Elite Afghan commandos ‘betrayed’ by the British and left behind to be hunted down
“I feel betrayed by the British.”
Once part of an elite Afghan special forces unit, Shaheen and his two brothers spent years fighting side-by-side with UK commandos.
But when Kabul fell to the Taliban in the chaos of August 2021, so many of his comrades were left behind. His brother Qahraman was hunted down and murdered.
“We were like one family,” he says. “I cannot bear to hear about my colleagues hiding now in Afghanistan, their lives in danger.”
Sky News can reveal that dozens of soldiers who served in two Afghan special forces units that were set up, trained and paid for by the British have since been murdered or tortured by the Taliban.
Working with Lighthouse Reports and The Independent, Sky News has verified dozens of cases in which the Taliban has targeted and physically harmed these former commandos who risked their lives alongside the British.
Members of the Triples with British veteran Charlie Herbert
Shaheen told Sky News how for years he and his two brothers were part of Commando Force 333 (CF333), an Afghan special forces unit established by the British in 2002.
His name and the name of his brother have been changed in this story for his family’s protection.
In the mid-2000s, there were still pockets of Taliban fighters dotted around Afghanistan, despite their regime being toppled by the coalition of international forces, including the US and UK.
Known as the Triples, CF333 and fellow unit ATF444 embarked on joint missions with the British to battle the remaining Taliban – and received salaries from the British government for doing so, it can be revealed for the first time.
The camp where they and British commandos were based became a home for Shaheen and his brothers, he tells Sky News.
They took pride in their work and were involved in special operations around Afghanistan, putting themselves in danger for their country.
“Although they were younger than me, my brothers and I were so close that we were friends,” Shaheen says.
Shaheen says he has lost everything
Chaos as Kabul fell to the Taliban
With the US and UK announcing they were pulling out of Afghanistan after two decades, Taliban fighters swept across the country and it wasn’t long before they were at the gates of Kabul.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Shaheen says. “I didn’t go back home because I would be a top target for the Taliban.
“So for two days, I was wandering in the streets of Kabul, not knowing when I would be killed.”
Along with Qahraman and some of their comrades, Shaheen was able to get inside the airport, the last part of the city not under Taliban control. Their other brother had managed to leave Afghanistan by crossing the border elsewhere.
“The conditions were horrible at the airport,” Shaheen says. “I saw women and children being stampeded upon. People were beaten with batons, it was horrendous.”
While Shaheen was allowed on a flight out of Afghanistan, his brother was turned away.
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Sky’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay reporting from Kabul airport in 2021
Qahraman hunted down by the Taliban
Shaheen says after Qahraman left the airport “he was observed and followed”, and went to their sister’s home.
He did not leave the house for 10 days. When he finally did, a group of people shot him.
Asked if he blames the British for his brother’s death, Shaheen says: “He did a lot of hard work for the British. When he was kicked out of the airport, he became a target.”
Now living in Birmingham with his wife and children in a cramped house, Shaheen says he is a shell of his former self.
“I lost everything,” he says.
“I don’t even have 10% of what I was. Even here, I don’t have anything to be proud of.”
Shaheen speaks to Sky News reporter Michael Drummond
‘Unjust’ reason to deny Triples entry to UK
Despite serving shoulder-to-shoulder with British troops, the majority of the Triples were not evacuated in August 2021 and have subsequently been rejected under the UK’s scheme for relocating Afghans who worked with the British – known as the Afghan Relocation and Assistance programme (ARAP).
Most have been told this is because they did not work “alongside, in partnership with or closely supporting… a UK government department” – despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
One British veteran, who served alongside the Triples for five years, said the relationship between the Afghan and UK units was a “completely symbiotic partnership”.
“We were completely embedded,” the veteran said. “We were one unit. You couldn’t work more hand in glove with the British than they did.”
Members of the Triples during training with British forces
Charlie Herbert, a former British Army major general who served in Afghanistan, said denying the Triples entry to the UK on the basis that they did not work alongside, work in partnership with or closely support the UK armed forces, is “both disingenuous and unjust”.
He added: “I can think of no other Afghan security forces who were more closely aligned to the UK than 333 and 444, nor who more loyally or bravely supported our military objectives.”
Another veteran, who served alongside the CF333s, said: “They put their lives on the line, properly fighting with us, for us. They were the national force doing the UK government’s bidding. That cannot be more aligned with the UK’s strategic interests.”
Conversations with current and former UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources suggest that the UK Special Forces department was effectively “blocking” the Triples from being accepted under ARAP.
It is unclear why.
Read more from Sky News:
Afghanistan: How the US lost its longest war
The story of how the ‘greatest military force’ abandoned Afghanistan
Taliban fighters in Kabul in August 2021 after their takeover. Pic: AP
Ministry of Defence: We have never issued blanket decisions
When approached, the MoD did not deny that UK Special Forces was refusing to approve the cases.
An MoD spokesperson said: “The UK government has made an ambitious and generous commitment to help eligible people in Afghanistan. So far, we have brought around 24,600 people to safety, including thousands of people eligible for our Afghan schemes.
“The MoD has never issued blanket decisions on applications from any cohort who have applied to the ARAP scheme. All eligibility decisions are made on a case-by-case basis against strict criteria taken in accordance with the Immigration Rules and based on the evidence provided by individuals.”
Shaheen, like so many of his surviving comrades, wants to know why they were left behind and for the apparent block on Triples applications to be lifted.
But for so many, it is already too late. They have already been hunted down by the Taliban.
“There’s a saying in my country,” Shaheen says. “On one hand, there’s a cliff – and on the other, is a tiger waiting for you, so you don’t have much choice.”
Story in cooperation with: May Bulman, investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports, Fahim Abed, investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports and Monica C Camacho, OSINT reporter at Lighthouse Reports
Additional reporting by Katy Scholes, Sky News international producer
The moment could have felt so different. It should have felt so different.
It was supposed to come a long time ago, and it was supposed to be the outcome of a peace process, of reconciliation, of understanding, of coexistence and of healing.
If it had happened the right way, then we’d be celebrating two states living alongside each other, coexisting, sharing a capital city.
As it happened: France recognises Palestinian state
Destroyed buildings in Gaza, as seen from Israeli side of the border.
Pic: Reuters
Instead, the recognition of Palestine as a state comes out of the rubble of Gaza.
It has come as a last-ditch effort to save all vanishing chances of a Palestinian state.
Essentially, the countries which have recognised Palestine here at the UN in New York are jumping to the endpoint and hope to now fill in the gaps.
Those gaps are huge.
Even before the horror of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, there was almost no realistic prospect of a two-state solution.
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Two-state solution in ‘profound peril’
Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Benjamin Netanyahu’s divide-and-conquer strategy for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza had made reconciliation increasingly hard.
The Hamas attack set back what little hope there was even further, while settlement expansion by the Israelis in the West Bank accelerated since then.
An updated map of Israel and Palestine on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office website after the UK recognised the state of Palestine
The same questions which have made all this so intractable remain.
How to share a capital city? Who controls Jerusalem’s Old City, where the holy sites are located? If it’s shared, then how?
What happens to the settlements in the West Bank? If land swaps take place, then where? What happens to Gaza? Who governs the Palestinians?
And how are the moderates on both sides emboldened to dominate the discourse and the policy?
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Two-state solution ‘encourages terrorism’
Hope rests with Trump
Right now, Palestinian extremism is holding out in Gaza with the hostages, and Israeli extremism is dominant on the other side, with Netanyahu now threatening to fully annex the West Bank as a reaction to the recognition declarations at the UN.
It all feels pretty bleak and desperate. If there is cause for some hope, it rests with Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the only man who can influence Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (below). Pic: AP
Pic: Reuters
Over the next 24 hours in New York, he will meet key Arab and Muslim leaders from the Middle East and Asia to present his latest plan for peace in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan will all participate in the meeting.
Delegates applaud after Emmanuel Macron announced France’s recognition of a state of Palestine. Pic: AP
They will listen to his plan, some may offer peacekeeping troops (a significant development if they do), some may offer to provide funding to rebuild the strip and, crucially, all are likely to tell him that his Abraham Accords plan – to forge ahead with diplomatic normalisation between Muslim nations and Israel – will not happen if Israel pushes ahead with any West Bank annexation.
Netanyahu will address the UN at the end of the week, before travelling to the White House on Monday, where he will tell Trump what he plans to do next in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Read more from Sky News:
Typhoon brings 183mph winds as thousands evacuated
Flights suspended at European airport after drone sightings
If Trump wants his Abraham Accords to expand and not collapse – and remember the accords represent a genuine diplomatic game changer for the region, one Trump is rightly proud of – then he will force Netanyahu to stop in Gaza and stop in the West Bank.
He is the only man in the world who can.
World
Israel is increasingly ostracised – and no matter how strong its army, it’s not a good place to be
Emmanuel Macron was in his element. Touring the UN’s main hall, hugging fellow leaders before taking to the podium.
He was here to make history. France, the country that carved up the Middle East over a hundred years ago along with Britain, finally giving the Palestinians what they believe is long overdue.
As it happened: France recognises Palestinian state
Yvette Cooper witnessed the event looking on. Her prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, did the same over the weekend. Foregoing such hallowed surroundings, he beat the French to it by a day.
“Peace is much more demanding, much more difficult than all wars,” said Macron, “but the time has come.”
There were cheers as he recognised the state of Palestine.
The time for what? Not for peace that is for sure. The war in Gaza rages and the West Bank simmers with settler violence against Palestinians.
The French and British believe Israel is actively working against the possibility of a Palestinian state. Attacks on Palestinians, land seizures, the relentless pace of settlement construction is finishing off the chances of a two-state solution to the conflict, so time for unilateral action they believe.
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Could UK recognition of Palestinian state affect US relationship?
Without the horizon of a state of their own, Palestinians will resort to more and more extreme means.
The Israelis say they have already done so on 7 October and this move only rewards the wicked extremism of Hamas.
But the Netanyahu government has undeniably sought to divide and weaken the Palestinians and has always opposed a Palestinian state.
Israel still has the support of Donald Trump, but opinion polls suggest even in America public sentiment is moving against them. That shift will be hard to reverse.
Read more:
Will Trump force Netanyahu’s hand?
More than three quarters of the UN’s member nations now recognise a state of Palestine, four out of five of the security council’s permanent members.
The move is hugely problematic. Where exactly is the state, what are its borders, will it now be held to account for its extremists, who exactly is its government?
But more and more countries believe it had to happen. That leaves Israel increasingly ostracised and for a small country in a difficult neighbourhood that is not a good place to be, however strong it is militarily.
China will evacuate 400,000 people over a super typhoon that slammed into the Philippines and Taiwan today.
Super Typhoon Ragasa, which is heading to southeastern China, has sustained winds of 134mph.
Thousands of people have already been evacuated from homes and schools in the Philippines and Taiwan, with hundreds of thousands more to leave their homes in China.
Filipino forecasters said it slammed into Panuitan Island off Cagayan province with gusts of up to 183mph on Monday.
More than 8,200 were evacuated to safety in Cagayan while 1,220 fled to emergency shelters in Apayao, which is prone to flash floods and landslides.
The projected route of Super Typhoon Ragasa, by the Japanese Typhoon Centre. Pic: Japan Meteorological Agency
Domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces hit by the typhoon, and fishing boats and inter-island ferries were prohibited from leaving ports over rough seas.
In Taiwan’s southern Taitung and Pingtung counties, closures were ordered in some coastal and mountainous areas along with the Orchid and Green islands.
Officials in southern Chinese tech hub, Shenzhen, said they planned to relocate around 400,000 people including people in low-lying and flood-prone areas.
Strong waves batter Basco, Batanes province, northern Philippines, on Monday. (AP Photo/Justine Mark Pillie Fajardo)
Shenzhen’s airport added it will halt flights from Tuesday night.
In Fujian province, on China’s southeast coast, 50 ferry routes were suspended.
According to China’s National Meteorological Centre, the typhoon will make landfall in the coastal area between Shenzhen city and Xuwen county in Guangdong province on Wednesday.
The International Space Station captures the eye of Typhoon Ragasa. (Pic: NASA/Reuters)
A tropical cyclone with sustained winds of 115mph or higher is categorised in the Philippines as a super typhoon.
The term was adopted years ago to demonstrate the urgency tied to extreme weather disturbances.
Ragasa was heading west and was forecast to remain in the South China Sea until at least Wednesday while passing south of Taiwan and Hong Kong, before landfall on the China mainland.
The Philippines’ weather agency warned there was “a high risk of life-threatening storm surge with peak heights exceeding three metres within the next 24 hours over the low-lying or exposed coastal localities” of the northern provinces of Cagayan, Batanes, Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur.
Power was cut out on Calayan island and in the entire northern mountain province of Apayao, west of Cagayan, disaster officials said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from Ragasa, which is known locally in the Philippines as Nando.
On Monday, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr suspended government work and all classes on Monday in the capital, Manila, and 29 provinces in the main northern Luzon region.
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