‘I risked my life for the British army in Afghanistan, now the UK will not respond to my requests for asylum’

Mohammad Nabi is stranded, homeless and jobless after serving with the British army as an interpreter in Afghanistan, writes Anastasia Miari in Athens

Mohammad Nabi in army fatigues when he served with the British army in Afghanistan (Mohammad Nabi)

“When I made eye contact with that man in the cotton field, I knew he was Taliban. Something always told me. I didn’t finish my drink. I just went back into the tank and closed the door. A half second later, half of the tank exploded, and the British gunner above me was in flames. If we had been in the last half of the tank, we would all have been in pieces across those fields,” says Mohammad Nabi, recalling an ambush he experienced while serving as an interpreter for the British army in Afghanistan.

He is one of an estimated 8,000 Afghan personnel that worked for the British army over the 20-year campaign in Afghanistan. As the last of the troops withdraw, and the Taliban regains territory and clout in the region, Nabi fears his time is running out.

“Did you know they have taken fifty districts in 24 hours? Not fifteen. Fifty,” he says. The looming threat of the Taliban has been ever present in his life. Growing up on the front line, he was subjected to torture at the hands of the Taliban, aged just 14. Now 36, a refugee living in Athens, he worries about the future of the four young children he had to leave behind.