Australia will be generous with approving visa applications from Afghans who worked with Australian troops, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison promising the government will work through them with a high level of urgency.
Hundreds of Afghans who worked with Australian troops across 20 years are applying to leave the country ahead of the Taliban moving into areas of Afghanistan that coalition forces are vacating. A senior government source speaking on the condition of anonymity said Australia would be generous with approving the applications.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says visa applications from Afghan workers who helped Australian troops will be dealt with quickly.Credit: Janie Barrett
Former prime minister John Howard says the country has a moral obligation to help, including granting Afghans visas to live in Australia if necessary. Mr Howard was prime minister when Australia joined the United Nations forces in Afghanistan following the September 11 terror attacks in New York.
Mr Morrison told ABC radio the government was doing everything it can.
“I agree with prime minister Howard. We’ve had over the course of – it’s been some time now – 1400 Afghan workers and their families who worked for the ADF at DFAT brought to Australia over quite a number of years, and we’re also accelerating that process now. Hundreds are in that process right now,” he said.
“We’re doing it on the basis of the rules that were set actually in place by the previous Labor government back in 2012 and they are the right rules. And we’re doing that as fast and as safely as we can.
“So I absolutely agree with him. And this has a high level of urgency within the government, and we’re moving on that as quickly and as safely as we possibly can.
“It’s obviously an environment in which it’s difficult to operate – and I think people would appreciate that – as it has been when I was immigration minister some years ago. We were involved in exactly the same task, and we were applying exactly the same focus.”
Mr Howard told SBS News that Australia owed help to the Afghans who helped Australian troops.
“That is a moral obligation we have and it was a moral obligation that we shamefully discarded many years ago when we pulled out of Vietnam,” he said. “I do not want to see a repetition of that failure in Afghanistan.”
The former prime minister was questioned during the interview about whether he thought that obligation extended to interpreters and other staff who worked directly with Australian troops in Afghanistan, but were not allowed to apply for visas because they were subcontracted.
He said it was “all a question of the circumstances”, and he didn’t think it was something that “should turn on some narrow legalism”.
“If a group of people gave help to Australians such that their lives and that of those immediately around them are in danger, we have a moral obligation to help them,” Mr Howard said.
The former prime minister was questioned on whether he thought Australia had achieved its mission in Australia, noting that Al-Qaeda still have a foothold in Afghanistan and the Taliban is stronger than ever.
Mr Howard said Australia had achieved its original mission in Afghanistan, which was to deny Al-Qaeda the capacity to launch another attack similar to those on September 11, 2001.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, about 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians.
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