The phones have not stopped ringing. Inside the cramped offices of refugee charities, staff are fielding calls from Kabul. The stories are harrowing. Fathers selling their daughters. Not through choice. Through desperation.
The context is simple. The UK's resettlement schemes are failing. The numbers promised are nowhere near the numbers arriving. The system is choked with bureaucracy. Taliban checkpoints. Missing paperwork. A Home Office that moves at a glacial pace.
One charity worker told me this morning: 'We are hearing from families who have run out of options. No food. No money. No hope. Selling a child is not an act of cruelty. It is an act of survival.'
The political calculation is brutal. The government has its eye on the polls. Immigration is a toxic issue. But these are interpreters. Activists. Women judges. People who stood with British forces. They are being left behind.
Inside Whitehall, there is a standoff. The Foreign Office wants action. The Home Office worries about public perception. The Treasury counts the cost. Meanwhile, in Kabul, a father hands over his daughter to a stranger for two hundred dollars.
The charities are demanding an emergency resettlement programme. They want visas issued on the spot. They want flights chartered. They want the bureaucratic delays cut.
But the machinery of state does not move fast. It never has. Not for Afghans. Not for Syrians. Not for anyone who does not have a lobbyist in Westminster.
The question is whether this will break through. Whether the stories of one father, then another, then another, will force the government's hand.
I am told Number 10 is monitoring the situation. They are 'concerned'. But concern does not fill a stomach. Concern does not bring a daughter back.
The real test will come in the next 48 hours. If the charities can mobilise public opinion. If the media keeps the pressure on. If the opposition forces a debate in the Commons.
Otherwise, the phones will keep ringing. And the fathers will keep selling.
This is a live situation. I will update as more information emerges.
