Helping a lovely Afghan family complete the road from hell to freedom

Arriving in Pakistan last week, it felt like "being freed from a cage" said oldest son, Mujib. We need your assistance to help them complete their long journey to safety and freedom.

In Sept 2021, Claire Berlinski, writer, publisher of the Substack site The Cosmopolitan Globalist, for which I have written on occasion, published a letter from the father of a family of eight people, including five daughters and a son, whose plight was desperate. The future of the 5 daughters was unclear. Prospects of no education, forced marriage, and worse, were all in the cards.

To make matters worse, their very lives were at risk.. The father had worked for a French NGO, the mother as a lawyer defending women and children’s rights, a profession shared by their oldest daughter. She was on the verge of getting a masters degree in public policy. They are also ethnic Tajiks, which in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. Any one of these factors made them targets of the medieval moronic murderers now ruling Afghanistan.

They reached out to Claire for help. and she proceeded to try and do so, advertising their plight, reaching out to local agencies, and helping to raise money for their escape. Here was the first letter she published, from the father, Sayedx, with, at the time the family names expunged for their own safety:

“I wish good health to those who are reading this letter now and I hope they are healthy and have a happy life with their family.

I am ██████████ and I’m writing this letter from Kabul. I am the head of a family of eight: myself, my wife, my five daughters, and my son.

I worked hard for many years so that my children could have a good life. To study. Achieve their dreams. Be a useful person in the community and serve their people.

My children must study so that they can be useful to society in the future. I have always supported them in this.

I worked in the health department for many years. I also worked for seven years for the French NGO ███████ as a field trainer and helped them successfully to complete their projects.

My wife worked as a lawyer in Afghanistan, helping to support vulnerable women and children.

My 24-year-old daughter ███████, a law and political science graduate, dreamed of earning a master’s degree in this field from a developed country and becoming a lawyer, like her mother, who defended women’s and children’s rights.

My son ███████ is 22 years old and a computer science student. He is a competent and alert boy and also a hardworking boy. He wished to continue his studies in the field of computer technology and achieve his dreams.

███████, my 16-year-old daughter, is a schoolgirl who wished to study journalism in the future to make her voice heard around the world.

My daughters are teenage prisoners. ███████, 11, and ███████, 5, are my little girls.

With the arrival of the Taliban and the takeover of Afghanistan by this terrorist group, all the goals and aspirations of my family have been destroyed. The Taliban are looking for people who have worked with international organizations. They do not respect the rights of women and children. They are looking for women activists in civil society, like my wife and daughter.

After the fall of Afghanistan, I repeatedly emailed the French government and the French embassy in Kabul, asking them to save our lives and bring my family to France, but I did not receive a reply.

I am currently in Kabul with my family, and our lives are in danger. We are in a bad situation and I ask those who can help us to save my family. My children need to move to a safe place to be able to study and achieve their goals in life.

Please help us in these difficult days. We desperately need your assistance to be able to move out of Afghanistan.”

About a year ago, Claire reached out to me to see if I could help the family, perhaps with raising funds on their behalf, or by helping them achieve refugee status. I am not sure why Claire had this misplaced faith in my ability to raise funds, or in my possible high level connections. She knew I was Canadian, and maybe figured incorrectly that because I was well known in certain circles I might have influence. :) I am not sure. She subsequently found out that I managed to help another Afghan student, years ago, escape to the US to study physics.

Helping that one student, as small a contribution to the effort to help the Afghan people as a whole, nevertheless was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. Saving a single human life, up close and personal, has a very different, andmore dramatic impact than a career of speaking out against oppression on a broader scale. In any case, after I saw this picture (now removed) of the family’s five daughters with their mother, I was hooked.

Since that time, Claire and I have met online with the eldest son, Mujib, and others, to try and plan a strategy both for escape from Afghanistan, and ultimately for resettlement in Canada, where I live. Canada has a refugee sponsorship program for just this purpose, if we could find 5 resident sponsors, and guarantee sufficient funds to support the family for their first year of residence. Acceptance in this program is not guaranteed but it was and is worth trying.

But the first step was to get the family out of Afghanistan. That was a long process, with pitfalls and challenges that Claire has described in her Substack posts. About 2 months ago, it suddenly appeared that it might be possible to get visas for the entire family to travel to Pakistan, and amazingly, as Claire outlined in her Monday posting, we got word last week from Mujib that the family had successfully crossed the border into Pakistan, as it turns out a day before that border had been closed because of fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the region!.. As Mujib put it in a Feb 18th email to both of us: “I think I have been released from a cage and I am flying.”

This is not the end of their saga, but it is a new beginning. It gives us a chance to complete paperwork, raise funds, and hopefully eventually see this lovely and talented family settled in a country where each of them can try and achieve their full potential, with support for their health and welfare.

Here is a letter written by Mujib the next day, Feb 19th, to the world:

“Hello to everyone’s who read this letter, I hope all of you are fine and safe. I am Mujib a member of Salihi Family, I am sure all of people who read this letter know about my family.

I have a great news, I and my family are safely out of Afghanistan and now we are safe and very happy. My sisters and parent are also so happy, now we are out of Afghanistan and I feel freedom. Since Taliban take over Afghanistan we lived like prisons in Afghanistan, we passed really hard days, my sisters and my mother were at high risk in Afghanistan. Taliban was a direct danger for us, during 18 months under the control of Taliban regime we pass the hardest time of our live, Taliban make Afghanistan like a hell for all people especially for girls and women. Taliban don’t have any respect to women and girls, under the control of Taliban no one have freedom and safety, every Afghan person want escape from Afghanistan and all of them have same reason (Taliban).

Since Taliban take over Afghanistan the rate of crime, early marriage and forced marriage against women and girl dramatically increased. I have 5 sisters and they were at high risk of these crimes, now we are out of Afghanistan and we all so happy and feel freedom. I was like a bird in the cage when I was in Afghanistan but now I feel I am flying like a bird and feel freedom and safety.

I am very thankful to all people who support my family during these months, although we are out of Afghanistan but we are not in our final destination, but the good news is: now we can go to our final destination from here. Now we really need to your helps and your more supports.

I am very thankful to Claire, Mr. Lawrence and all people who want help my family.”

We are now raising money using a variety of mechanisms to help fund the arduous effort of applying for and achieving success in the Canadian Sponsorship program, including the funds necessary to support the family as they settle in Canada, should our efforts be successful. One way involves a gofundme campaign first started by Claire, and now updated to support the new effort. The link is below. I urge all of you to consider providing some support. Look into the eyes of the youngest daughter, 11 year old Belqis, who got among the highest grades in math and science in her class this year (she was young enough to still be allowed to receive education in Afghanistan) and think about the gift you can give her to go to school in a safe environment, and reach for the stars…

Thanks for your help. We will be publishing more updates as the situation evolves…

➥ THE FUNDRAISER