Until final week, Shabeer Ahmadi was busy protecting the information in Afghanistan. But after a hasty and excruciating determination to depart his Taliban-controlled nation for an unsure future in Spain, he’s helplessly glued to information feeds on his cellphone, following each twist within the dramatic finish of the evacuation of Afghans from Kabul.
The 29-year-old journalist and 9 shut family managed to board one of many evacuation planes and at the moment are going by way of the prolonged asylum course of whereas beginning a brand new life in a northern Spanish metropolis. But the way forward for 1000’s of Afghans who haven’t been capable of escape, together with members of his circle of relatives, is now the main focus of his fears, Ahmadi stated.
“There is a feeling of desperation in Afghanistan,” he stated.
“Imagine if you had made a building for 20 years now, that building is getting destroyed and you cannot go out from that building. It feels very bad. Our education, our hopes for ourselves, for our children, for our future, for our country is all destroyed.”
Tolo News, the non-public Afghan outlet the place Ahmadi labored as deputy head of reports, has been a goal of the Taliban. But it was not solely him who felt below menace in his instant circle: Ahmadi’s mom is an lawyer. His father, a former journalist. And his brother, an engineer, labored on hydropower era, an important infrastructure for the operation of the conflict-worn nation.
Earlier this month, because the Taliban’s siege closed on Kabul, the household began making use of for emergency visas to a number of international locations. Spain was the primary to react, because of the mediation of a Spanish journalist whom Ahmadi had befriended in Kabul.
It took the ten of them a protracted and difficult day amid the crowds piling up outdoors the airport “and another one inside, sleeping among hundreds on the ground” earlier than they have been cleared to go, regardless of a few of them missing passports.
“When I boarded the plane, I was thinking that finally, thank God I’m safe. But what happens to other people who remain in Afghanistan?” he puzzled, talking through video convention from Huesca, the place the group was relocated on Thursday, at some point after touchdown in Madrid.
“There are people calling me saying that there’s no salary by the government or by the Taliban now. And banks are closed and they cannot afford their families’ evacuation,” the journalist stated.
He defined that as overseas troops are pulling out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, a lot of his acquaintances are on the lookout for alternate options to depart Afghanistan through Iran and Pakistan.
The former correspondent thinks that the way forward for Afghanistan is bleak. He blames, largely, the U.S. administration of Joe Biden for urgent forward with the choice to drag out.
“Because it couldn’t negotiate a good deal with the Taliban, the U.S. handed over us to the Taliban, to a group that has ties to so many terrorist groups around the world,” he stated. “They abandoned the new generation of Afghanistan.” He fears that “a very bloody war” will get away between the Taliban and ISIS within the coming months and years, drawing overseas extremist fighters and leaving tens of millions of harmless lives caught within the battle.
That’s why leaving Afghanistan, he stated, “hurts every moment.” But he couldn’t work for the way forward for his nation whereas his life was at stake, he added. And but, if issues calm right down to a level, if a authorities is fashioned that ensures sure situations even whereas the Taliban stay in management, he’s pondering returning residence.
“I always tell my friends that any strong country is strong because of the people who work for it, so we cannot leave our country forever,” Ahmadi stated.
“We are a generation that has not seen any single day without war in Afghanistan, but if you want our future generations to see such a day, we have to work for our country.”
