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Mursal was a star in her homeland. In Australia, she's a refugee
They were leaders, scholars, athletes, actors, TV anchors, and so much more in Afghanistan. Now, one year on from the Taliban's takeover, we meet some of those starting from scratch in Australia.
Published 13 August 2022 7:01am
By Rashida Yosufzai
Source: SBS News
Image: After fleeing Afghanistan, Mursal is again playing football. (Supplied)
As the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last August, Australia evacuated thousands of people fearful of the resurgent militant group.
Scores fled with little but the clothes on their back, and among them were those with prominent or public backgrounds in the media, sport, politics and the arts.
One year on, some have found new jobs and carved new hopes and friendships, while others still yearn to help those they left behind.
The footballer
Mursal accepts a football trophy in Afghanistan and (right) as a member of the Afghan Women's National Team in Melbourne. Source: Supplied
She was good at it. So good, in fact, she would soon make the Afghanistan national under-17 women's team.
But on her way to training, people would look at her with disdain. The Kabul taxi driver she’d proudly tell of her dreams of playing for the Afghanistan Football Federation would say she was “a bad person”, she recalls.
But she continued to play and represent her country.
“Soccer — that was my love of life.”
Mursal is pursuing her football dream.
She knew staying behind under a new dawn for the Taliban would spell the end of her dreams of playing football professionally.
One year after boarding an evacuation flight out, the 19-year-old’s life looks completely different.
But while she's having to start from the ground up in a new country, she’s getting to experience life as a regular teenager, playing for A-league team. Melbourne Victory under its humanitarian program, and hoping to continue studying.
“I know there are much more talented girls and women all around the world that don't have this opportunity,” she says.
“I'm so grateful I've got that I have this opportunity to do something for myself. I hope that one day I will be able to do something for those others that need help.”
The journalist
Khalid Amiri conducting an interview in Afghanistan (left) and at his computer in Australia.
One day, he got a call from a Taliban militant, who had issues with how Khalid referred to their soldiers who’d died in the field. They wanted to be referred to as ‘martyrs’, not the dead.
“And they were like, ‘you can't give a positive image [of] the Afghan army, of the security forces and the Afghan police as well. So yeah, our job was very tough,” he says.
“I was a strong critic of them, and this put me in trouble.”
Khalid made it out of Afghanistan with the help of then-coalition minister Linda Reynolds, who he connected with on social media, and who helped him board an evacuation flight to Australia.
But in the first weeks and months after settling in his new home in Melbourne, his mental health suffered as he tried to adjust to a very different life.
Khalid Amiri (centre) wants to be a voice for people left behind in Afghanistan.
“It's a pain, it's a trauma that will live on in our hearts forever. Because we never thought of becoming refugees. Becoming a refugee is never, never a choice. You become one when you're left with no other choices.”
It's a pain, it's a trauma that will live on in our hearts forever. Because we never thought of becoming refugees. Becoming a refugee is never, never a choiceKhalid Amiri
His depression and anxiety lifted when he applied for - and won - a scholarship at the University of Melbourne, where he is now studying international relations. He wants to use it for good.
“I feel very fortunate enough that I've been evacuated to Australia because here I have freedom," he says.
“I can be vocal for the people who are left behind in Afghanistan, particularly my friends and my colleagues from the media.”
The women's rights champion
Naqib Forotan in Afghanistan (left) and in Australia.
The NATO project was aimed at combating domestic violence, but it also hoped to build the capacity of women in the Afghan armed forces and to support the next generation of Afghan women leaders. Naqib says it was hoped one day the program would help lead a woman to the Afghan presidency.
He is devastated to have seen all of his hard work collapse under the Taliban.
“All the achievements that we had, all the hard work that we had done to Afghanistan's women and society and community, everything collapsed,” he says.
“We were imagining women in leadership positions … but now we are seeing them be deprived of their basic human rights.”
Naqib and his young family fled Afghanistan in the weeks before the Taliban took over.
He thought he would still be able to go back to his country one day - until, he says, the capital was overtaken by the Taliban without even a fight.
Now living in Canberra, he and his wife, as well as his siblings, are all working in various fields, including legal aid to accounting, to the public service. Naqib is also studying under a scholarship with the Australian National University.
Naqib Forotan (right) worked alongside Australian soldiers in Kabul.
He’s most grateful for the education his young daughter now is guaranteed, a prospect she would not have in Afghanistan. The preschooler has already learned a few words in English.
“Everyday my daughter goes to preschool and comes back, she learns something new,” he says.
“I can see how good she is settling.”
In the days following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, Australia evacuated about 4,100 people from the country on 32 flights, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says.
DFAT has made available 31,500 visas through the Humanitarian and Family Visa programs and as of 5 August had received 47,912 applications, comprising an estimated 211,122 applicants.
There have been 6,000 permanent humanitarian visas have been granted to date.
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