From house arrest in Kabul, respected democratic leader Fawzia Koofi personally asks Jacinda Ardern to take in some of her family and supporters
Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi was run off the road and shot last year in a Taliban assassination attempt – the second gunpoint attempt on her life. Her daughter was with her, and held her head down and managed to get her to hospital.
But the pain of her injuries was nothing to the pain of seeing her country over-run again by the Taliban, Koofi tells Newsroom NZ. "The scars on my body from the attack will fade, but the scars on my heart from the pain of my people, that will remain with me."
Despite the heavily armed Taliban fighters at her front gate in Kabul, the former Vice-President of the Afghanistan National Assembly is speaking out for the people of her nation. She has supplied a list of 16 members of her family and her civil rights organisation, and is asking the New Zealand Government and its Defence Force personnel in Kabul to help them to safety.
READ MORE:
* Interpreter's mother: 'We are in the cross-hairs'
* 'The window is rapidly closing' – NZ Defence Force
* Helen Clark: 'Fawzia is a very, very brave woman'
* Women leaders can build a different Afghanistan
A Royal NZ Air Force Hercules braved sporadic Taliban fire to swoop into Kabul's international airport to mount a third airlift this week. It picked up New Zealand and Australian nationals and visa holders, and managed to get out again before suicide bomb attacks that claimed at least 60 lives, including 12 US marines.
There are still visa holders, interpreters and their families begging to be rescued, as well as Koofi's vulnerable civil society activists – but the Prime Minister has ruled out any prospect of a fourth airlift. Newsroom is not naming the 16 on Koofi's list, for their own safety. But among them are three of her family members who have been active in her Movement of Change.
"Threats to our family members and lives are increasing every moment," writes one of those three women. "The fall of Kabul and advance of the Taliban make it possible to be a target for the Taliban at any time, therefore leaving us with no option but to leave the country and seek asylum."
Koofi is appealing to the UK and US Governments, with interviews in The Guardian and on Voice of America, but also to New Zealand because of her humanitarian organisation connections with this country. She has previously met with Helen Clark; she says Clark and Jacinda Ardern are role models to the young women she works with.
She herself is determined to stay and speak out, despite the looming August 31 deadline for the last US and international troops to leave. "I don't need asylum. If I am forced to leave, I will stay somewhere very close so I can come and go and support my people."
She has got her daughters Shuhra and Shaharazad on a US Air Force flight out to Doha, where Koofi had been a member of the Afghan Government negotiation team trying to broker a truce with the Taliban.
Koofi's sister Maryam and 35-year-old niece Nilofar Jalali Koofi, who is pregnant, had tried to get to international military base at Hamid Karzai International Airport to fly out this week – but their car was stopped on the perimeter by the Taliban.
Two Taliban fighters dragged their driver from the car then commandeered it, and drove the women to a remote part of Kabul.
Maryam and Nilofar were also MPs until the Taliban took over. In the back of the car, they quietly phoned Fawzia. She listened in distress as the two begged to be released. But the Taliban fighters just mocked them. "You MPs, you're all just trying to flee the country now," they were told.
Eventually after two hours, they were dropped back near the airport and, incredibly, Fawzia believes they may now have gained access to the airport and been accepted to board an evacuation flight to the UK.
"I will continue. I will continue to resist, I will continue to struggle, I will continue to raise my voice. I will continue to protect the rights and the voice of people. How long will I be alive? I don't know."
– Fawzia Koofi, Movement of Change
The danger is very real. Another prominent female leader, Charkint District Governor Salima Mazari, was kidnapped by the Taliban last week. Koofi believes she has now got to safety, but there is no confirmation yet. "The Taliban are executing many high-level army and police officers," Koofi says. "And they have everything in their hands now, all the offices, all the cars, all the weapons, all the money.
"They have all these young boys who they taught to be fighters, but for them to govern, this is going to be a challenge.
"Millions of people have lost their jobs, there is a lack of food. There is no rule of law and people are fearful. The Taliban has announced girls can only go to school up to grade 6, and working women cannot go to their offices until further notice. It is the same as what they did when they first took power, unfortunately."
"But I will continue. I will continue to resist, I will continue to struggle, I will continue to raise my voice. I will continue to protect the rights and the voice of people. How long will I be alive? I don't know. Like everybody else, nobody in Afghanistan is safe."
'We need the world to support us'
She wrote this weekend to the Prime Minister, asking for New Zealand's help: for women leaders like Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark to speak out strongly in international forums, and for Defence personnel to help extract not just New Zealanders, but also the interpreters who helped them, and some of the senior members of her democratic Movement of Change who otherwise face Taliban retaliation.
"Many people in Afghanistan are my supporters and they are all at risk," she tells Newsroom. "So we must support the entire country of Afghanistan. But my immediate supporters and staffers are more at risk.
"These are women who have been with me at the press conferences and the big meetings and the public gatherings, they are pictured with me. Now they are texting me and sending me voice messages, asking me to help them. The names I am sending you are civil society activists, very active in their local communities in difference provinces.
"When the Taliban entered Kabul, one of the fighters called my head of security and said, are you the one with Ms Koofi? I will send you to life imprisonment. We didn't take him seriously, but when the international forces leave and the airport closes, it becomes even more difficult."
Most of all, she said, Ardern must take responsibility for extricating those interpreters and their families who worked with the NZ Defence Force and NZ Police.
"We need the world to support us. I know the interpreters, and the people at the airport trying to leave, they are the brains of Afghanistan. They are the talent, who the country has invested in. But if the opportunity for living and for life is so little in this country, they need to be given a chance – especially those interpreters and their families who worked with military.
"If New Zealand could help get them to a safer place or to New Zealand, I think that's one of the best decisions the Prime Minister could make."
'The window is fast closing' – NZ Defence
An Air Force Hercules has completed a second flight into Kabul, returning evacuees to an airbase in the United Arab Emirates.
Commander Joint Forces New Zealand Rear Admiral Jim Gilmour said the aircrew and the Defence Force personnel on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport had successfully evacuated another group of New Zealand and Australian nationals and other visa holders out of Afghanistan overnight.
“We’re working as fast as possible but the reality is that there is a condensed timeframe to work to. The situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile and dangerous."
– Rear Admiral Jim Gilmour, Royal NZ Air Force
Rear Admiral Gilmour said NZ Defence Force would need to depart the Kabul airport before the United States withdrew its security forces. “We’re working as fast as possible but the reality is that there is a condensed timeframe to work to," he said. "The situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile and dangerous. The security situation on the ground continues to be closely monitored.
“Extraordinary efforts have been made by government agencies and partner nations to get people out.
"Our NZ Defence Force personnel on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport have been able to contact evacuees, advise them which gate at the airport to go to, check they meet the eligibility criteria, negotiate with security forces, and guide evacuees through the airport and then on to a military aircraft, whether that’s been our aircraft or the aircraft of one of our partner nations.”
But according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, the situation in Afghanistan right now is "highly uncertain, fragile, and changing rapidly". Due to the rapidly deteriorating situation, and a diminishing window for evacuations, a spokesperson said New Zealand had stopped accepting resettlement applications from Afghan nationals.
Those remaining New Zealand citizens and visa holders should not travel to the International Airport because of the ongoing and very high threat of terrorist attack, she said, but instead move to a safe location and await further advice.
"The window to evacuate people out of Afghanistan is rapidly closing," she said, "and we cannot assist all those we are seeking to evacuate."
Helen Clark: 'Fawzia is a very, very brave woman'
The prospects of New Zealand extracting more people from Kabul are dimming, says former Prime Minister Helen Clark. As President Biden's August 31 deadline approached, she said, there was real concern about direct attacks on foreigners at the airport.
"We should never have been in this situation. I'm very concerned about the peremptory withdrawal, with notice given at the start of the fighting season, which basically gave the Taliban a timeline to grab as much territory as they could.
"It's very daunting now, and looking at some of the accounts of people with New Zealand visas and what they've gone through at the airport, beaten up, broken feet, broken fingers, broken ribs, it's horrible."
As United Nations Development Programme Administrator until 2017, Clark visited Kabul where she met Fawzia Koofi and other female leaders. "I think Fawzia is a very, very brave woman."
"The Taliban will know her well because she was in the room, negotiating. The Taliban speak with many voices. One voice is the people who go round assassinating and killing and roughing people up at the airport.
"And then you have the ones who sat in 5-star luxury in Doha, run the social media accounts, and assure everyone they want an inclusive government. To which the answer is, pigs might fly.
"But the test of that will be how they deal with people like Fawzia."
Koofi asked Clark and Ardern to speak up strongly in international forums, to fight for democracy and children's right to education in Afghanistan – and Clark vowed to do so.
"It condemns women to a world where their lives are mediated by men who have access to knowledge. It's a huge degradation of women's rights."
– Helen Clark
"I will continue to speak up for the people of Afghanistan," Clark said. "I've been engaged with the affairs of Afghanistan for the past 20 years, since we accepted the Tampa refugees. That was quickly followed by the 9/11 attacks, and then the focus on the Taliban as the host of Al Qaeda, and the rest is history.
"Having been there as Prime Minister, having been there as UNDP Administrator, have been there in the last two-and-a-half years to look at work World Vision was doing for women and children, I'm committed to giving voice to those who can't speak for themselves, and don't have international platforms. I'm very distressed by what has happened.
"The past 20 years has not been spectacular progress, but it has been steady steps towards more healthcare, more education, working to establish institutions of governance, and suddenly it's washed away. It's very very disturbing."
Clark said the Taliban's announcement that girls would not be allowed to attend school beyond grade 6 was "devastating".
"It's barely literacy. So a girl's hopes of being a doctor or a nurse, a teacher or an airline pilot or just about anything, are dashed. All the literacy she's going to have is enough to read the price of something in the market. Not even a full understanding of the Koran. It condemns women to a world where their lives are mediated by men who have access to knowledge. It's a huge degradation of women's rights."
She said Jacinda Ardern faced a difficult challenge to get any more interpreters and their families out, or civil society activists like Koofi's family and supporters.
"The Government's instructions will be to NZ Defence Force on the ground, to do whatever you can. The problem is that the window had pretty much closed," she said.
"Fawzia Koofi's voice needs to continue to be heard. And the question is whether she can continue to exercise that voice from where she is, because they tend not to brook any dissent."
Women leaders can build a different country
When the convoys of Taliban fighters drove back into Kabul, it happened very fast. People were all fleeing, Koofi said. Some to the airport, some to the provinces. The streets were emptied of traffic.
Two groups of Taliban arrived at Koofi's home, heavily armed, in big government cars they had commandeered. They argued: some wanted to enter and search the house; others wanted to just guard the entrance. Eventually they left fighters by the gate, but did not force their way in.
That was August 15. For nearly two weeks now, Koofi has not been able to safely leave her home. But instead, her family and supporters have come to her; the house is full.
And at the gates when she looks out each morning, the armed Taliban fighters.
"A lot of these fighters are not ideologically Taliban," she says. "They had no opportunities, so they joined the fighting forces. And through a machine gun, they found an identity for themselves. So now violence and guns is part of their identity.
"So if we give them a different opportunity where they can be educated, where they have a legal income, I'm sure they will make a new identity."
Koofi is calling on Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark to use their international platforms to support all people in Afghanistan, but particularly a resumption of the meaningful participation of women in education, the workforce and democratic institutions.
She hopes to visit New Zealand, when it becomes possible, to meet with Ardern and talk about her importance as a role model to young women.
"When I see what is happening to my country, what is happening to women when they can't go to school, this is killing me inside," she says.
"New Zealand has been run by women. They have been enormously successful role models.
"In Afghanistan, women have been oppressed by violence and guns. If they are given the chance to exercise their social, political and economic rights, I think this will be a very different country."
