Women and girls and persecuted minorities will make up the bulk of the Afghan refugees resettled in the UK, the home secretary has said.
While the Taliban has said women’s rights will be respected, Priti Patel said it was hard to believe “the PR operation that we’re currently seeing.”
The UK government will work with other nations and pledged to resettle 5,000 Afghans in the UK in the first year.
However, some MPs have criticised the scheme for not going far enough.
Thousands of Afghans have been trying to flee the country after the militants seized control of the capital Kabul.
The government has committed to resettling up to 20,000 Afghan refugees in the UK in the long term – and Ms Patel said she wanted the majority of those to be women and girls and persecuted minorities.
The Taliban promised the rights of women in Afghanistan will be respected “within the framework of Islamic law”.
But the home secretary said the group had a history of oppressing women and “that’s not going to change overnight”.
“I genuinely do not think that we should be at all believing the spokespeople or the PR operation that we’re currently seeing,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
The new plan is on top of the existing scheme for interpreters and other staff who have worked for the UK.
Some 5,000 Afghans and family members are expected to come to the UK under that policy.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Ms Patel refused to give a timescale for how long it would take for the 20,000 Afghans to be brought to the UK.
However, she compared the new scheme to one introduced for Syrian refugees, which saw a similar number of people resettled over a period of seven years.
“We could end up bringing many more [than 20,000] but first of all we have to have the underpinning and the infrastructure and the support to do that,” she said.
She said a target of 5,000 in the first year was “deliverable”, adding: “It would be terrible quite frankly to bring people and not be able to give them the support that they would need in terms of accommodation, resettlement and giving them the opportunity to build a new life in the UK.”
Asked how the UK would get vulnerable people, who may not feel safe leaving their homes, out of Afghanistan, Ms Patel said ministers would work with third party agencies, humanitarian organisations and other governments, including the US and Canada.
She added that people could also be resettled from neighbouring countries, as well as Afghanistan itself.
Meanwhile, Parliament has been recalled and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently updating MPs about the situation in Afghanistan.
He said the government would be doing everything it can to support those who have helped the UK mission in Afghanistan and to “avert a humanitarian crisis”.
Source: BBC
