‘Time is running out for escape’
AZIZ spent ten years with British Forces, many of them on the frontline. But he was never as frightened confronting the Taliban on the battlefield as he was when trapped with his young family at Kabul airport.
The former translator was caught in the mayhem with his wife and four children as they tried to reach a flight out of Kabul. Aziz feared his son and three daughters, aged between seven and one, would be killed.
Even after reaching the front of the queue and waiting for entry to the area controlled by the British, he claimed the numbers were overwhelming and he took the ‘heartbreaking’ decision to turn back.
Aziz, 40, said: ‘I feared for my children’s lives. We were exhausted; one passed out and my baby was screaming and vomiting because there was nothing to eat or drink. It was
dangerously hot and I thought the risk to my children of staying there was too great.’
Aziz said he was originally turned down for relocation. But that decision was reversed and he received an email telling him to go to the airport for his evacuation flight to Britain.
Unlike others, he did not experience any problems passing through Taliban checkpoints; his brother, a doctor, helped him get through.
Aziz, who told the Mail he planned to try again last night, said he has received five Taliban death threat letters and has twice survived attacks.
He said: ‘The number of people at the airport is intimidating. Everyone fights to reach the front. But we will have to try again because we know that time is running out and the airport may close with no chance of escape.’