‘They will kill us’: how a joint group of Afghans and Australia brought activist to safety as Taliban captured Kabul | Australian immigration and asylum

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As the sun beat down on the crowd outside Kabul airport, Najia Babakarkhail imposed herself in silence, her face hidden by a makeshift disguise.

Taliban fighters, armed with AK-47s, dressed in black, scanned the crowd where Babakarkhail, her daughter and twin granddaughters, stood, three generations of Afghan women all desperate to flee the recently fallen capital.

Babakarkhail knew that a small mistake would betray them.

She was a high-value and easily recognizable target for the Taliban.

Afghan politician and activist, open to social justice issues, her face had been splashed regularly on television and in newspapers in her province of Paktika, in eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban had already killed his brother and his bodyguard. They had sent warnings directly to Babakarkhail itself.

“So I wore sunglasses and wore my skirt over my head,” she told The Guardian via an interpreter. “I covered everyone, and even I didn’t speak, I was afraid someone would recognize my voice.”

For a week and a half after the sudden capture of the capital by the Taliban, his family of seven had been hiding in their Kabul home, waiting for an inevitable knock on the door.

“‘They can do anything, they will kill us’, I was thinking like that,” she said. “I was not afraid of death, but I was afraid for my family, I did not see my family in danger.

Babakarkhail’s lifeline came from an unlikely source.

Across the world in Australia, members of a small unofficial group calling themselves the 21st Kabul Lancers contacted Babakarkhail’s daughter, Walwala Sayed, after applying for a visa in her desperation to flee Afghanistan.

The Lancers, all Australian and Afghan military and government figures, began to work quietly as the Taliban’s march through Afghanistan gathered momentum earlier this year. They have so far helped more than 300 people, including Australian citizens and residents, to flee Afghanistan and reach Australia.

The message the Lancers gave Walwala and his family was clear: they had a chance to escape to Australia. But that meant braving the chaos of Hamid Karzai International Airport to reach the Australian soldiers.

The family were asked to wear specific color scarves, which would alert Australians to their identity.

The Lancers sent a driver home to transport them to the airport.

When they arrived the crowds and chaos were too great. Taliban fighters were everywhere, some shooting in the sky.

“I was crying, it was a very difficult time,” said Walwala. “So my mother told me to tell them ‘we are not going, better to stay here than to die outside the airport’.”

The Lancers convinced them to try again.

Walwala remembers her twins crying desperately, their skin scorching in the relentless sun. One of the girls collapsed in the heat.

“I told them ‘sorry we can’t come, it’s too dangerous. It’s impossible, ”she said.

As night fell, the Lancers tried once more. The family were given the coordinates of a bus and asked to watch its lights in the early morning darkness.

The army was then dispatched to find the bus and ask for Babakarkhail’s family.

Miraculously, the plan worked. The family were taken to the airport, airlifted from Afghanistan, and eventually arrived in Australia.

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The story of the Lancers is remarkable, but not officially told by the Australian government. Forming a “private and personal humanitarian enterprise to help friends and acquaintances”, the group’s work is done independently.

The Lancers helped Australian-trained Afghan soldiers, interpreters, journalists and politicians flee Afghanistan, using local contacts and maintaining lines of communication with a network of officials working on the evacuation. They provided escorts to transport targets on foot or by vehicle. Groups were advised to wear brightly colored scarves or umbrellas to help security forces identify them once they arrived at the airport.

The group’s work includes helping Afghans bypass Taliban checkpoints, hide in shelters and join coalition troops at Kabul airport.

“The fall of Afghanistan was an unprecedented and extraordinary situation, with acts of bravery, courage and heroism on the part of the Afghan people, the ADF, Australian government officials and our allied mission partners “a member told Guardian Australia on condition of anonymity. . “There are many who have stories of escaping Afghanistan, but even more stories continue of those who survived in Afghanistan and those who settle across the world and in Australia.”

“That day was very difficult”

When the Taliban entered Kabul, senior defense officials were in the Kabul Defense Ministry building, holding their usual morning meetings.

No one imagined that Kabul would take the city so quickly.

One official, who cannot be identified to avoid endangering his family, recalls being in the room with President Ashraf Ghani’s Defense Minister Bismillah Khan when he realized Ghani had fled the country.

It soon became apparent that the government had collapsed.

“When we realized the president was no longer there, he left Afghanistan… he was the man in charge,” he told Guardian Australia. “So when he escaped the defense ministry leadership said now everything was in place so we shouldn’t kill people because inside Kabul city it was very difficult to fight the Taliban. “

The official quickly began to fear for his own life. He fled with the Minister of Defense and managed to catch a flight to Uzbekistan.

His family was trapped in Kabul.

“That day it was very difficult to move anywhere, but I was talking to my mother and my brothers, and I told them to be inside the house, not to go zero share, ”he said.

“After the Taliban started searching our home, one day they came to take the car, one day they came to take up arms. And every day they keep coming. Even still they seek, they come, they ask especially for me.

The official managed to track down the Lancers through an Australian who had previously advised the Afghan Ministry of Defense.

The Lancers helped a larger government effort to fly him and other senior officers from Uzbekistan to Australia.

“They were all evacuated by [the Lancers] to their Australia, ”he said.

Those who escaped are extremely grateful to the Lancers and Australia for bringing them to safety.

But they also fear for their friends, their family and for Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

“Everything was destroyed in one day,” Babakarkhail said.

“It’s very difficult. Even now I don’t feel good. I can’t help but think about my country, what will happen to our people, what will happen to our government. Why everyone is silent Why no one talks about our country?

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