“We don’t know what to do”: in Pakistan, hundreds of Afghans await asylum in France

Published on : 09/25/2021 – 10:59

Until last summer, Rafi * was a journalist for an Afghan television station very critical of the Taliban. A refugee in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, he is currently taking steps to reach France with the help of the National Union of Journalists. “The SNJ confirmed that the Foreign Ministry in France was going to evacuate the Afghan journalists from Afghanistan. But we still have not received any news,” he told France 24.

“We do not know what will happen to us. We have come to Islamabad but there is no organization or embassy speaking to us. We do not know what to do,” he continues. And to insist: “We came here just to stay alive.”

The journalist, like several of his colleagues, had however been registered on the Quai d’Orsay list of people to be evacuated from Kabul as a priority. France, however, ended the evacuations before he could board a plane. And if Rafi was able to find another solution to leave Afghanistan by road to Pakistan, he fears for the life of his wife, a journalist too. For lack of a passport, she could not flee with him.

“Women journalists are even more vulnerable… They can no longer work”, testifies one of her colleagues, a refugee in the Pakistani capital. “There is no one to help them. How will they do when they have spent all their savings? Men can still manage. But an independent woman, what can she do, where can she go? ”

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“We live locked up”

In Kabul, Manizha *, a dissident poet, has been in hiding for several weeks with her family. It too could not be evacuated by the French for lack of time.

“Here, it is not home, I hide. I miss my life before: getting up in the morning and going to work …”, she says, contacted by France 24. “We live locked up: I locked my children at home when they should be playing football outside. “.

For the moment, the French authorities do not have clear instructions for those still waiting to be evacuated.

* Names have been changed