It was the toughest decision these judges ever made.
To flee Afghanistan, the country they love and spent years working to rebuild. To leave behind family and friends for new, unknown lives on the other side of the world.
A sentence of exile, to save their lives.
Photo: AP
In the middle of August last year, amid the chaos of the US armed forces’ abrupt pullout from Afghanistan, female judges and prosecutors faced a perilous future.
Key actors in the country’s fragile justice system, they had jailed high-profile terrorists, drug barons and violent criminals.
Overnight, with the withdrawal of foreign forces and the fall of Kabul, they were left exposed and vulnerable to deadly reprisals.
“At 10am I was at work in Kabul. At 11am I got a phone call: ‘The Taliban are in control. They are looking for you, go home and hide,’” said Farah Altaf Atahee, who fled with her husband and three children.
The Guardian met Atahee and other female judges in December last year in Athens, where they had been evacuated from Afghanistan and were awaiting relocation to new homes.
Fifteen judges and their families — about 70 people in total — have been resettled in Australia.
As she recounted the events of the day the Taliban seized power in Kabul, Atahee fought back tears. She said she realized that thousands of recently released prisoners, including Taliban leaders and heroin traffickers, the violent criminals she had sent to jail, wanted revenge on her and other judicial officers.
“Everything we worked for, everything we had, gone,” she said. “My home, my family, my work, my life, my savings, all gone, in less than an hour.”
Thirty-one-year-old Mahtab Fazl told a similar story.
She escaped the western city of Herat with her husband and two young boys, but still fears for the family they were forced to leave behind.
“Because of my job as a judge, every day they are facing risks, they’re in danger,” she said. “We need to get them out of Afghanistan.”
WAITING FOR CANBERRA
Australia has committed to taking in some of these women and their families as part of its humanitarian pledges to support Afghan allies and vulnerable people.
However, the seemingly generous offer for help is increasingly looking inadequate.
An Australian Department of Home Affairs spokesman said that female judges would be processed as part of an “agreement of 3,000 places allocated to Afghan nationals within its 13,750-humanitarian visa quota” for last year and this year.
An Australian Senate report on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and its response to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, earlier this month said that Australia’s actions were “dishonorable.”
The inquiry found that former Afghan interpreters for the Australian military, and other colleagues left behind, were at a high risk of brutal reprisals.
Australian Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Alex Hawke has announced that Canberra would over four years issue 15,000 humanitarian and family visas for Afghans.
Again, though, that figure, which at first glance looked generous, appeared to be repackaging old commitments to humanitarian visas that predated the Taliban seizing power in Kabul.
Some critics go further, saying that the number of visas Canberra is offering vulnerable Afghans is lower than previously allocated.
Sarah Dale, director of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Sydney, said Australia could offer 20,000 additional humanitarian visas that were “easily manageable,” as COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions have freed up resources in the system.
“After 20 years of military engagement, of commitments to the people of Afghanistan, why are we not offering more to those left behind?” she said. “We’ve turned our back on our moral obligations to do more.”
Dale said the government’s announcement of 5,000 places in the family stream over four years was less than what was granted previously.
“The 10,000 humanitarian visas, over four years, must not include those already evacuated, as it would leave fewer additional places,” she said.
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