Hanif Mohammadi was surrounded by animals on his family’s farm in rural Afghanistan when the Taliban killed his parents and forced him to flee.
Now, the 17-year-old is an asylum seeker in Stockholm and doing what he does best: herding goats.
Wearing running shoes, jeans and a light brown sweater with his pitch-black hair tied back, Mohammadi checks his smartphone just like any ordinary teenager as he follows a flock of goats in the green meadows of Lidingo, an island in the inner archipelago of Stockholm.
“In Afghanistan, we had a lot of goats and sheep, so when I came to Lidingo ... I wanted to help out and learn a little Swedish,” he said.
He has been living in Sweden for a year and a half, anxiously waiting for his asylum request to be processed.
Mohammadi, who is from Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold, said the insurgents killed his father after he refused to join them.
His uncle helped him escape before he ended up in Sweden.
“In Afghanistan, my life was really tough because I lost my parents ... my family,” he said.
Holding back his tears, Mohammadi said: “I received a phone call last summer saying [the Taliban] had killed my uncle too.”
Surrounded by goats under a bright blue sky in Lidingo, Mohammadi is far away from the violence in his nation, in a home away from home.
Whenever he finds time off from school, Mohammadi joins his mammal friends.
He pulls down a tree branch to help the goats nibble on the leaves as one of the animals puts its front hooves on his waist to stand on its hind legs.
Mohammadi bursts into laughter.
Henrik Ponten is the chairman of a community called “Get2Gether,” humorously using “get,” which is “goat” in Swedish.
With help from volunteers and asylum seekers, the community focuses on the conservation of an endangered Swedish goat species, whose milk is used to produce cheese at a factory in Lidingo.
The boys “come out into society and create new contacts in Sweden,” Ponten said.
He said that herding helps asylum seekers better integrate.
“They’re very competent and good at herding because they’ve done it before,” he said. “More importantly, they get to contribute to keeping Sweden beautiful.”
Afghans constitute by far the highest number of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Sweden.
While the asylum process can take more than a year on average, a majority of Afghan minors have their applications approved, according to the Swedish Migration Agency’s figures for last year.
About 1,600 asylum applications by Afghan minors were submitted to the agency by the end of November last year. About 500 were rejected.
In a security assessment published earlier this month, the agency deemed some regions in Afghanistan, such as Panjshir, Bamiyan and Daikundi, “less dangerous,” despite “increasing violence” in the war-torn country.
The migration agency said that not everyone from Afghanistan will “automatically receive protection in Sweden,” despite “a gradual deterioration” in security.
Mohammad Ali Mohammadi, a 15-year-old asylum seeker, fled to Sweden from the Taliban stronghold province of Maidan Wardak.
“There is a lot of fighting there, that’s why I fled,” Mohammadi said. “You’ll get killed if you go there.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese