Readers respond to Gaby Hinsliff’s article about Pen Farthing’s evacuation of animals from Afghanistan
The emotive language of Gaby Hinsliff’s article (What a story to tell the world: Britain values dogs more than Afghan people, 30 August) not only risks deflecting attention from the consequences of the reactive, rather than proactive, response of the British government, but also suggests that one cannot care equally about the victims of humanitarian crises and the plight of other innocent species in manmade conflicts.
Accordingly, “human souls” are pitted against a “menagerie of strays”, whose lives a former soldier in Afghanistan and his Afghan staff valued enough to wish to save at the risk of their own survival. Ms Hinsliff is no doubt correct in noting that cats are “of no conceivable interest to the Taliban”, so what fate does she imagine awaited these animals under the new rulers of the country?
