Pen Farthing and his animals WILL be evacuated from Kabul after army helps them through airport and government finally gives charter flight clearance - but MoD makes no mention of his 24 Afghan staff

Pen Farthing and his rescue dogs have been allowed through at Kabul airport and will be evacuated from Afghanistan after the government finally gave his charter flight clearance to take off.

Defence bosses confirmed on Twitter that the former Royal Marine and his animals are awaiting transportation and are being supported by the UK Armed Forces after he was helped through the airport by the army.

When contacted by the MailOnline, the Ministry of Defence declined to clarify whether the charter flight would also be transporting Mr Farthing's 25 Afghan staff.

'Pen Farthing and his pets were assisted through the system at Kabul airport by the UK Armed Forces. They are currently being supported while he awaits transportation,' the Ministry of Defence said in a tweet on Friday night.

'On the direction of the Defence Secretary, clearance for their charter flight has been sponsored by the UK Government,' the statement added.

Paul 'Pen' Farthing's campaign to get his staff and animals from the Nowzad shelter out of Afghanistan has caused controversy in recent days, after receiving a huge amount of public support.

The animal charity boss had earlier hired a private plane which was due to take off from Luton, but it was prevented from doing so so due to security concerns in the wake of an ISIS attack that killed 103 people.

Mr Farthing and his team got 300m inside Kabul Airport yesterday but were turned away by Taliban fighters due to President Biden deciding to change visa requirements.

The campaigner tweeted: 'The whole team & dogs/cats were safely 300m inside the airport perimeter. We were turned away as @JoeBiden had changed paperwork rules just 2 hours earlier.

'Went through hell to get there & we were turned away into the chaos of those devastating explosions. #OperationArk'

His friend, fellow activist Dominic Dyer - who had been hoping to board the flight from the UK - said the 'security situation' had prevented it from going ahead.

'There is a plan that we could operate but I just don't know if that could be possible,' he told Good Morning Britain. 'We hope and pray we can get him, his staff and animals home.'

After criticising Britain's evacuation mission as 'badly run' he was branded an 'armchair amateur' by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who accused him of not understanding how an operation of that scaled worked.

The Tory politician also said Mr Farthing and his allies had 'taken up too much time' of senior commanders during the crisis.

Animal charity boss Pen Farthing and his rescue dogs have been allowed through at Kabul airport and will be evacuated from Afghanistan after the government finally gave his charter flight clearance to take off. Mr Farthing, who is stuck in Afghanistan with 200 dogs and cats, said earlier his 'mission' to get them and his staff out of the country has been unsuccessful and he is now likely to have to leave the country on his own

Defence bossed confirmed on Twitter that the former Royal Marine and his pets are awaiting transportation and are being supported by the UK Armed Forces after he was helped through the airport by the army

more videos

Biden addresses Afghanistan crisis during meeting with Israeli PM

Afghans try to get back to Kabul Airport after deadly suicide blasts

Busker accosted by angry woman 'you can't bloody sing'

'The biggest hostage crisis the UK has ever seen' - Tom Tugendhat

Massive fire in Juno Drive, Leamington Spa in Warwickshire

'No one blocked' Pen Farthing's evacuation attempt says Ben Wallace

Psaki clears up Biden's 'hunt them down and make them pay' statement

'What a proud moment': Phillip Schofield accepts LGBT award win

Police arrest three Extinction Rebellion protestors after vandalism

Police comb woodland in search for missing Claudia Lawrence

Shocking moment Houston man viciously attacked by two pitbulls

Smoke seen billowing from Leamington Spa fire in drone footage

And, in a series of tweets, Mr Wallace rejected claims his staff had blocked a flight for Mr Farthing.

He said: 'Let's get some facts out there: One. No one, at any stage has blocked a flight.

'This is a total myth and is being peddled around as if that is why the pet evacuation hasn't taken place. Two. I never said I would not facilitate. I said no one would get to queue jump.

'Three. The issue, as those desperate people waiting outside the gates know too well, has always been getting processed through the entrances. It can take over 24 hours. There is no point turning up with a plane until the passengers / pets are airside.

'Four. As people were processed ARAP (Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy), LOTR (Leave outside the Immigration Rules) etc they were called forward. Once processed and on the airfield they are marshalled on to a plane. As I have said we will facilitate at all stages but the priority will be people not pets.'

Mr Wallace went on to say there had been no 'U-turn' over the issue, calling for critics to allow civil servants and the military to deal 'with one of the most dangerous and challenging evacuations for a generation'.

He added: 'The bullying, falsehoods and threatening behaviour by some towards our MOD personnel and advisors is unacceptable and a shameful way to treat people trying to help the evacuation. They do their cause no good.'

Since the collapse of the Afghan government, Mr Farthing and his supporters have campaigned to have his staff and their families as well as 140 dogs and 60 cats evacuated from the country in a plan he has dubbed Operation Ark.

Reports have suggested the Prime Minister's wife Carrie stepped in to push for his rescue.

Asked about the reports yesterday, Mr Johnson said: 'I've had absolutely no influence on any particular case, nor would that be right.

'That's not, that's not how we do things in this country.'

This morning, Mr Farthing issued a plea on Twitter to ensure his 'safe passage' into Kabul airport.

Addressing the Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, Mr Farthing said: 'Dear Sir; my team & my animals are stuck at airport circle. We have a flight waiting. Can you please facilitate safe passage into the airport for our convoy?

'We are an NGO who will come back to Afghanistan but right now I want to get everyone out safely.'

He added: 'We have been here for 10 hours after being assured that we would have safe passage. Truly would like to go home now. Let's prove the IEA are taking a different path.'

His friend and supporter Dominic Dyer, from Milton Keynes, said a privately funded plane had been due to land on Friday from Luton airport, but plans had to be scrapped due to security fears.

The blast took place near the Baron Hotel at the Abbey Gate of the airport where huge crowds had gathered in an attempt to enter the airport

Mr Dyer said another plane is now waiting in a 'neighbouring country' but cannot land in Kabul until Mr Farthing is granted entry into the airport.

He said: 'We have a plan in place and we can act swiftly, but not until he's granted entry into the airport.

'It's a complicated situation and the door is closing, the next 24 to 48 hours are crucial - we need it to happen before then to avoid him, his staff and the animals becoming stuck in the country.

'There are options for him to go back to his centre and hunker down or he could try and leave the country on the road - but there are fears over the Taliban closing the borders, so it's unclear what's going to happen.'

Earlier on Thursday, Armed Forces minister James Heappey said British forces could not move 'desperate Afghans' to make way for Mr Farthing's pet rescue mission - as harrowing footage emerged of dogs suffering from the heat while stuck in a container outside Kabul airport.

Mr Heappey said that while the former Royal Marine deserved praise for staying behind with his staff and animals until they are evacuated, giving them priority over other desperate people waiting to leave 'doesn't feel like the right thing to do'.

Taliban militants have blocked Mr Farthing's convoy carrying 173 cats and dogs from entering Kabul airport to flee Afghanistan - as he warned the animals could soon die from heat exhaustion after being left for more than ten hours in a sweltering travel crate.

Yesterday shocking footage emerged of the animals gasping for breath inside the packed container.

Summing up the situation this morning, Armed Forces minister James Heappey suggested it would be wrong to prioritise Mr Farthing and his animals for processing over other applicants.

He told Sky News: 'For him, it is a grim reality of these situations that as a British national we would seek to expedite his passage into the airport but he, commendably, has said that is not what he wants to do.

'He is asking us, the Americans and the Taliban for safe passage but I am afraid safe passage is also other words for being brought to the front of the queue.

'And I just wonder how you feel about having to make a decision whereby we move lots of desperate Afghans out of the way to bring him through because of the profile and the support he has. That doesn't feel like the right thing to do. It gives me no pleasure to say that though.'

Mr Farthing appealed directly to the Taliban on Twitter in a desperate bid to secure the release of the animals

On Thursday Mr Farthing appealed directly to the Taliban on Twitter in a desperate bid to secure the release of the animals.

Addressing Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, Mr Farthing wrote: 'Dear Sir; my team and my animals are stuck at airport circle. We have a flight waiting. Can you please facilitate safe passage into the airport for our convoy?

'We are an NGO who will come back to Afghanistan but right now I want to get everyone out safely.

'We have been here for 10 hours after being assured that we would have safe passage. Truly would like to go home now. Let's prove the IEA are taking a different path.'

The Government is still scrambling to evacuate thousands of British nationals trapped at Hamid Karzai International Airport

Mr Johnson is said to have personally intervened in the row at the urging of his wife, Carrie (they are seen in Cornwall during the G7 meeting)

By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail

Last night Pen Farthing said his convoy of 200 shelter animals and 68 staff was targeted with gunfire after getting access to the airport.

On their way to board a chartered plane, a gunman opened fire in an incident which saw the group's driver narrowly avoid being shot in the head and the convoy forced to turn back.

Earlier yesterday the charity director pleaded with the Taliban on Twitter to 'facilitate safe passage'.

Plans to board a privately-funded plane had been derailed due to security fears.

Mr Farthing's supporter Dominic Dyer, an animal welfare activist, said a plane is waiting in a 'neighbouring country' but cannot land in Kabul until Mr Farthing is in the airport. Here Guy Adams looks at how the saga unfolded.

The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, is a former Captain in the Scots Guards who now finds himself overseeing one of the most dangerous and challenging military evacuations since Vietnam.

Yet at lunchtime yesterday, the 51-year-old minister found the time to break off from directing proceedings in Kabul to put out seven spectacularly angry tweets.

They were designed to 'get some facts out there', as he put it, about his attitude towards Operation Ark, an attempt to evacuate roughly 200 cats and dogs from Afghanistan in the hold of a charter jet that will also carry the staff of a UK-run charity named Nowzad.

In recent days Mr Wallace and his team have been accused of seeking to obstruct the daring animal rescue mission, firstly by failing to help secure permission for the plane to land and secondly by refusing to assist the evacuees (human, canine and feline) in their endeavours to reach the airport.

Supporters of the charity, which is run by a former Royal Marine named Paul 'Pen' Farthing, have mounted a highly personal lobbying campaign via social media. This appears to have got under the Defence Secretary's skin.

Supporters of the charity, which is run by a former Royal Marine named Paul 'Pen' Farthing, have mounted a highly personal lobbying campaign via social media

'The bullying, falsehoods and threatening behaviour by some towards our MoD personnel and advisers is unacceptable and a shameful way to treat people trying to help the evacuation,' he wrote.

Elsewhere, Mr Wallace denied reports that he'd ever sought to 'block' a flight, claiming: 'This is a total myth and is being peddled around as if that is why the pet evacuation hasn't taken place.'

He also stated, somewhat provocatively, that in the coming days his 'priority will be people not pets'. As the hostile tone of these remarks suggest, Operation Ark is now at the centre of an ugly and at times utterly surreal political dispute.

While aspects of it might seem entirely frivolous – the fate of 200 cats and dogs obviously pales in comparison to that of thousands of Afghans attempting to flee Kabul – the row may also raise serious questions about the way in which Boris Johnson's Government conducts its business.

For the campaign against Mr Wallace has been led by Dominic Dyer, an animal rights activist with close links to the Prime Minister's spouse Carrie. She even has a picture of him on her Twitter profile.

Dyer has spent the last three days bombarding the Defence Secretary with no fewer than 53 hostile tweets, including one which read 'F*** this whole sh**** government and their unelected Spads and cronies,' and others which dubbed Wallace 'an arrogant, stupid fool of a man', and a 'total disgrace'.

He has also attacked Mr Wallace's special adviser, Peter Quentin, accusing him of 'dirty tricks'. Yet while launching this attack on a Government minister, Mr Dyer also claims to have enlisted his friend Mrs Johnson to Operation Ark's cause.

The campaign against Mr Wallace has been led by Dominic Dyer, an animal rights activist with close links to the Prime Minister's spouse Carrie, pictured

In interviews, he has said that she 'most certainly' intervened to persuade the PM to order Mr Wallace to 'seek a slot' for the rescue flight.

Although the PM yesterday claimed he 'had absolutely no influence' over policy towards the evacuation, it has been reported that Trudy Harrison, his parliamentary private secretary who is seen as a close ally of Mrs Johnson and shares her keen interest in animal rights, did intervene on Operation Ark's behalf to raise the issue with Defra officials.

It is, all told, a curious affair. And to truly understand it all we must wind the clock back to the summer of 2006 when the aforementioned Royal Marine Pen Farthing arrived in Helmand province with the men of 42 Commando Royal Marines.

During the peacekeeping tour, he was befriended by a horribly mutilated dog that had been used by Afghans in dog fights. Moved by its 'big, sad eyes' he took the animal back to the UK.

It became the first of around 1,700 dogs that Mr Farthing rescued, setting up Nowzad – named after the town he'd been stationed in – to give them new lives, often in the West where many became companions of retired soldiers who had served in Afghanistan, helping address post-traumatic stress.

The thoroughly inspiring charity won a string of humanitarian awards and made great strides in educating Afghans about animal welfare and eliminating rabies from Kabul, where the disease is a major public health risk. Staff at its rescue centre in the capital included some of the country's first female vets.

Then came the Taliban's takeover, which threatened not only Mr Farthing's staff (deemed to be at risk of reprisals for having worked for a Western agency) but also his animals: in the 1990s the Taliban forbade the keeping of pets on the grounds that they are regarded as unclean under the organisation's extremist interpretation of Islam.

Mr Farthing managed to evacuate his Norwegian wife, Kaisa Markhus, and a pregnant American friend. He then vowed to remain in Kabul to secure the safe evacuation of his staff members with their immediate families (who have been given visas to travel to the UK), plus the animals in Nowzad's care.

In a few days, supporters raised roughly £200,000 to charter planes to take them first to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, roughly 45 minutes from Kabul, and then to Britain.

At this stage, however, problems emerged: amid the chaos of the evacuation, Mr Farthing found himself unable to secure permission for the airplane to land at Kabul.

By the start of this week, he and his staff were also still holed up at their HQ, several miles from the airport, which was by then difficult to access.

There followed a dispute with UK authorities which played out via interviews and Twitter posts.

It began on Tuesday, when Mr Farthing tweeted: 'Have been left to fend for myself in Kabul.

Cut off from my MoD Ministry of support line by the special adviser to Ben Wallace. 22-year marine left behind lines. Neither my staff nor animals will now get out. Cheers.'

In a TV interview he added: 'We've got a privately-funded plane that can take 250 passengers out, 69 of them would be me and the staff, but we've got an empty cargo hold. I don't understand the problems here, I'm not asking the MoD to give me a plane I just need to have a call sign.'

Hours later, Wallace responded on LBC Radio: 'I have some really desperate people in that queue who are really under threat of life and death, and if we don't get them out their future is very, very bleak. I simply have to prioritise those people over pets.'

In a second interview, Wallace criticised Mr Farthing's supporters, saying: 'Some of the campaigners have latched onto the fact they've chartered a plane as if this is somehow the magic wand. The magic wand is whether people can get through Kabul, through the checkpoint, and then through the 3,000-plus people waiting.'

Repeating his provocative soundbite, he added: 'I am not prepared to prioritise pets over people.'

The remarks met with huge anger from Mr Dyer and his allies, who include a TV vet named Mark Abraham, who helped Mrs Johnson source her pet dog Dilyn. Mr Dyer, a former campaigner against badger culls (an issue on which he has persuaded Mrs Johnson to lobby the PM on) uploaded furious messages to Twitter, urging supporters to 'get on to Ben Wallace's Twitter feed… reflect your views'.

Mr Dyer also called the Defence Secretary a 'bully boy incompetence fool who is playing politics with the lives of Pen Farthing, his team and animals in Kabul. This man is a total disgrace.'

Replies by his supporters contained Mr Wallace's office telephone number, which was bombarded with angry calls. Fast forward a few hours, and Mr Wallace announced an effective U-turn.

At 1.33am on Wednesday he uploaded a statement to Twitter saying: 'Pen Farthing's staff have been cleared to come forward… I have authorised MoD to facilitate their processing alongside all other eligible personnel at (Kabul airport).

'At that stage, if he arrives with his animals we will seek a slot for his plane. If he does not have his animals with him he and his staff can board an RAF flight.'

Mr Dyer responded by posting gleeful videos to Twitter saying that Wallace had 'had his hands slapped' and 'his legs pulled from under him'. He then claimed the change of policy had been ordered by Mr Johnson, possibly at the behest of his wife.

That in turn prompted the by now somewhat frazzled Defence Secretary to tell Tory MPs that his involvement in the ongoing battle over Operation Ark was affecting his ability to oversee the rest of the evacuation.

What I can tell you, and it is a bit upsetting, is that I have soldiers on the ground who have been diverted from saving those people because of inaccurate stories, inaccurate lobbying that have diverted that resource,' he wrote to them at 4.30pm on Wednesday. 'And that is not something I would be proud of.'

Whitehall insiders appear to agree. 'Wallace shouldn't really have got involved, but everyone is getting fractious and having to get by on very little sleep, and that's affecting their judgment,' one says.

'He's also been anxious, rightly, to protect his Spad Peter Quentin from abuse. But the way he's chosen to do it has at times been clumsy and tweeting in the middle of the night and whatnot is never going to be a good look.'

As for Mr Farthing, his employees and their cats and dogs, yesterday morning they were in vehicles baking in the hot sun at Kabul airport.

With the animals starting to struggle with thirst, he used Twitter to lobby another influential figure for help: Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman.

'Dear Sir, my team and my animals are stuck at airport circle. We have a flight waiting. Can you please facilitate safe passage into the airport for our convoy? We are an NGO who will come back to Afghanistan but right now I want to get everyone out safely,' he wrote.

'We have been here for 10 hours after being assured that we would have safe passage.'

Around tea time, news came that they had secured access to the airport. However it was later reported that Mr Farthing had been forced to leave after their vehicle was targeted by a gunman.

They intend to return today, so with a following wind, the Operation Ark evacuees get a happy ending. But however this plays out, the political fallout may take far longer to resolve.

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick. Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o

NowMyNews

Search This Blog