Month after Taliban takeover, Ukrainians stranded in Afghanistan

As night falls, dogs bark in the background. But he is in no hurry to go to bed. He guards his house and family, embracing a gun, until morning. “Strangers wanted to get into my house. It is difficult to say who exactly it was. Even now, they shoot – I have no idea who is shooting whom,” he told Al Jazeera by phone.Last month, Afghan evacuee flights were halted as the country was thrown into chaos during the final stages of the Taliban’s takeover after US troops left.

Flights have since resumed and, as a Ukrainian passport holder, 33-year-old Abdul can leave the country. He, however, is stranded. In total, at least 70 Ukrainian citizens are in Afghanistan waiting to leave. Including their family members, this number rises to approximately 200. All have appealed directly to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy several times for help. Many have run out of money and their Ukrainian bank cards do not issue cash through Afghan ATMs. Most of the families hail from different provinces across the country but are temporarily renting homes in Kabul as they have been advised to wait for a flight out of the capital’s main airport. Abdul is one of about 10,000 Ukrainians with ancestry in Afghanistan. There have been two waves of Afghanistan-Ukraine migration – when the Soviet-backed leadership fell, and when the Taliban took power in the late 1990s. Abdul left Afghanistan 17 years ago because of violence in his home town, joining his father in Ukraine. His father later returned to Afghanistan, but disappeared.

Source: aljazeera.com