A London family who traveled to Afghanistan for a wedding this summer spoke of their nightmare of being stranded in Kabul.
Sabrallah Zahiri and his relatives flew after Afghanistan from Heathrow on July 19th and should be returning this Monday. Instead, they are stuck and staring fearfully at them from their apartment window Taliban outdoors.
Mr. Zahiri from Hounslow said he tried to leave but his car was stolen at gunpoint.
He told Sky News: “They said ‘you have to give me the key’. I said ‘why is it my own car and not the government car?’ and they said ‘we don’t care’ and they put a gun to my head and I said okay take it. “
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Mr. Zahiri with his brothers Abdul Wajed and Fatur Raman at a wedding on August 8th
Eleven British nationals attended the August 8 wedding, including two children aged two and eight. There are also two newly married brides on visas to stay in the UK.
All 13 try to come back.
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Calls from Kabul
Mr Zahiri said he had contacted the UK consulate and had been instructed to stay there pending further details. He said, “I just keep trying to call them and they just say, ‘You have to wait, you have to wait’. But I don’t know how long.”
They filmed the Taliban from their window, and some family members grow angrier when armed men approach them over fences.
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The Taliban hold first press conference
In a press conference on Tuesday The Taliban said: “We want the world to trust us.” But their own people live in fear.
We spoke to the sister of a British national who, following the death of her father, is now in an all-women household in. lives Accept.
Women fear that under Taliban rule they will not be allowed to leave the house without a man and that therefore no one will be able to go out to buy food.
The mother and four sisters, aged 25 to 45, locked themselves in for four days for fear of how they would be treated by the new rulers.
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Her other sister Maria Mohmoodi-Karimzad, who lives in Hounslow in West London, said: “In your own country, in your home country, you cannot go out alone as a woman because there is no man. Where is that? Human rights? Where are the women’s rights? “
The Taliban say they are upholding women’s rights in their interpretation of Islamic texts and, as it stands, there is little the international community can do other than hope for women’s freedom.
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Abdul Ahmedi believes that Western governments now have no choice but to work with the Taliban
Abdul Ahmedi, who runs a dry cleaner in Chiswick, west London, also has parents and siblings in Afghanistan. He believes that Western governments now have no choice but to work with the Taliban.
He told Sky News, “You have to help them as you helped the previous administration. They spent trillions there and most of the money went to the war.
“Now they should deal with the Taliban, not for the sake of the Taliban, but for the sake of the Afghan people – because they don’t deserve to be isolated as they did after the war with the Soviet Union.”
These are crucial days for those trying to get out and those who can’t, eagerly awaiting what will become of their country.
