Afghan student at U of R praying for safety of five siblings, parents stuck in the country

Countless lives have been disrupted by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, including some here in Saskatchewan.

The terrorist group took over the country in a matter of just nine days, after starting a campaign timed to coincide with the pullout of American troops.

An evacuation campaign followed. However, the Canadian government stopped evacuations at the end of August, with an unspecified number of Canadian citizens and allies still in the country.

Zohra Zahir, a PhD student in biology at the University of Regina, is from Afghanistan. Her parents and five siblings are among those who weren’t able to escape the country.

Zahir has been living in Canada for three years. When she left Afghanistan, she felt she was leaving her family in a country that was moving in the right direction.

“You knew the country was going forward. It was hard. I’m not saying it was easy, but you knew that, still, there’s a way. We knew we had all these opportunities to grab and to grow,” she explained.

But when she saw the news of the Taliban’s aggressive advance, her heart dropped.

“The first day, the first week, it was shocking. I didn’t even know how to express my feelings. It was like an unbearable pain that I didn’t know what word I could use to (describe). I was even shocked myself that everything happened that fast,” she said.

Now, her father is in hiding and she’s constantly worried about her sisters.

“My sister was a university lecturer,” Zahir said. “She’s not going out, because they said that they have to figure out how to let women work. So she’s just at home doing nothing.

“My other sister, she’s a university student, and she’s not going to university as well … Everyone else at home, they are not going to school.

“That is a huge thing for us. What is going on in that country, they just wanted freedom, to go to school and to study. Even those very simple human rights … they don’t have that even.”

Her youngest sibling is just two years old. She said her adult sisters called her sobbing while the Taliban was shooting celebratory gunfire in the air following the pullout of American soldiers. The child was crying uncontrollably.

It’s a dire situation, and Zahir would love to be able to help bring her entire family to safety in Canada.

However, it’s not that easy.

“During those evacuations, I couldn’t help them to come. Still, they are there,” she said. “I’m searching for different ways to help them and so far, nothing. Still, I’m hopeful to find a way to bring them here, but I don’t know how, when and where. But still, I’m trying.”

While she’s certainly glad to be in Canada, Zahir is scared she may never be able to return to her home country.

“It’s been years that I (haven’t) seen (my family) …,” she said. “With all these things that happened, I don’t think that I can go back to my country and see my home, my father’s land and my grandfather’s land.

“I don’t know what will happen, and when we will be united in one country under one roof,” she added, holding back a sob.

She would have loved to see her country grow, progress and experience peace. But her dreams suffered a major setback when the Taliban took power.

“(Western governments) had to have a plan, and they didn’t have any plan. Even they were shocked that the Taliban conquered the country in nine days,” Zahir said. “So all those 20 years that we were trying to help the country, we were trying to progress, it was nothing. It came back to 1996 when the Taliban conquered Afghanistan.

“That’s crazy, that all those years were for nothing.”