CHIBA, Japan (Kyodo) — Several Afghan evacuees arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo on Sunday night, the first confirmed group of people from Afghanistan to take refuge in Japan following the Taliban’s return to power in mid-August.
The evacuees were among around 10 Afghans who entered neighboring Pakistan by land last week. The four were a local worker of the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Afghanistan and family members, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Madina Morwat was among scores of Afghan journalists who lost their jobs when dozens of television and radio stations suspended programming after the Taliban captured Kabul last month.
But the 23-year old reporter quickly resumed her career after taking a job at Tolo News, part of Afghanistan’s largest media company Moby Group and a channel that has come to symbolise the rise of liberal media in Afghanistan since the Taliban were first ousted from power following the US-led invasion in 2001. “Many embassies asked if I wanted to leave Afghanistan, but I am committed to work for women and my country,” she said.
The UK government has released a fact-sheet for people evacuated from Afghanistan. It provides information on rights and the next steps regarding the immigration status in the UK. – read the full factsheet here.
The information in the fact-sheet will be reviewed and integrated into our resettlement information pages.
The United Arab Emirates has started operating an air bridge to deliver tons of aid to Afghanistan, a Kabul airport operations manager said on Saturday.
The UAE is a close ally of the US and is among a number of Gulf states that have been key staging posts for evacuation flights from Afghanistan.
Source: BBC
Former Royal Marine Paul “Pen” Farthing said the campaign to evacuate workers at his animal shelter from Afghanistan has been “a complete success”.
Last month, Mr Farthing was forced to leave behind 68 staff and family members when he and some 150 animals were evacuated from Kabul.
The staff are now in Pakistan in the care of the British High Commission.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said they would be brought to the UK in the coming days.
UNITED NATIONS, September 12. /TASS/. Afghanistan will be represented by Ghulam Isaczai, the current ambassador to the United Nations, at the upcoming high-level week at the UN General Assembly which will be held on September 21-27, a UN source told TASS on Saturday.
NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with the Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press about what she’s witnessed in Kabul as Afghans react to life under Taliban rule.
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Continue reading John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing NationsSource: Guardian
Mohammad Zaman Khadimi was forced to make an impossible choice as he fled the Taliban for sanctuary in Australia
On an August morning, Mohammad Zaman Khadimi walked out of class and into a world entirely changed.
“I heard the news that the Taliban were coming,” he says. “They had captured Herat and Lashkar Gah and they would come to Kabul. Nothing would stop them. Everything changed. I knew I would be vulnerable.”
Within 48 hours, the Islamist group would seize control of Kabul and sit in the presidential palace. The Taliban would be the government.
Source: Voice of America
ISLAMABAD – Twenty-four-year-old Tamana Zaryab Paryani is too young to remember the last Taliban rule, from 1996-2001, but she recalls the horror stories her mother told her.
“My mother said Taliban were a terrorist group … it was a brutal time. They used to stone people to death,” Paryani told VOA in a WhatsApp call from Kabul, where she and nearly 20 other women are regularly protesting in the streets against the very group her mother warned her about.
