Por the Afghans welcomed in France after their departure from Kabul, for some in disaster, the adaptation is sometimes complex and the memories difficult. A mother of three, Hanifa found herself separated from her youngest during her chaotic evacuation from Kabul in mid-August. For six months in France, despite a welcome she describes as excellent, the Afghan has lived like a broken doll, her tears inevitably flowing as soon as she mentions Mustafa. “My heart is still crying”, sums up the thirty-year-old, her eyes moist, from the vast, still insufficiently furnished apartment where she and her two remaining toddlers are housed. And to rehash the heartbreak, her 7-year-old who claims her, the heartbreaking conversations on WhatsApp.
Hanifa is one of several hundred Afghans evacuated from the French embassy on August 17, two days after the country fell into the hands of the Taliban. Beaten by extremists in front of the French diplomatic representation, she was able to climb in extremis with her youngest Osman and her eldest Bahar, 3 and 8 years old today, in one of the buses leaving for Kabul airport. But Mustafa, who came separately with an aunt, was not so lucky. The boy finally left Afghanistan a few days later by road, with his father, a senior official of the old regime. Both currently live in Uzbekistan.
“I thank France very much. She gave me an apartment, social security. When I was sick, I didn’t have to pay for medicine,” Hanifa lists. And to take out of his golden wallet his recently obtained 10-year residence permit, or even his credit card bailed out by the French state. “But my problem is Mustafa”, collapses the mother, who has started a family reunification procedure to finally find her son and her husband. Without certainty as to the deadline or the positive outcome of his request.
123,000 civilians evacuated
AFP met half a dozen Afghan refugees among the 2,600 evacuated by France between August 16 and 30, before the departure of the last American soldiers. In total, some 123,000 civilians were exfiltrated during the gigantic airlift organized by the United States. Washington claims to have received some 70,000 Afghans, London more than 15,000, and Rome nearly 5,000. Berlin had identified 10,000 Afghans at risk but had only been able to get 4,000 out in the last two weeks. of August. Some 400 others joined France in the following months via Qatar, while rumors in the Afghan capital report new evacuation flights. Questioned by AFP, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday “fully mobilized” to organize “new operations as soon as possible”.
Among those already in France, all praise the welcome received in their new homeland. But they also recount, six months after their arrival, a half-hearted life, the terror they feel for their loved ones, now under the yoke of fundamentalists, while Afghanistan, in bankruptcy, risks plunging into famine. Hanifa, filmed by AFP, refuses to allow her face to appear on the screen for fear of reprisals for her family back home. She wants to keep her place of residence in eastern France quiet, for fear that the Taliban will find her there, even if that seems unlikely.
Usman, too, requires an alias. This former senior Afghan official, who now lives in a dingy building in the suburbs of Strasbourg with his wife and three children, including a newborn baby barely a month old, alternates optimism and dejection. At 28, he is full of praise for the French system and “the extraordinary services” enjoyed by Afghan evacuees. Her eldest daughter, like the children of Hanifa, is already in school. The teacher “sets up special classes” so that she and other first-timers learn French faster, he marvels. His wife gave birth in January “like a French woman” in hospital when her asylum request had not yet been accepted and she did not have social security, Usman continues. And to recall the kindness of a neighbor, in his seventies, who renders him innumerable services, when he is not teaching him pétanque.
“VIP” refugees
The Afghan evacuees are treated as “VIP” refugees by the authorities, observes a social worker interviewed by AFP. The examination of the files is accelerated for these families often coming from the Afghan upper classes, who sometimes struggle to adapt to their new penniless daily life, estimates another social worker. Usman, however, does not regret his new condition. “We traveled in armored cars in Afghanistan, with armed guards, because we were never safe. Here we live in an ordinary building and receive social benefits, but we are at peace. It’s much better that way,” he remarks.
But this tranquility is shattered by the rhythm of Afghan news. Usman’s father was kidnapped by the Taliban for three days this fall before being freed, under pressure from tribal leaders called for help, AFP reported. Usman had lost sleep over it. He is on antidepressants. “We belong to Afghanistan. We can’t forget it, ”sighs Usman, who, despite six years of study in his country and in neighboring Pakistan and a past as a former ministerial adviser, aspires to become a social worker in reception centers for asylum seekers. asylum in order to “give back what was given to him”.
“Living underground” to escape the Taliban
Mostafa, 31 years old and studying in India, also wants to be active, whatever the job, to “occupy his mind”, as soon as he obtains his residence permit. He came to France with his mother Yasamin Yarmal, a recognized actress, and two of his sisters. But he left his wife, son and daughter in the chaos of Kabul airport, where thousands of desperate people were trying to get home like them: “The children passed out because we were so tight. My father accompanied them to the hospital with my wife. It was then that we entered the aerodrome. They were never able to join us,” he says softly. A former soldier, he thinks he made the best choice for him because, if he had stayed, he would have had to “live underground” to escape the revenge of the Taliban.
According to a UN report consulted by AFP, the fundamentalists have killed more than a hundred former members of the government sphere, Afghan security forces, and Afghans who have worked with foreign troops since their capture to be able to. A figure largely underestimated according to several Afghans based abroad, who identify their abuses online. At the end of November, the NGO Human Rights Watch already attributed to extremists one hundred murders or enforced disappearances in only four provinces of the country.
But living like this, without his family, makes Mostafa “too sad”. In the suburbs of Paris, where he lives, or in Paris, where he takes French lessons three times a week, “I see people, new places. But in me, nothing makes sense, everything becomes useless,” he sighs. His mother Yasamin, smiling and very sunny in front, admits to wondering about her place in France when her husband of 40 years lives hidden in Afghanistan with the wife and children of her son. “I feel like I’m no longer alive,” she says. That my roots have dried up, that I am nothing: a body without a soul. »
