Nepali officials have raised the issue of deportation by the UK of more than 100 Nepali guards, who risked their lives to protect British embassy staff in Afghanistan, with British officials.

According to British newspaper, The Guardian, these Nepali guards who served during very difficult times in Kabul were secretly repatriated to Nepal against their wishes shortly after being airlifted to safety in the UK.

During the bilateral consultation meeting between Nepal and the United Kingdom in London on Wednesday, Nepali officials sought an explanation from British officials on the issue, one Nepali official participating in the meeting told the Post.

“One of the items on the meeting’s agenda was people-to-people linkage. But all issues of our concern were discussed,” the official said.

But he did not share what the British side communicated to the Nepali officials.

Soon after the issue of Nepali guards serving in the British Embassy in Kabul surfaced in the British media, the Nepali Embassy in London had also taken up the matter with the British authorities, the Nepali official added.

Hundreds of Nepali nationals and a small number of Indian nationals who protected key institutions in Kabul were brought to the UK on a Royal Air Force flight during the chaotic evacuation of the Afghan capital by Western countries in August 2021, as victorious Taliban forces closed in.

It has now emerged that days after they arrived in the UK, more than 100 of these evacuees were forcibly removed to their home countries even though many had been issued with six-month visas on arrival, according to The Guardian’s report.

The Guardian has interviewed some of the deported guards, who believed their lives were in danger in Nepal.

Some were forcibly removed from hotel rooms in the UK in areas including Northampton, Reading, Oxford and Swindon before completing what at the time was a mandatory 10-day period of Covid pandemic hotel quarantine for new arrivals in the UK.

Nepal was designated as a red-list country, with UK government instructions that people should not travel there, when the former guards were flown back in 2021.

Some have managed to find their way back to the UK since 2021 and have claimed asylum.

“In March, at least 10 Nepali guards who protected the British embassy staff in Kabul and were still living in the UK were arrested in a raid at their west London hotel and detained by the Home Office.

After the detentions came to light, the British Home Office issued a statement saying that the removals of those detained had been paused “pending further review,” reads the report.

It said the evacuees were flown from Kabul as “a gesture of goodwill” with the understanding that they were expected to return to their home countries.

More than 100 of those forcibly removed from the UK have written to Rudra Dhakal, a British resident of Nepali heritage who is supporting them, with the Home Office, Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, Nepalese government and UNHCR copied in, in a letter titled “Urgent appeal for further humanitarian protection in the UK”, according to the Guardian.

Dhakal confirmed that he assisted these Nepali guards who were in trouble. “I am trying to spread the message about the injustice being done to the Nepali guards by the British government across the nooks and corners of the world,” Dhakal wrote on his Facebook wall.

“These veterans were absolutely forgotten by the British media and the Government of the UK for a long time after they were evacuated from Afghanistan in August 2021. I hope the British government will correct its historical mistake for the justice of these bravest of brave veterans who protected the Western envoys and convoys in the Afghan war,” Dhakal has written in his Facebook wall.

Published on: 27 April 2023 | The Kathmandu Post