In hiding and desperate, two former Afghan interpreters have urged the UK to rescue them from what they see as a Taliban death sentence because they worked for British troops.
Both men, named “N” and “W” to protect their identities, said they applied to a government scheme to be allowed to resettle in Britain, but were rejected because they had been sacked from their interpreting jobs for offences that they said they did not commit.
“In the coming months the Taliban will get me,” said N, sitting in a house in an Afghan city with his three children.
They held up posters with the words: “Help us UK gov” and “Safe our life UK”.
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Sky News is not disclosing where N is staying.
“As soon as possible, they will find me, they will slay me. They will slaughter and behead me and my family,” the 35-year-old said.
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Image: ‘N’ showed pictures of his time helping British forces
“Please save my life, please protect from me. I am abandoned and this is clear.”
W, 31, a father of four young children, communicated separately with Sky News via email from a different city because the mobile phone signal was poor.
It was not possible to send a team to speak with him in person because of the deteriorating security situation.
“Please kindly bring changes in your policy. Do not leave anyone behind who worked for the British forces,” W wrote in response to a list of questions.
Image: ‘Please do not leave us for the Taliban,’ said ‘W’, a father of four
“Please pay attention. Please ignore [employment] termination issues,” he said.
“Please provide safety for all interpreters. Please do not leave us for the Taliban. For the battles’ enemies. Please think about our kids and families.”
He continued: “I am absolutely fearful about my life because I already lost my family member. Taliban are stronger than every other time… We feel heartbroken.”
W said the Taliban killed his brother, who had been working as a nurse at hospital run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) in 2017.
“Please we are human, not a robot… Please pay attention,” he added.
Their anxiety appears justified as Taliban fighters took control of much of the capital of northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province on Sunday in a significant gain, though fighting with government forces was continuing around the city’s airport and other areas.
They also overran government buildings in the northern provincial capital of Sar-e Pul.
Image: The Taliban took control of much of Kunduz city on Sunday
Increasingly concerned about the fate of Afghan interpreters, a group of more than 40 former military chiefs, commanders and diplomats wrote to Boris Johnson last month to call for greater generosity with the government’s resettlement scheme, called the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
It has already been expanded to help more than 2,300 former interpreters, other staff and their families relocate to the UK, including over 1,000 people in the past few weeks alone.
However, anyone dismissed from their job for certain offences has been rejected. About one third of all Afghan employees for the British military were sacked.
Former military bosses said the Taliban would not distinguish between whether or not an interpreter had lost their job.
They regard anyone who worked for British forces as a traitor who deserves to die.
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UK should ‘step forward’ to help Afghanistan – Ellwood
“I think the principle must be: if in doubt, bring them out. Whereas it seems to be the other way round at the moment and that can’t be right,” said General Lord Richards, who was head of the armed forces between 2010 and 2013 and served in Afghanistan.
“If just one interpreter and his family are injured – or worse still die – as a result of our failure to get them out when we should, then that life will be on the conscience, I hope, of those who are taking these decisions.
“So, they better be pretty certain of why they’re rejecting these applications.”
Image: A government fighter takes a position during fighting in Herat province. Pic: AP
Lord Richards said the only reason should be if the individual poses a security risk.
N, who worked with British forces in southern Afghanistan between late 2010 and early 2012, said he was accused of smoking drugs and stealing equipment used on foot patrols, such as goggles and knee pads – crimes he strongly denied committing.
“I told my boss… please don’t do this to me. I am not accused of what you are saying,” N said. “This is a misunderstanding.”
For W, who was an interpreter in Helmand province, between 2009 and 2014, he said he too was wrongly accused of smoking marijuana.
Image: British soldiers with NATO-led Resolute Support Mission forces in Kabul in March
Neither men were able to appeal the decision to sack them. W was even then subsequently hired by a contractor and continued working as an interpreter with the military until 2014.
Yet both men have had their applications to relocate to the UK repeatedly rejected.
N described how he felt when his latest claim for help was turned down: “A bad feeling happened to me. I can tell you in reality that I can’t control myself at that time.”
He said: “I should receive the same help from UK to rescue me and my family. If this does not happen… my message is clear that dishonour, shame will be squarely on the feet of UK government and UK nation.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “We carefully assess each application for relocation under the criteria of the ARAP. Those who were dismissed for serious offences, including those that constitute a crime in the UK or threatened the safety and security of British troops, will continue to be excluded.”
A UN expert has said some young soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces are being left “psychologically broken” after “confront[ing] the reality among the rubble” when serving in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, was responding to a Sky News interview with an Israeli solider who described arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza.
She told The World with Yalda Hakim that “many” of the young people fighting in Gaza are “haunted by what they have seen, what they have done”.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ms Albanese said. “This is not a war, this is an assault against civilians and this is producing a fracture in many of them.
“As that soldier’s testimony reveals, especially the youngest among the soldiers have been convinced this is a form of patriotism, of defending Israel and Israeli society against this opaque but very hard felt enemy, which is Hamas.
“But the thing is that they’ve come to confront the reality among the rubble of Gaza.”
Image: An Israeli soldier directs a tank near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel. Pic: AP
Being in Gaza is “probably this is the first time the Israeli soldiers are awakening to this,” she added. “And they don’t make sense of this because their attachment to being part of the IDF, which is embedded in their national ideology, is too strong.
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“This is why they are psychologically broken.”
Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said he believes the Sky News interview with the former IDF solider “reflects one part of how ugly, difficult and horrible fighting in a densely populated, urban terrain is”.
“I think [the ex-soldier] is reflecting on how difficult it is to fight in such an area and what the challenges are on the battlefield,” he said.
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10:42
Ex-IDF spokesperson: ‘No distinction between military and civilians’
‘An economy of genocide’
Ms Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts, also said her most recent report for the human rights council has identified “an economy of genocide” in Israel.
The system, she told Hakim, is made up of more than 60 private sector companies “that have become enmeshed in the economy of occupation […] that have Israel displace the Palestinians and replace them with settlers, settlements and infrastructure Israel runs.”
Israel has rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to defend itself after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.
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2:36
‘Israel has shifted towards economy of genocide’
The companies named in Ms Albanese’s report are in, but not limited to, the financial sector, big tech and the military industry.
“These companies can be held responsible for being directed linked to, or contributing, or causing human rights impacts,” she said. “We’re not talking of human rights violations, we are talking of crimes.”
“Some of the companies have engaged in good faith, others have not,” Ms Albanese said.
The companies she has named include American technology giant Palantir, which has issued a statement to Sky News.
It said it is “not true” that Palantir “is the (or a) developer of the ‘Gospel’ – the AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, and that we are involved with the ‘Lavender’ database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing”.
“Both capabilities are independent of and pre-ate Palantir’s announced partnership with the Israeli Defence Ministry,” the statement added.
Israel’s prime minister has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement at a White House dinner, and the US president appeared pleased by the gesture.
“He’s forging peace as we speak, and one country and one region after the other,” Mr Netanyahu said as he presented the US leader with a nominating letter.
Mr Trump took credit for brokering a ceasefire in Iran and Israel’s “12-day war” last month, announcing it on Truth Social, and the truce appears to be holding.
The president also claimed US strikes had obliterated Iran’s purported nuclear weapons programme and that it now wants to restart talks.
“We have scheduled Iran talks, and they want to,” Mr Trump told reporters. “They want to talk.”
Iran hasn’t confirmed the move, but its president told American broadcaster Tucker Carlson his country would be willing to resume cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
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But Masoud Pezeshkian said full access to nuclear sites wasn’t yet possible as US strikes had damaged them “severely”.
Away from Iran, fighting continues in Gaza and Ukraine.
Mr Trump famously boasted before his second stint in the White House that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Critics also claiming President Putin is ‘playing’ his US counterpart and has no intention of stopping the fighting.
However, President Trump could try to take credit for progress in Gaza if – as he’s suggested – an agreement on a 60-day ceasefire is able to get across the line this week.
Indirect negotiations with Hamas are taking place that could lead to the release of some of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages and see a surge in aid to Gaza.
America’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is to travel to Qatar this week to try to seal the agreement.
Whether it could open a path to a complete end to the war remains uncertain, with the two sides criteria for peace still far apart.
President Netanyahu has said Hamas must surrender, disarm and leave Gaza – something it refuses to do.
Mr Netanyahu also told reporters on Monday that the US and Israel were working with other countries who would give Palestinians “a better future” – and indicated those in Gaza could move elsewhere.
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” he added.
An Israeli reservist who served three tours of duty in Gaza has told Sky News in a rare on-camera interview that his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering areas soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat, a practice he says left civilians dead where they fell.
“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” he said. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous you need to kill them. No matter who it is,” he said.
Speaking anonymously, the soldier said troops killed civilians arbitrarily. He described the rules of engagement as unclear, with orders to open fire shifting constantly depending on the commander.
The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division. He was posted twice to the Netzarim corridor; a narrow strip of land cut through central Gaza early in the war, running from the sea to the Israeli border. It was designed to split the territory and allow Israeli forces to have greater control from inside the Strip.
He said that when his unit was stationed on the edge of a civilian area, soldiers slept in a house belonging to displaced Palestinians and marked an invisible boundary around it that defined a no-go zone for Gazans.
“In one of the houses that we had been in, we had the big territory. This was the closest to the citizens’ neighbourhood, with people inside. And there’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it,” he said. “But how can they know?”
People who crossed into this area were most often shot, he said.
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“It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle,” he said.
Image: The soldier is seen in Gaza. Photos are courtesy of the interviewed soldier, who requested anonymity
The soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Gazans were terrorists, even when they were clearly unarmed civilians. This perception, he said, was not challenged and was often endorsed by commanders.
“They don’t really talk to you about civilians that may come to your place. Like I was in the Netzarim road, and they say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn’t be there, and if he still comes, it means he’s a terrorist,” he said.
“This is what they tell you. But I don’t really think it’s true. It’s just poor people, civilians that don’t really have too many choices.”
He said the rules of engagement shifted constantly, leaving civilians at the mercy of commanders’ discretion.
“They might be shot, they might be captured,” he said. “It really depends on the day, the mood of the commander.”
He recalled an occasion of a man crossing the boundary and being shot. When another man came later to the body, he too was shot.
Later the soldiers decided to capture people who approached the body. Hours after that, the order changed again, shoot everyone on sight who crosses the “imaginary line”.
Image: The Israeli soldier during his on-camera interview with Sky News
At another time, his unit was positioned near the Shujaiya area of Gaza City. He described Palestinians scavenging scrap metal and solar panels from a building inside the so-called no-go zone.
“For sure, no terrorists there,” he said. “Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it’s kind of like the Wild West. So, some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that.”
The soldier said many of his comrades believed there were no innocents in Gaza, citing the Hamas-led 7 October attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Dozens of hostages have since been freed or rescued by Israeli forces, while about 50 remain in captivity, including roughly 30 Israel believes are dead.
He recalled soldiers openly discussing the killings.
“They’d say: ‘Yeah, but these people didn’t do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die’.”
He added: “People don’t feel mercy for them.”
“I think a lot of them really felt like they were doing something good,” he said. “I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren’t innocent.”
Image: The IDF soldier during one of his three tours in Gaza
In Israel, it is rare for soldiers to publicly criticise the IDF, which is seen as a unifying institution and a rite of passage for Jewish Israelis. Military service shapes identity and social standing, and those who speak out risk being ostracised.
The soldier said he did not want to be identified because he feared being branded a traitor or shunned by his community.
Still, he felt compelled to speak out.
“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country,” he said
“I think the war is… a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over,” he said.
He added: “I think in Israeli community, it’s very hard to criticise itself and its army. A lot of people don’t understand what they are agreeing to. They think the war needs to happen, and we need to bring the hostages back, but they don’t understand the consequences.
“I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what’s happening, it wouldn’t go down very well for them, and they wouldn’t agree with it. I hope that by speaking of it, it can change how things are being done.”
Image: The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division
We put the allegations of arbitrary killings in the Netzarim corridor to the Israeli military.
In a statement, the IDF said it “operates in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.
“The IDF operates against military targets and objectives, and does not target civilians or civilian objects,” the statement continued.
The Israeli military added that “reports and complaints regarding the violation of international law by the IDF are transferred to the relevant authorities responsible for examining exceptional incidents that occurred during the war”.
On the specific allegations raised by the soldier interviewed, the IDF said it could not address them directly because “the necessary details were not provided to address the case mentioned in the query. Should additional information be received, it will be thoroughly examined.”
The statement also mentioned the steps the military says it takes to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation warnings and advising people to temporarily leave areas of intense fighting.
“The areas designated for evacuation in the Gaza Strip are updated as needed. The IDF continuously informs the civilian population of any changes,” it said.