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.
Source: 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: Guardian
In Afghanistan 9/11 is remembered as a trigger for decades of war which this year have come full, grim circle. The Taliban who controlled the country and sheltered Osama bin Laden at the time of the attacks are once more in command of Kabul and most of the country.
“This is the day when the bad times started for Afghanistan and Afghans,” said Haizbullah, a grocer in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s heartland and original capital.
Source: Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a commercial flight out of Kabul on Thursday with the cooperation of the Taliban — the first such large-scale departure since U.S. forces completed their frantic withdrawal over a week ago.
The Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a breakthrough in the bumpy coordination between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s new rulers. A dayslong standoff over charter planes at another airport has left hundreds of mostly Afghan people stranded, waiting for Taliban permission to leave.
Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s northern neighbor, has awarded its third-highest civilian award, posthumously, to two former anti-Taliban Afghan political figures belonging to the Tajik ethnic group – late legendary Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
However, the timing of the award–when Massoud’s own son, Ahmad Massoud, and former Afghan vice-president Amrullah Saleh are putting a fierce resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir valley–seems a signal to the Taliban.