More than 3,000 Afghan citizens entitled to refuge in the UK are still in their home country almost two years after the Western military withdrawal.
A report released by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee on Friday said 3,075 people who qualified under the emergency Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) were still there.
They include those who collaborated with British forces during the 20-year US and NATO-led occupation of their country. Politicians have previously expressed fears that they would face retribution from the Taliban* after they swept back into power in August 2021.
Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, called the chaotic and bloody pullout from Kabul a "dark chapter in UK military history."
"Without a thorough public inquiry, this is a chapter that we won't have learned from," Ellwood said, adding that the government must "take an unflinching look at where we went wrong."
Hundreds of Afghan civilians and 13 US servicemen and women were killed during the rushed evacuation of the US, British, French and other western embassies from the capital via Kabul airport.
That was after US president Joe Biden first unilaterally pushed back the withdrawal date in the peace treaty struck by his predecessor Donald Trump to September 11 2021, then pulled his troops out covertly by night before sending them back in once the western-trained Afghan National Army melted away.
British troops sent in by then-prime minister Boris Johnson narrowly escaped death and injury in the suicide bombing and subsequent shooting among would-be asylum seekers crowded around the airport's concrete walls — including some UK citizens.
They even had to venture into the city to rescue a US journalist left stranded by her own country's soldiers.
The committee chair had previously said that those Afghan citizens were "at risk of harm as a direct result of assisting the UK mission."
"We can't change the events that unfolded in August 2021, but we owe it to those Afghans, who placed their lives in danger to help us, to get them and their families to safety," Ellwood said.
In 2022 Ellwood demanded the British government deploy the Royal Air Force to impose a 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine — potentially bringing it into conflict with Russian forces.
* The Taliban is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.