the world can help the 10% that don't.

dingy people

As they they aren’t human beings.

CNN have just reported that the Taliban have completely surrounded the airport.

I so hope that doesn’t mean that they are preventing people from leaving Afghanistan.

Estimated between 9-10k Americans still there and untold Afghans who want to leave.

What about the Brits? ?

Yes,as soon as possible

I have read that women judges etc have been told to expect to be punished.

Great points interested.

Hmmm. Watch this space.

MerylStreep

The Taliban have called for an amnesty. They are asking for women to join the new government.

Interesting.

Floriel

"There's always one.' Make that two, Alegrias. I too feel sick to the stomach about what is happening out there, particularly to the women and girls, but I don't want hundreds of thousands more refugees here, especially from a culture so different from ours. If the Taliban came here I'd fight to the death and 'take one with me' as Churchill said. I don't understand why the Afghan forces didn't put up more of a fight.

How do you know they didn't?

The British and American media aren't going to admit the Afghans fought to the death but needed help, are they? Would show us in an even worse light.

YES - undoubtedly. But we need to ensure that we have the Infrastructure to be able to house them on arrival - and work out how many people can be dispersed among the different areas of UK, so that no one area is 'over flooded with refugees', as that is what starts the Right Wingers to stir up trouble with our own people against the Refugees.

They need all the help that they can get - God Bless Them all

My late brother was an interpreter, but rarely in a war zone.

The idea of him giving service the way these people have and then being abandoned to his fate is just awful.

I also fear for the young women and girls over there who are seen as mere commodities.

We must help them.

The Russians have also been financing the Taliban apparently, and of course who looks after their money in BRITISH off shore territories?
SO we are to blame for enriching the Taliban because we have a corrupt government which turns a blind eye to what banks get up to, and these hidden off shore accounts.

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/british-banks-handled-vast-sums-of-laundered-russian-money

Mapleleaf

It really has to be wondered why, when so much time and money was spent training the Afghan military to protect their people and support a government who was supposedly forward thinking and wanting their population to live a safe and decent life with access to education (especially girls and women who were never really valued as equal citizens) and all that we take for granted here, this very same military and government rolled over backwards to let the Taliban take control so easily. In my view, this has been planned for for a very long time and I suspect many of the Afghan military and government were in support of the Taliban. Either that, or they were very weak willed and disorganised to fight back efficiently on their own. There's a lot more to this than meets the eye.

My thoughts too. I think the majority of Afghan men are happy to let the Taliban in so they can lock the women up in the home again. Our western freedoms are not really accepted in these countries and we wonder why our interference ends in disaster. I don’t believe the Afghan army were afraid of the Taliban, they outnumbered them, were trained and equipped by the Allies and could have fought them off if they’d wanted to. After all, they saw off the mighty Soviet Union in the 80s when they tried to impose communism.
I do think we should take in the women, children and the men who assisted our armies,but we’ll never reach the women now.

Yes, we have to help, especially any women who seek refuge. Unfortunately it seems that it is mainly men who try to get to a safe country. It almost made me cry thinking about what is going to happen to females in Afghanistan now.

Interesting comments. Afghanistan has had a history of warring tribes since time immemorial. The Russians failed to establish any sort and left for very good reasons, and now, so have the Americans and their supporters. I remember my father saying when the Russians went into Afghanistan, that they would leave soon, and I did not believe him, he was right.
There is no understanding in the west of these cultures.
A woman I met socially told me she worked in one of the asylum centres, and said the Afghans were the biggest trouble makers. Saudi Arabia and UAE do not have equality for women. Yemenis(who people have been supporting against Saudi Arabia) LAW says its OK to marry children off at any age. Girls are affected by this and married to much older men, the only thing the law says sexual intercourse cannot take place until puberty. So you need to start thinking about who do you want in the country? And another question to ask is the Taliban have always been supported by Saudi Arabian private money, laundered by British banks through off shore accounts. Maybe we should put our own house in order first.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46554097

I would say yes. To compare us with other countries though as to how many is somewhat naive. Canada for example is much bigger landwise as is Germany and many other countries with population's about the same as the UK. Larger countries have the capacity to create accommodation much speedier than the UK and many countries want and need bigger populations. Yes, people need sanctuary but there has to be a worldwide effort to do this as all can be affected by terrorism.

Yes definitely. Those poor innocent people, it’s beyond awful.

Absolutely!

Johnny Mercer (who I normally don't have much time for) on the radio at lunchtime saying that while he understands the personal feelings that Ben Wallace is experiencing, that doesn't let him off for all the failings about how the situation in Afghanistan has been handled.

I’ve been purposely staying off the Afghanistan threads because its such a complicated situation that I feel I have nothing to say. But I’m interested to see that people with no knowledge or comprehension of the situation whatsoever are happy to come on here and pontificate about who believes what in a country that probably none of us have been to or know anything about. Or who is worth saving and who isn’t. But the last straw is when people start spouting about our country being full, how ungrateful all these incomers are, and all the rest of it. I suspect those people – men, women and children – clinging to the undercarriages of planes in flight would be happy to live anywhere that meant they didn’t get beaten in the street or deprived of life because they went for a haircut.