My son-in-law has a charity that helps with the education of girls in Afghanistan, and we have spent the last 10 days working to get some of our workers who would be at extreme danger from the Taliban out of the country.
We have hardly slept over the last week. We have been following every lead and glimmer of hope to try to achieve this. We managed to get some of the women out, thanks to our wonderful British soldiers on the ground.
However, on Wednesday one of our workers spent over 24 hours in a queue at the airport, having risked his life to get there, including crossing the human-waste-filled canal. After a night and day with no sleep or food, he was told at the last gate that he would not be accepted as he did not have a passport, despite having other paperwork.
A passport costs over £65, and this is an unattainable amount of money for lots of people living in Afghanistan.
To have our friend and colleague, who is the kindest, hardest-working man I know, turned away just as he got to the last gate in the airport for the sake of £65 is heartbreaking enough. But then to read that the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, had to spend time dealing with a charity’s efforts to fly rescued animals out of Kabul (Report, 26 August), when every second counts, is just too much to deal with at this time.
Name and address supplied