Afghanistan: Feminine MPs in Turkey concern for future with out assist from the West

Feminine Afghan politicians who fled to Turkey after the Taliban seized management of Kabul are dealing with an unsure future as their visas will quickly run out, campaigners and former MPs have warned.

An Afghan former senior minister, who didn’t need to be named, instructed The Unbiased she is struggling to assist her household as a result of the Taliban froze her checking account.

The politician mentioned she was talking on behalf of 35 feminine Afghan politicians, together with ministers and deputy ministers, in addition to civil society activists and campaigners at present dwelling in Turkey after escaping Afghanistan in mid-August

Talking in an unique interview from Turkey, the 56-year-old mentioned the Afghan ladies had solely been granted short-term six-month visas and aren’t positive if they are going to be capable of renew them.

“We don’t have any path. We by no means thought the nation would collapse in August all of a sudden. Proper now we don’t have any alternatives,” mentioned the politician, who has been in Turkey for 4 months.

“We don’t have any assist from the Turkish authorities. There isn’t any welfare assist for immigrants. No medical assist, no schooling, no monetary assist. I’ve three daughters. They will’t go to high school as the price of schooling is simply too excessive.”

The Turkish authorities couldn’t be reached for remark.

The politician mentioned one in every of her daughters is severely disabled – including that herself, her husband, and their kids are merely “sitting in the home”.

“It’s actually, actually difficult,” the politician, who lived within the Afghani capital of Kabul, mentioned. “I didn’t cry for 3 or 4 years, now I’m crying every single day, as we don’t have any future.”

She mentioned she has sort 2 diabetes and is affected by again ache but can not afford drugs. Whereas she is at present counting on drugs for diabetes she introduced along with her from Afghanistan, she doesn’t understand how she’s going to cope when that runs out.

“We at the moment are consuming low-cost primary meals,” she added. “We had an enormous home in Afghanistan. The entire luxuries. We got here to Turkey with nothing. The Taliban froze our financial institution accounts. We have been on the frontline standing up for human rights and ladies’s rights in Afghanistan and now the worldwide group ignores us.”

The opposite feminine politicians and campaigners in Turkey are in the same state of affairs to herself and are additionally pissed off, she mentioned, as she referred to as for the worldwide group to assist them.

The politician, who has visited Britain twice beforehand, mentioned she had despatched her paperwork to the UK 3 times to assert for asylum however had not heard something again. She has additionally tried to use for citizenship in Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Sweden, the US and different European nations however has but to listen to something again.

The opposite Afghan ladies have additionally despatched paperwork to varied nations however have but to have had any luck securing citizenship elsewhere, the politician mentioned. About 80 per cent of them have utilized for UK citizenship, she added.

There may be rising concern that the UK’s Afghan Residents Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), introduced with a lot fanfare in August, continues to be not up and working 4 months on. The scheme pledged to assist 5,000 folks within the first yr and as much as 20,000 within the coming years, however MPs who attempt to contact the Residence Workplace about it have mentioned they’re being ignored.

The Refugee Council mentioned on Monday that the Residence Workplace’s failure to offer protected and authorized migration routes for Afghans is forcing hundreds to make harmful journeys to hunt security within the UK.

The Residence Workplace didn’t reply to request for remark by deadline.

Heather Barr, affiliate director of the ladies’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, instructed The Unbiased the hardship confronted by feminine politicians and campaigners who’ve escaped Afghanistan is “sadly actually acquainted”.

“The quantity of people that really feel like they haven’t any selection however to flee Afghanistan is a lot bigger than any nation has been prepared to resettle,” she mentioned.

“Their state of affairs is extremely precarious … they haven’t any means to resettle there completely. No means to resume their visas. No means to work and earn an earnings and ship their kids to high school.”

She warned the UK, the US and different nations are exhibiting “little or no sympathy” for the Afghan folks and offering them with a dearth of choices – including: “It feels just like the door is slamming in Afghan refugees’ faces”.

Final month, dozens of feminine Afghan MPs arrange a ladies’s parliament in exile from Greece, the place many escaped to in August. Nevertheless additionally they have considerations about their visas working out and the prospect of being completely resettled within the West.

The Taliban swept to energy in August in Afghanistan, which is at present within the grips of an acute starvation disaster. The final time the hardline Islamist group dominated the nation, ladies have been barred from working, ladies have been blocked from going to high school, and ladies needed to be chaperoned by a male family member in the event that they needed to go away the home.

Marzia Babakarkhail, who used to work as a household court docket choose in Afghanistan however now lives within the UK, instructed The Unbiased: “For the time being, the variety of susceptible ladies who stay in Afghanistan and are vulnerable to dying reaches hundreds.

“This quantity consists of ladies, each within the capital Kabul and the provinces, who’re at present lively in civil society, the police pressure, nationwide safety, in addition to ladies within the judiciary and authorized system and different essential realms.

“The folks we have now evacuated and helped is incomparable to the variety of lives nonetheless in want of assist. I urge the worldwide group and UK authorities to resettle Afghan ladies in protected locations.”

Chatting with The Unbiased in a earlier interview, the 55-year-old, who efficiently helped marketing campaign for some feminine judges to be rescued from Afghanistan, accused the Taliban of making an attempt to kill her in Afghanistan in 1997 and once more in Pakistan in 2007.