Real story
An Afghan female pilot recalls the last days of her stay in Afghanistan, and worries about her surviving family.Rakhsar, whose real name is not, is an Afghan Air Force pilot. He made his last flight to Kunduz last year. When he flew to the northern province, he did not know it would be his last flight as a pilot in Afghanistan.As Taliban fighters advanced rapidly in August last year, Rakhsar told Afghan-Tennessee how it became more dangerous to fly to provinces that remained under government control.He thought the situation would be temporary, although its severity became apparent when he was ordered to refuse to go home or to the airport because of a threat of attack. Rokhsar changed his route every time he went home, sometimes even changing his home address: “I did not enjoy walking freely, going shopping or meeting friends, because it was dangerous for me,” he explained. .Rakhsar was preparing to fly to Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, on August 14, but realized that he was no longer safe.A day later, Rokhsar learned of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul. The staff never returned to evacuate the rest.
“I stayed at the airport with some of my colleagues, we spent the night waiting to be evacuated, but our planes never came back,” he recalls. “We saw American planes land in Kabul. They started evacuating their staff. “If we could not leave tonight, it would be our last night of survival.”Rakhsar recalls that large crowds marched to the airport, chaos ensued, Americans and the Taliban opened fire, panic spread and he feared for his life, he added, adding that hell was in front of my eyes.Fighting among the crowds, they were just as frustrated that some of them even tried to cling to the plane. Contact with some of his foreign colleagues finally left Afghanistan on August 7.But this trip was different, this time he was not a pilot but an evacuator, he had to leave his family in Kabul, he is worried for their safety under the Taliban regime, he is especially worried for his sister, a famous Afghan athlete, because now Women’s rights are under serious threat.Rokhsar is still waiting this time, not for the plane, but for home. He is currently in a refugee shelter in Doha, Qatar, awaiting resettlement, but his focus is not on his own future but on the fate of his sister and family. Is.”Let’s think that all the athletes, the civil society and the women who worked in the army left the country, about their rights,” he says. What is the future for them in terms of the education they received? Who is responsible for all this?
