Pen Farthing and rescue dogs trapped in Afghanistan after UK shuts Kabul airport gates

Kieran Galpin

Farthing secluded far from home.

Former Royal Marine and charity worker Pen Farthing is trapped in Afghanistan with the Taliban after it was announced the gates of Kabul’s airport had been sealed. The former CNN hero of the year had been trying to evacuate his staff and almost two hundred rescue dogs when Kabul airport was attacked on Thursday.

Following the gate attack, the Ministry of Defence announced that no one else would be called for evacuation on Friday morning. Instead, the remaining hours will focus on airlifting Brits and Afghans already processed and waiting inside the airfield.

Pen, 69 Afghans and the rescue animals were 300 metres inside the airport when Taliban soldiers said they were not permitted to get on the plane. “I am going to try again,” he told the Sun on Friday morning. “We were 300m inside. It had taken 36 hours to achieve that.”

"I'm not leaving here without my staff".

Ex-Marine @PenFarthing has told @skynewsniall that he's happy to wait so he can leave Kabul with his @Nowzad workers and animals.#KayBurley #Afghanistan UF 2/2 pic.twitter.com/Hjp0zzq9uZ

— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) August 24, 2021

“I had all my staff, all dogs and cats 300m inside perimeter.

“We had gone through hell to get there.”

Farthing had been told that US President Joe Biden had changed the evacuation policy.

Moments later, the first terror attack occurred and the area erupted into chaos.

“As we were trying to flee from the airport, we were getting tear-gassed so we were obviously trying to drive the vehicle when we can’t see anything.

Boris Johnson get @PenFarthing his people & animals in Kabul airport now before lives of people & animals are put under threat. We have a plane leaving today to rescue them which you have committed to allowing us to land @ZacGoldsmith @carrielbjohnson @BWallaceMP #OperationArk pic.twitter.com/OC5Abr8CZQ

— dominic dyer (@domdyer70) August 26, 2021

“It was just the most horrific thing.”

“The staff are telling me it’s time for me to go. They don’t think a foreigner will be welcome here,” he continued.

“Staff have asked me to take as many dogs and cats as I can. But now I can’t get them past the Taliban check points.

“My mission to get them out of Afghanistan has just ended because Joe Biden stopped it.”

But new rules mean that airport extraction is no longer possible for Farthing and his band of staff, Afghan’s, and animals.

Though a privately funded flight was due to pick them up, the flight was cancelled due to growing safety concerns.

The whole team & dogs/cats were safely 300m inside the airport perimeter. We were turned away as @JoeBiden @POTUS 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

— Pen Farthing (@PenFarthing) August 27, 2021

“If he makes his way and we can find him, we will try and put him on a flight,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in an interview on Good Morning Britain.

“The threat is obviously going to grow the closer we get to leaving,” he told Sky News.

“The narrative is always going to be, as we leave, certain groups such as ISIS will want to stake a claim that they have driven out the US or the UK.”

Farthing’s biggest hope now is to flee to a neighbouring country where they can be airlifted out.