The phone is ringing. It is a call via Whatsapp of Kabir Haidary, Afghan citizen and former employee a Camp Arena, the Italian base to Herat, headquarters of our contingent during the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Di Kabir, for ten years at work both in the technical department and in the canteen until the flag lowering ceremony on 8 June 2021 in the presence of the Minister of Defense, Lorenzo Guerini, Ilfattoquotidiano.it he had told the story early last October. The country of the ‘Great Game’ was in the midst of the chaos triggered by the return to power of the gods Taliban coincided with the flight of the West. The contacts with him during the last three months have been constant, but when, with his excellent Italian, he inaugurates the call, he gives the good news: “We are awaiting the flight to Italy, now we wait for the connection from the airport of Istanbul towards Milano. The Italian Ministry of Defense took us out of that hell, but without you we wouldn’t have made it. Thank’s my friend”.
The work of the Italian political and diplomatic authorities obviously did not stop at the blitz in the second half of August and the rescue of the hundreds of Afghan citizens who in the last twenty years have collaborated at various levels with our country during missions. Enduring Freedom e Resolute Support. As many have gone into hiding in recent months, protecting themselves and their families from settling of accounts of the Koranic students towards those who helped the “Invading enemy”. Kabir Haidary did more: he sold the house and everything he owned raising the necessary money to go into hiding, taking with him his pregnant wife, two small daughters, parents and a brother. It has been a dramatic month. Until that phone call last Wednesday to which a second Thursday was added, even more exciting: “Everything went well. First the ok for the flight from Turkey to Milan, then the reception at the airport and now the military personnel have transferred me and my whole family to one of their facilities in Sanremo. Here we will spend the next ten days to respect the anti-Covid quarantine, then we should be sent to the final destination which has not yet been communicated to us. Wherever it will be for us is fine, I can’t wait to be able to settle in and start a new life, find a job and imagine a different future for my family, in peace, away from that hell. We will never be grateful enough to Italy ”.
When the article was published in early October, Kabir was still in Pakistan, a Peshawar, along with his wife, daughters and brother, while his parents were still in Acceptance, guests of some relatives. Haidary, through Ilfattoquotidiano.it, had addressed directly to the leaders of the Ministry of Defense by launching an appeal and asking to be rescued. His passage to Pakistan in September had made him temporarily safe, but his Pakistani visa would expire by the end of the year and at that point he would have only two options: stay in Pakistan in hiding, with all the risks involved, or return to his country.
The real tragedy, however, was consummated in August, when he and his loved ones, as requested by Italian diplomatic officials, left Herat, drawing a clear demarcation line with the past. The goal was to board one of the planes made available by our contingent for evacuations. The following two weeks, from mid-August onwards, were staged worldwide showing everyone the sense of a epochal defeat of NATO. In the midst of the chaos at Kabul International Airport, there were also Kabir and his family who, unlike others, were unable to board those flights. Here is what Haidary told a Ilfattoquotidiano.it about the hectic days outside the airport of the Afghan capital: “On the phone they told me to leave for Kabul, to bring the family and to rest assured, they would put us on a plane to leave for Italy. After the attack near the airport calls have stopped e no one has replied. We were on the evacuation list, Italy cannot abandon us like this “.
Evidently, although with its times dictated by an absolutely unstable framework, Italy has not abandoned Kabir Haidary to a written destiny. After the attempt to be evacuated in the first wave failed, the former collaborator of the Italian contingent went to Pakistan. Had he done so a month later he would not have made it as the borders between the two countries were sealed and visas were no longer issued, forcing the Afghans to make astonishing clandestine escapes. Attempted to make contact with the Italian Embassy a Islamabad and awaited a decisive signal: “We were separated from my parents, they in Kabul and we in Peshawar (the Pakistani city closest to the Afghan border, ed) – adds Haidary – The only safe way to get them here was to buy a plane ticket for them with the money from the sale of the house. Flight prices had become very expensive, I spent more than 2 thousand dollars. In the end we found ourselves together, hoping that sooner or later the day would come when we would be able to leave for Italy. In recent days that signal has arrived. The Ministry of Defense first sent the rest of my family to Italy and my wife and I left on Wednesday. Now we are all in Italy, happy, very happy “.