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Then, in 1988, as the Soviets prepared to depart and it became clear that Kabul could fall to the mujahedeen, the museum staff hid some of the most important objects in government facilities closer to the center of town. The Bactrian Hoard, a collection of 2,000-year-old jewelry and weapons, was stashed in the depths of the presidential palace. The museums staff kept its secret for the next decade, successfully safeguarding the finest treasures. But there wasnt enough space to move the remainder of the museums collection, including the Islamic wing.

One morning, Saifi and the others woke to a pillar of smoke rising in the distance. Fighting had broken out between two rival groups, and the museum was hit by rocket fire. An inferno raged on the top floor; in the galleries, metal and wood were reduced to heat, light and ash; stone cracked and shattered.

Not everything was destroyed in the blaze. Afterward, fighters in the area began stealing from the museum. They went for the low-hanging fruit, said Jolyon Leslie, who was working for the United Nations in Kabul. The museums coin collection, the remains of the Islamic gallery, and its remarkable Begram Ivories, delicate and portable, were all taken. At first, it was opportunistic: ragged, hungry men stumbling off with what they could carry. Leslie recalled driving past street sellers flogging items fresh from the museum, displayed among vegetables on a sheet of newspaper in the mud. My God, thats a Buddha, that isnt an onion, he realized. Hed stop and pay the equivalent of a few dollars, and take them for safekeeping.

But as time went on, the looting became more organized. Leslie was part of a group that tried to preserve what it could at the museum by welding iron bars onto the windows. The thieves came back with crowbars. One night, two massive schist reliefs in the entrance hall, which had seemed too heavy to remove, disappeared, presumably by truck. There were anecdotal reports that the mujahedeen were in cahoots with Pakistani dealers, Leslie said. Certainly, many of the museums looted artifacts turned up for sale across the border in Peshawar.

During the war, almost 100 Ghazni marbles, including the Hamburg panel, disappeared from the governments possession. The pieces that were missing were the big, complete pieces, Rugiadi told me. Though we cannot be certain, it seems probable that the Hamburg marble ended up on the black market in Pakistan, which was awash with Afghan antiquities. During the 90s, commanders and other wartime entrepreneurs invested in heavy machinery and labor to systematically excavate the richest sites. Thats when you have the looting of sites across the whole country, Simpson, the curator at the British Museum, said.

As tragic as the looting of the museum was, such illicit excavations were worse in an important sense, because they destroyed the archaeological record. At least we know something about the original site of the Ghazni marbles. But each illegal dig meant that information about the past was lost forever. Shorn of their connection to their sites of discovery, a rich stream of antiquities crossed Afghanistans borders, destined for world markets, many via the Persian Gulf, where the mujahedeen had well-established connections with wealthy patrons of the jihad.

According to the Italian database, the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait holds four of the Ghazni panels taken from the Afghan government collection; others have ended up at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization and the Islamic Art Museum Malaysia. The Sharjah Museum did not respond to a request for comment. Eric Delpont, director of the Paris museum, said that its panel was acquired from Hotel Drouot in 2003, and that the museum was unaware that it came from the Afghan government collection, believing it to be from a mausoleum in the Ghaznavid capital. Salam Kaoukji, the collection manager at al-Sabah, said that she was aware of their panels provenance but that she didnt know if there were plans for restitution, adding that it was up to the governments of Kuwait and Afghanistan to decide.

Continue reading here:
How One Looted Artifact Tells the Story of Modern Afghanistan - The New York Times

On the table are, sadly, two very badoptions: The withdrawal of all international troops by May 1, as agreed in the Doha accord, or the extension of the US-led intervention that began nearly 20 years ago.

I favor staying, and let me explain why.

International soldiers will not win this war, nor will they bring peace. But they are an indispensable bargaining chip in the difficult peace negotiations underway in the Qatari capital.

Thirsty for power and recognition, the Taliban are demanding the end of foreign occupation and the easing of all sanctions against them. These are the only two levers the West has at its disposal to put pressure on the radical Islamist extremists to agree to a cease-fire and advance negotiations.

Sandra Petersmann has been reporting on Afghanistan since 2001

To put it bluntly, troop withdrawal and sanctions are not a panacea that will work overnight. People will continue to die in Afghanistan in the coming months as a result of terror and war. According to the UN, between October and December of last year alone, at least 30 civilians on average were killed or injured each day.

This is the bitter truth of the "America First" policy. Former President Donald Trump took it to extremes with the Doha Accord. The narcissist desperately wanted to go down in history as the president who brought US troops home. He was all about ending America's longest war to win an election. But that plan backfired.

Trump was not the first to decide on Afghanistan's fate based solely on domestic political considerations. "America First" began with the revenge-driven invasion after the 9/11 terror attacks.How else can we explain the United States and its Western allies' unsavory alliances with war criminals and human rights abusers (for example the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum) for the sake of hunting down al-Qaeda and punishing the Taliban?

Germany's Bundeswehr has been on duty in Afghanistan for the past 20 years

The hasty invasion took no account of the Afghan civil war which began in 1978 and remains unresolved to this day. Nor did the intervention at least consider the wounds left by the Cold War and Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The military campaign was carried out without any regard for the dangerousrole played in Afghanistan by regional states such as Pakistan, India and Iran. They, too, are igniting the Afghan battlefield with maximum national egoism.

And that is why now after 20 years of war for the US coalition and after a total of four decades of continuous war for the Afghan people there are no better options on the table.

America's allies, including Germany, will follow the beat of Trump successor, Joe Biden's administration. If the US goes, all coalition troops go. There are currently about 10,000 left in the country. If the Americans stay, NATO allies will stay. Germany currently has around 1,100 troops stationed in Afghanistan, making it the second-largest troop contributor after the United States.

But theAfghanistan mission is just as unpopular in Germany as it is in the US. Germans also question why the Bundeswehr is still on the ground. Germany is now facing a federal election, but the political elite in Berlin do not want to spoil their campaigns with the issue of Afghanistan and they refuse to provide much-needed explanations to the public. Germany first!

It is time for truth: Those who invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago in anill-considered manner should not pull out equally recklessly and deal a death blow to the young and however imperfect Afghan democracy which was created by, and is totally dependent on, Western support. Dodging responsibility means admitting defeat.

Afghanistan needs maximum pressure on the Taliban as well as on the divided, often corrupt government and the many warlords. It needs maximum political and diplomatic involvement of all the major regional states and the other two global powers, Russia and China. This will be strenuous and dangerous.

But those who still refuse to put the necessary strength, willpower and patience into an "Afghanistan first" policy risk further displacing a terrorized Afghan population from their homeland an outcome that will also have consequences for the rest of theworld.

Read more from the original source:
Opinion: Why the United States needs to stay in Afghanistan - DW (English)

The New Guy seemed dazed as he toured the office with his predecessor. Tall and hunched, like a pro athlete five years into retirement, the New Guy looked too old to be a captain.

It was 2012. I was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Camp Phoenix, working with a small team assigned to build police stations throughout Kabul for the Afghan National Police. We worked with police commanders to determine what physical infrastructure they needed to get ready for the supposed 2014 withdrawal of U.S. forces. It was a unique vantage point on a war already 10 years old and largely feeding on itself, like a terrarium in Thunderdome.

Our old boss, Luke, was an engineer in the Air Force. He would go out every day for meetings with Afghan police commanders, return to the office, and review blueprints and contracts for 12 hours. He spent his free time working on his Ph.D. When Luke introduced the New Guy, an Air Force reservist, as the new boss, we explained our jobs, dozens of projects. The New Guy had no questions; he just muttered easy enough or thats just some project management stuff, with relaxed, breezy confidence.

Luke, ever the professional, left so that the New Guy could take charge without the former boss lingering. The office was a small room with plywood walls and three cheap wooden desks side by side. I sat on one side. The other lieutenant, Mike, sat opposite, with the New Guy now in the middle. As soon as we sat down, he explained that a doctor told him that to avoid jet lag he needed to rest one day for every hour he flew. He figured that his flight had been 14 hours, so he would see us in two weeks. And with that, he left the office.

Mike took the rifle to the New Guys boss and explained. The major said that he would keep it and see how long it took the New Guy to report itmissing.

This is not going to go well, Mike said.

For several days, Mike and I continued our work. We went on missions, designed projects, and wrote contracts. This new guy was actually going to try to sleep for 14 days. It was heroic, in a way, to be so self-contained. As if Melville had written Bartleby, the Napper instead.

We were just getting used to not having a boss when I bumped into the Operations Officer, Maj. Harrison. He was third in command and always harried. Some people begin to physically resemble their occupation. He was an armor officer and had the attributes of a tankphysically big, loud, and aggressive.

Staron, wheres the New Guy? he asked. The boss hasnt seen him around.

Well, sir, about that. I then explained the New Guys regimen for jet lag and that we hadnt seen him for a couple days.

Hes just been fucking sleeping? Harrison turned to one of his captains and sent them to retrieve the New Guy. Stand there until he actually leaves his fucking room.

And so the New Guy started coming to work.

Mike was in the final weeks of his deployment. He had no patience left, so it fell to me to try to bring the New Guy up to speed. I took him around Kabul to show him our projects and introduce him to the Afghan police commanders and contractors who were working with us. As we drove through the city, he pointed out the window at a group of Afghan women.

LT, whats the deal with the women in blue robes? Are they nuns?

No sir, they dont have nuns here. Theyre wearing the traditional burqa.

When we returned to the base after these trips, the New Guy would generally disappear to nap for several hours, leaving us alone to do the administrative work. One day, I went back to the office to start working and found Mike as angry as I had ever seen him.

Whats up, man?

He left his fucking rifle in the office, Mike said.

Afghan workers cleaned and did maintenance on the base. Mike had turned in his chair to find one of these workers holding the New Guys M4 rifle. For a split second, Mike had assumed that he was going to be the next victim of one of the insider attacks that had become all the rage lately across Afghanistan. Instead, the worker just needed to get to the A/C unit.

Mike took the rifle to the New Guys boss and explained. The major said that he would keep it and see how long it took the New Guy to report it missing.

It took nearly a day. After that, the New Guy began to talk about disloyalty and deceitfulness in the office. It drove Mike crazy, but only for the few final days before he left for good.

Our commander, Col. Remigio, was an Army colonel from the infantryshort and intense, a yeller. His high-pitched voice would rise until it gave a pubescent crack, then he would return to normal as if all the air was out of the balloon. Each week, the New Guy had to brief Remigio, and every week, Remigio would be disappointed in the New Guys inability to answer questions. The New Guy didnt know his own projects, and for the detail-oriented Remigio, that was a cardinal sin.

Staron, this isnt that serious, the New Guy liked to say to me. This isnt a realwar.

After one such performance, Remigio took the New Guy to his office and screamed at him for 45 minutes. Just as Remigio was about to wind down, the New Guy leaned back in his chair and said, Look, sir, what you need to understand about me is that Im 90 percent civilian.

According to a major who was in the office, Remigio was slightly stunned, but took a breath and went back to screaming, for another 45 minutes.

For the next few days, the New Guy asked me about it regularly. It was all he could talk about. That was so unprofessional, he said. Is that how yall do things in the Army?

Staron, this isnt that serious, the New Guy liked to say to me. This isnt a real war. My brother was finding improvised explosive devices in Kandahar, one of my best friends had been nearly killed by a suicide bomber, and two guys I went to college with had been killed in Regional Command-East. The war seemed real to me. At the very least, I considered it not unserious.

Every so many days, like clockwork, the New Guys mantra would unleash something in me. Relax, hed say, one time too many, and I would explode. The New Guy would laugh and say that I needed Jesus. I would storm out of the office.

Fortunately, our teams civilian contractor, Dan, had inherited a humidor with about 400 cigars from another contractor. We would go to a patio and smoke while Dan talked about his ex-wife and I calmed down. The sessions usually ended with us looking at the Hindu Kush mountains in the distance with the sun fading and Dan wistfully saying that he would build a ski resort over there someday. I dont think he has yet.

The New Guy was still taking his post-mission naps in the afternoon but would return to the office in the evening to do online shopping until late into the night. He had an affinity for leather goods. We began to avoid the office after dinner.

And as Col. Remigio became more critical of him, the New Guys attitude began to shift. He wasnt as breezy as before. He became arbitrary. He demanded the plans for a multimillion-dollar project in two or three days, even though such an undertaking would require weeks of work.

He would sink into long periods of silence in the office, increasing the unease. He didnt do any work, just continued appraising leather coats online. Then, apropos of nothing, he would assign me a deadline to complete online training on emotional intelligence.

The New Guy once shared that his career manager told him that he wouldnt be promoted to major without a deployment, so he had to come to Afghanistan. It had only taken him 10 years.

For him, the war in Afghanistan was something to be endured in order to get to a better tomorrow. At least he was honest about what he was trying to accomplish by being there. As opposed to those who felt disappointed and cheated that this was their war. I heard this sentiment countless times. We need to get back to real fighting. No more of this insurgency bullshit. As if we had a choice on whether an insurgency would break out, existentially speaking. (As opposed to through policy, which almost ensured an insurgency.) Every time I heard officers say they wanted a real war with real fighting, I wanted to give them a hug and apologize for the lack of battles of the Bulge.

To these guys, the war in Afghanistan was also something to be endured in order to get to a better tomorrow. A tomorrow with a lot of tanks fighting tanks, hopefully.

When I first arrived to Afghanistan, someone passed along a word of comfort: Dont worry. You cant fuck it up. Its Afghanistan. Its already fucked.

In this kernel lay the closest approximation of a strategic vision for the day-to-day administration of Americas war in Afghanistan, which had assumed its own reality, its own internal logic.

For instance, before even coming to Afghanistan, the New Guy had been required to attend adviser training at Fort Polk. He spent his training paying bills and online shopping, which was a tough habit to break, it seemed. Many of my colleagues had completed this course and remained in touch with trainers there. Through that grapevine we heard that the New Guys instructor, appalled by his indifference to training, had sought to have him removed from the deployment. The instructor reported the New Guy to different bosses, including attempting to shame the New Guys unit for sending him in the first place. The response: There was no one else who would be ready to deploy in time. The instructor said, It would be better if no one went than to send this guy. The New Guy was sent.

It didnt matter which direction the ball was moving, so long as 11 players were on the field.

I was never quite sure that the New Guy understood where he was. It was as if he had been hit in the head on Sept. 10, 2001, and been in a coma until mid-2012, at which point he was awakened and informed that he was going to Afghanistan. He existed outside of history, except his own. In the past lay only slights and insults that he continuously referenced, like Mikes handling of the rifle. In the future lay promotion to major.

He had a habit of reflexively agreeing to whatever an Afghan commander asked for, regardless of feasibility. I asked him why he said yes when the clear answer was no.

You hear about these green-on-blue shootings? the New Guy said. Im not getting shot.

Somehow, the only Afghan-related notion that he had learned was green-on-blue. He asked Afghans if the meat they served was pork. He tried to give bottles of wine as gifts to Afghan commanders. Nothing had permeated his disinterest except the fact that Afghan soldiers were shooting Americans. And his solution was to tell the Afghans what they wanted to hear.

After he went home, I spent a lot of time informing Afghans that we had to break promises that never should have been made. No one ever got angry about it. They were used to the disappointment, maybe even relieved that someone was actually acknowledging that we were going back on our word.

One morning, after the New Guy and I almost came to blows, I reported him to the head of engineering. Kyle, were going to sit on these allegations, the head of engineering told me. Other stuff has come to light and hes fucked himself. Sure enough, a few days later, the New Guy announced that his deployment was being cut short.

It seems that he had sensed that Col. Remigio was going to fire him. So, as an insurance policy, the New Guy went to an Army National Guard unit on our base and asked if they wanted an engineer to work on police stations for them. The unit did want to do more for the police, but they had no money to spend on construction.

The New Guy explained that he would bring our $25 million budget with him if they found a place for him. He truly believed he had control of a $25 million line item in the U.S. defense budget and could carry that money around with him. Even more embarrassingly, the staff of the National Guard unit believed him.

When the proposal for this transfer reached the National Guard units chief of staff, he understood it was nonsense. He contacted Remigio, and the New Guy was kicked out of Afghanistan by the military in January 2013.

He returned in April 2013 as a civilian with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He just needed more time to find the right leather jacket, I guess.

By then, I was about to leave. I landed in the United States on April 14. The plan was to drive back to Texas and reintegrate into my old unit, lounge around for a couple of days, then enjoy a months worth of post-deployment leave.

I got back to my unit headquarters building and made the rounds, talking to friends I hadnt seen and figuring out what my job would be once I came back for good. As I was talking to someone, the new operations officer, Maj. Johnson, came up to me.

Are you Lt. Staron?

Yes, sir.

Welcome to the unit. The battalion commander wants to have a family day. I want you to plan the food. Do you think you can manage getting that?

I think I can manage ordering food, sir. But Im going on leave this weekend, so I wont be around for a while.

How long are you going on leave for?

A month, sir.

A month? Why are you taking that long of a vacation?

Well, I just got back, sir.

Back from where?

The rest is here:
When the New Guy Came to Afghanistan - Slate

In May, the United States is supposed to withdraw its remaining forces from Afghanistan in line with an agreement signed with the Taliban in Doha last year. But violence is escalating and the intra-Afghan talks mandated by the Doha accord have made little progress. If American troops leave, the Taliban might abandon the peace process and seize power by force.

This would arguably be mission accomplished for Pakistan, which has backed the militant group since its inception in the 1990s to establish strategic depth in Afghanistan and counter Indian influence there. The Afghan government maintains close ties to New Delhi and its ouster would likely harm Indias interests.

However, Islamabad appears to want a responsible U.S. withdrawal and has repeatedly insisted it would prefer an inclusive administration in Kabul. This might be an attempt to deflect accusations that it supports the Taliban, of course, but there are good reasons for Pakistan to oppose a takeover by the militant group and a restoration of its theocracy.

As former U.S. counterterrorism official Tricia Bacon notes, Though Pakistan and the Taliban have long-standing common interests, these have not produced a friendship. Pakistans security establishment largely views the Afghan Taliban with contempt, while the Taliban often resents Pakistans interference.

For years Islamabad has tried to push the Taliban around, often at Washingtons behest. Before 9/11 the United States asked Pakistan to pressure former Taliban chief Mullah Omar into surrendering Osama bin Laden, which he refused to do. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf also triedand failedto prevent the Talibans destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Efforts to strongarm the Taliban continued after the groups fall from power. When the Afghan conflict stalemated and the United States started exploring a diplomatic solution, Islamabad was called on to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. But the Taliban went behind Pakistans back and opened secret talks with the Afghan government.

This infuriated Pakistan, which wanted to control negotiations. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) proceeded to punish the Taliban by detaining half of its leadership in a 2010 sweep, including the current deputy emir, Mullah Baradar. Some Talibs were allegedly mistreated in Pakistani custody; oneformer defense minister Mullah Obaidullahmay have died under torture.

So, while Pakistan has hosted and helped the Taliban, it has also tried to bully them. And it has done that partly at Americas request, effectively siding with the Talibans main enemy. Indeed, Islamabad provided crucial assistance to the U.S.-led military campaign which removed the group from power in 2001.

It also handed captured militants over to U.S. custody, including former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Zaeef, who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Zaeef vilifies Pakistan and its intelligence agency in his memoir, an attitude echoed in later interviews with Taliban members.

In other words, there is bad blood between the militant group and its Pakistani sponsors which could negatively impact their relationship going forward. Pakistan is generally viewed with suspicion in Afghanistan, and a Taliban regime would have a political incentive to distance itself from Islamabad to win domestic popular support.

In the 1990s, the Taliban did not kowtow to Islamabad and followed previous Afghan governments in rejecting the Durand Line, the disputed border with Pakistan. Taliban fighters have more recently insisted that the Pashtun areas of Pakistan belong to Afghanistan.

This could become a flashpoint if the Taliban returns to power, all the more so because Pakistan is building a border fence along the Durand Line which slices through tribal territory, separating families and obstructing economic activity. The Taliban has apparently tried to block construction of the fence in some places.

A Taliban regime might also host militant groups that are hostile to Pakistan. Islamabad has pursued a dual strategy with militants, supporting some (like the Afghan Taliban or Lashkar-e Taiba) which further its interests, and opposing others (like ISK, Al Qaeda, and the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP)) which attack Pakistanis.

The Taliban do not share this approach. While the movement indeed opposes the Islamic State, it continues to harbour Al Qaeda and it has never condemned or attacked the TTP, which sought refuge in Afghanistan after the Pakistan Army expelled it from the tribal areas in 2014.

Between 2007 and 2015, TTP terrorized Pakistan with repeated mass-casualty attacks, including a horrific assault on a school in 2014. The prospect of an energized TTP, aided and inspired by the Afghan Taliban, must be of great concern to the Pakistani leadership. It is also bad news for China, whose workers in Pakistan have been attacked by the group.

If the Taliban return to power and host extremists as they did in the 1990s, the United States would likely call on Islamabad to pressure them into expelling their guests. That did not work back then, and may not do so this time around, either. Pakistan would be blamed, and U.S.-Pakistan ties could suffer as a result, driving Islamabad further into Beijings arms.

Islamabad would have less leverage over a Taliban regime now than it had in the 1990s, when Pakistan was one of only three states to recognize its government. Recently the group has cultivated diplomatic contacts with most countries in the region, including former adversaries like Iran and Russia, or Qatar, where its political office is based.

Pakistans economic ties with Afghanistan might also be impaired if the Taliban seized power. Sanctions would likely be imposed on Afghanistan by the United States and international community, constraining trade and investment. Islamabads longstanding hopes of connectivity with Central Asia via Afghanistan would be dashed.

Moreover, a Taliban takeover might be resisted by other Afghan armed groups. Conflict and continued instability would further hamper economic activity and might unleash a flood of refugees into Pakistan, placing a major burden on the strained Pakistani economy and making it easier for militants and smugglers to infiltrate the country.

The drugs trade would also surely intensify under a Taliban regime. The movement is deeply involved in narcotics and could use the levers of government to facilitate trafficking and cultivation. Opium is Afghanistans main source of revenue and it will take years, if not decades, for the ruined country to develop viable economic alternatives.

A boom in Afghan narco-trafficking is the stuff of nightmares for Pakistan. The country already has a sizeable population of addicts. In recent years crystal meth has become increasingly prevalent among Pakistani youth and will likely get even worse as Afghanistan has started producing cheap meth using locally-grown ephedra.

Despite all these problems, a Taliban-run Afghanistan would at least be less friendly to Pakistans arch-rival, India, than the current government. Delhi is one of the few regional powers not to have forged diplomatic ties with the movement, placing it at a distinct disadvantage if the Taliban regains power.

But this is a silver lining on a very dark cloud. The costs of a Taliban takeover for Islamabad would be considerable, sealing Afghanistans fate as an impoverished, unstable narco-state and incubator of terrorism that threatens Pakistans national security and economic interests.

For that reason, Pakistan can be expected to continue its efforts to facilitate a political settlement in Afghanistan and help prevent a collapse into state failure and full-blown civil war. But, with peace talks stalled and the United States possibly heading for the door, a hurricane is forming.

Rupert Stone is a freelance journalist working on issues related to South Asia and the Middle East. He has written for various publications, including Newsweek, VICE News, Al Jazeera, and The Independent.

More here:
Why Pakistan Should Fear a Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan - The National Interest

Fatima Abdullah was on a break from her medical career when the coronavirus pandemic hit Ireland in March 2020. A qualified doctor, Abdullah moved to Ireland after her husband, Abdullah Afghan, who is also a doctor, secured a job in Co Mayo in 2014. She wanted to continue her training in obstetrics and gynaecology but needed time to care for her two small children. However, when the HSE launched the Be on Call for Ireland campaign in response to health crisis, Abdullah changed her mind.

I was a doctor sitting at home, and a doctors job is to help people. I thought this is the time they need me. Of course I had no idea then things would get so bad.

Her husband Afghan recalls how friends tried to discourage his wife from signing up. They said we should wait for things to settle before she went back to work. But we said, No, this is life and death and we owe the Irish people. Weve settled here, theyve given us opportunities. We have a very good life with our kids and its our time to pay back to Ireland. Were proud that we did it. It also made us feel like we really belong to this society.

Originally from Afghanistan, both Afghan and Abdullah grew up in Pakistan after their families fled their home country. Afghan, whose family comes from the southeastern city of Khost, was born en route to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Things were extremely difficult. My parents never could have imagined Id end up as a doctor. At that time all they were thinking about was staying safe. What they did for me was beyond imagination. They were not educated; they had to do manual labour for us to go to school.

Abdullah, who is from the Afghan capital of Kabul, was two years old when her parents emigrated. The situation in our country was so dangerous, our families could not think of staying there. They moved to save our lives.

The couple met in medical school shortly before Afghans graduation and were married soon after. In 2014, he was offered a job in Ireland while Abdullah, who was still completing her studies, visited during her three months off college where she would study before returning to Pakistan. In October 2015, their son Azlaan was born. To be honest it was not a planned pregnancy and I was supposed to go back to Pakistan for my exams. I had a really traumatic delivery because he was a big baby, I dont think Ill ever forget it. I found it really hard being a young mother here with no family support.

When Azlaan was nearly a month old, the couple travelled to Dublin to secure a visa for Abdullah and her baby to travel to Pakistan so she could complete her medical exams. We had to drive from Castlebar at 3am to get into the queue, remembers Afghan. There was no online system then; you had to queue outside to get the visa, and if you were later than 7am you could be turned back. But the immigration officers were extremely helpful and supportive. Azlaan was crying non-stop, and he processed our visa within minutes.

Abdullah stayed in Pakistan for five months to finish her studies before returning to Ireland with Azlaan, and in 2018, their daughter Anaya was born. Abdullah had applied for her sister, who lives in the United States, to visit and help care for the newborn but the visa request was rejected.

She had her two own kids in the States and we just wanted her to come and help us for three months. But because she was Afghan she couldnt get it. I had really bad postnatal depression after Anaya was born. Being alone and having no support, everything was so hard.

Similarly, Afghan found applying for visas to travel to the United Kingdom for training courses or to visit family in Germany extremely difficult. It was rejected so many times. Once I had to travel to Birmingham for an exam, and I was stopped by immigration for an hour and a half. Initially it felt terrifying, what were they suspecting me of?

Now I know this is going to happen and that I will be stopped and interrogated for hours every time I travel to mainland UK. Because of our passport, travel is hard.

Having worked the long hours of emergency medicine in Irish hospitals, Afghan decided to become a general practitioner so his wife could resume her training and he could help more at home.

However, he discovered it was extremely difficult for non-EU doctors to qualify for Irelands GP training programme, which allocates places through a preference system starting with Irish citizens, followed by Europeans.

He also applied through the NHS and was offered a position in Craigavon in Co Armagh. Afghan now drives 1 hours twice a day to and from his home in Bettystown, Co Meath, which the couple bought in 2019, to his job in Northern Ireland. The commute is long but its important for my career progression and once its completed I can work in Ireland as a GP.

Abdullah has been working in the emergency department of Our Ladys Hospital in Navan since September of last year and regularly cares for patients with Covid-19.

In November, both Abdullah and Afghan contracted the virus. We got very sick and were checking our oxygen saturation all the time, he says. Our temperatures were reaching almost 40 degrees, we were praying that we didnt deteriorate.

I kept thinking, what will happen to the children if we both have to go to hospital, adds his wife. We didnt have any support around us. That was really hard.

The couple have recently added their voices to the campaign calling for applications for Irish citizenships from migrant healthcare workers to be fast-tracked. Afghan, who applied in November 2019, says the wait has had a major impact on the family.

After working here for almost seven years and responding to the Call for Ireland the only thing we are asking is for our naturalisation application to be processed swiftly. When we are ready to lay our lives on the line for this country, I believe urgent processing is not a big ask.

The couple know Irish citizenship will help their children build a bright future. Im so happy my kids are in Ireland, theyre in a good country and living the best life a child could have, says Abdullah. Theyre safe here.

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com, @newtotheparish

Originally posted here:
New to the Parish: Abdullah Afghan and Fatima Abdullah arrived from Afghanistan via Pakistan - The Irish Times