he family of an 11-year-old Afghan refugee stranded in France after being separated from his parents in Kabul airport, he has been accused of Come on Patel from making “false promises” about safe routes to the UK.
Qamar Jabarkhyl, a 28-year-old British citizen, said his “heart melts” when his young cousin, Obaidullah, calls him crying every day from the small flat where he lives. Strasbourg.
Obaidullah and his parents, along with his twin brother and older sister, fled his hometown of Jalalabad during the Taliban takeover last summer.
They wanted to catch a flight to the UK to stay with Jabarkhyl but were thrown apart as they waited to board a plane when a bomb was detonated outside the airport on 26 August.
Mr Jabarkhyl told the PA news agency: “It sounded like complete chaos from what Obaidullah told me. He held his twin brother’s hand and they ran one to the (airport) gates and their family ran the other way.”
He believes the brothers were flown to… Dohawhere Obaidullah, exhausted from the journey, fell asleep and got lost when his twin sister went to the toilet.
The boy, then 10, was awakened and led in a different direction by strangers who promised him that he would be reunited with his brother on the plane, his cousin said.
But he was accidentally put on a separate flight to France, where he has been stuck “unlucky and scared” for the past eight months, said Mr Jabarkhyl, an engineer.
A 22-year-old Afghan refugee living in a studio in Strasbourg has taken Obaidullah under his wing but works long hours and cannot afford to care for him full-time.
In March, on the advice of the . made a family reunification visa application for Obaidullah Home officewho promised it would be dealt with quickly, Mr Jabarkhyl said.
That same month, Obaidullah celebrated his 11th birthday, for the first time thousands of miles away from his loved ones.
It melts your heart when an 11-year-old boy calls 20 times a day to say “hello” and “hi”
“It was really difficult. I asked the man he lives with to buy him a birthday cake, but he said he cried all day. He wouldn’t even cut his own pie,’ Mr Jabarkhyl said.
“It melts your heart when an 11-year-old boy calls 20 times a day to say ‘hello’ and ‘hi’.
“He’s not the same guy I would talk to on the phone years ago in Afghanistan, who would tell me hundreds of stories about his friends, what vegetables his family grows in their garden.”
Four months later, the family say the Home Office has still not confirmed whether Obaidullah can stay with them in the UK.
“I just feel like the Interior Ministry doesn’t care, with these empty promises Priti Patel is making to allow people from Afghanistan to settle in the country,” Mr Jabarkhyl said.
Obaidullah’s parents and sister were unable to be evacuated and moved to a rural area of Afghanistan after Jalalabad was overtaken by the Taliban while his twin brother arrived safely in the UK, the nephew said.
The youngster desperately wants to reunite his brother and eventually the rest of his family, but his mother is terrified she will never see her sons again, Jabarkhyl said.
“She thinks she will never see them again. She thinks she will be killed or they will be killed,” he said.
It comes after Bob Blackman, MP from the Jabarkhyl constituency, raised Obaidullah’s case in the House of Commons, describing the bureaucracy surrounding biometric cards and applications as “a nightmare”.
The family’s attorney, Nick O’Loughnan of Wilson Solicitors, said: “The Home Office has stated that this application will be considered ‘as a priority’, but Obaidullah is still awaiting a decision more than four months after submission.
“We hope that the Home Office will treat Obaidullah’s application fairly and that he will be allowed to enter the UK to be urgently reunited with his family.”
Up to 20,000 refugees are expected under the ACRS, with individuals and families brought to safety under Operation Pitting – Britain’s first military rescue mission – being prioritized in the first part of the plan.
The two remaining routes include allowing the British Council and security contractors to resettle in the UK and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to also refer refugees for resettlement.
The Interior Ministry has been contacted for comment.