Afghanistan: “We have helped the French army, our life is in danger”

Published on : 08/30/2021 – 08:53

“Now, it’s too late.” While the US military is due to leave Afghanistan on Tuesday, August 31, a majority of countries have in recent days ended their evacuation operations at Kabul airport. Among them, France closed its airlift on Friday after sheltering “nearly 3,000 people, including more than 2,600 Afghans”, according to the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly. But many Afghan Civilian Locally Recruited Personnel (PCRLs) who worked for France are still in the country.

“I received an e-mail on which it is written that I must be ready, with my family, to leave as soon as possible. He said that the embassy was going to call me and that I had to prepare my luggage.” , testifies a former translator of the French army to France 24. “We sold everything we had. Now we have nothing,” he continues, on condition of anonymity.

“We went to the airport but we did not manage to get through the gates. Before that, I had done all the papers and I had sent them according to the procedure indicated by the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs” , tells a second ex-collaborator of the French army. “But at the French Embassy, ​​they told us to wait, that the file was being processed. We waited. But now it is too late.”

>> To read also : Repatriation of Afghan allies from France: “Everything is played out at the airport checkpoint”

“Our life is in danger”

A total of 1,067 PCRLs, including 538 interpreters, have worked for France in Afghanistan since 2001, according to a parliamentary report published in April 2021. Among them, “222 ex-PCRL and their families, or nearly 800 people”, according to the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, were evacuated from 2012. Since the Taliban took power, around twenty others were able to leave the country.

“They could constitute one of the priority targets for the Taliban, who are already looking for them,” recalls a member of an underground network who works in Kabul to come to their aid. “They have helped foreigners, and this is a red line for the Taliban.”

For many of them, the situation is seen as an abandonment and a broken promise on the part of the French government. “We cannot leave our homeland because the Taliban are digging into phones and looking at all the details,” said a third individual. “The situation is very bad, our life is in danger. We worked for the French army, serving the French people in Afghanistan. Now we are asking that we all be evacuated from the country.”

And for a last to conclude: “we ask the French army to remember, that there was a time when it was we who helped its soldiers, who accompanied them in their missions.”