How 563 Afghans were brought to NZ
More than 500 Afghan evacuees have new hope for the future in New Zealand after months of uncertainty and hiding in their home country.
Manawatū woman Ellen Nelson, a former Defence Force engineering officer, spent 10 months working to get more than 40 of her former colleagues and their families – 563 people – out of Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August last year. The people were in danger from the Taliban because they had worked with the Defence Force. Nelson advocated to get them to New Zealand, working with Chris Parsons, deputy chief of the army, and Lieutenant-Colonel Martin Dransfield.
All 563 people gathered in Auckland last weekend and when Nelson walked into the event she was overwhelmed with emotion.
‘‘Most of the people in the room were children,’’ she said. ‘‘They were going to go to school and grow up in New Zealand as Kiwi kids. When I saw them, especially the little girls, I had this real sense of hope for what their future has in store for them. It is radically different to what was ahead of them in Afghanistan, where they would not have been allowed to be educated.
‘‘Some of them were facing the prospect of being forced to marry
Taliban soldiers. That was going to be their life. Now they are going to go to school, they are going to be educated if they want to, they will have a career if they want to, marry and have children if they want to.’’
Nelson spent 30-40 hours a week on the project. She filed visa applications for the evacuees, ‘‘compiling documents from people who are on the other side of the world, don’t speak English,
have no access to the internet, were in hiding’’. ‘‘It has been the most challenging, emotionally draining and difficult task I have ever been involved with.’’ All of them had visas by September but there was no clear path to get them out of Afghanistan. But then Parsons and Dransfield got in touch. They worked with the Government to get the people out.
Nelson said it was tough because it was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a Taliban-controlled country and there were no New Zealanders on the ground. ‘‘The fact we have got every single one of the 563 out is a miracle.’’ The evacuees gradually, and legally, left Afghanistan for another country, unnamed for security reasons, before flying to New Zealand. Donations were raised to cover travel, accommodation and food costs.
The Government has helped 1700 people travel from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.