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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am.

It’s been one year since the Taliban swifty took control of Afghanistan as the U.S. pulled out after 20 years of war.

In the days following the takeover, foreign countries rushed to evacuate diplomatic staff from Kabul. Thousands of Afghans were also airlifted out, but many, even those who worked directly with Australia and other foreign nations, remain trapped.

Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Karen Middleton, reveals the details of a deal struck in the last few weeks by the Australian Government – with Afghans who worked with Australia being told to cross the border into Pakistan – undocumented.

It’s Monday, August 15.

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RUBY:

Karen, you’ve been following the conflict in Afghanistan for decades, and you were actually talking to people in Kabul, as the Taliban took the city a year ago, weren’t you?

KAREN:

Yes, I was watching it unfold from days beforehand. I think the speed of the toppling of Kabul took a lot of people by surprise. It took the Australian Government and the defence force by surprise, and it seems to have taken the Americans by surprise as well.

I was getting alerts on these posts on Twitter and other forums and watching the reports of these towns and villages falling to the Taliban. And it was really obvious then that it was happening so swiftly. On the Sunday morning, it looked to be happening so fast that I actually sent a message to someone in Afghanistan and said I think this is going to happen today. And indeed it did later in the afternoon.

##Archival tape - Washington Post --
Airport panic featuring gun shots

KAREN:

It seemed like there was a lot of panic setting in in Kabul itself, certainly around the airport. I had reports of people going initially to the airport and finding that it was calm and then going back later in the day and it was just bedlam. People scrambling to try and get out, the gates to the airport had been thrown open. There were people on the apron of the runway, just a chaotic scene as people were panicking and just trying to get out of the city, worried about what the arrival of the Taliban meant, and there were also reports of the police and the Afghan National Army having made way, having not put up much of a fight at that point. I guess they could see what was happening and had worked out that resistance was probably futile at that point. So, there was a lot of panic clearly in the city and right across the country of Afghanistan.

##Archival tape -- Ramish Salimi (from 7am)
"The vast majority of the people of Afghanistan are trying to get out of the country."

KAREN:

It just seemed like such a failure of all of the international efforts of the past 20 years and people were worried and with good reason. The Taliban had been promising in negotiations with the United States that were held in Qatar, that they were a new version, a modern version of their old selves, and that they would be upholding particular standards.

##Archival tape -- Al Jazeera
“The Taliban movement has repeatedly confirmed its readiness for dialogue and negotiations.”

KAREN:

There were sort of muted undertakings about girls going to school and that things would be different this time. But I don't think anyone really believed it, and I don't think many people believe it now.

RUBY:

And in the year since the Taliban has held power in Afghanistan, we have seen them go back to the old way of operating in a lot of ways. Many restrictions came back pretty quickly, particularly regarding women and girls. Can you talk me through some of what we've seen?

KAREN:

Yes, I think, you know, there was lip service paid by the incoming Taliban to, as I say, the need for girls' education and wanting to sound like they were making promises, but not really being very convincing. And I think we have seen no commitment really to educating girls and women. In fact, we've seen a reversion back to the standards that were in place 20 years ago with the draconian rules being placed on women's movements and girls and what they can and can't do, who they are allowed to be seen with, whether or not they can work. We've seen some very brave women protesting in the streets, certainly early on.

##Archival tape -- The Daily Qudrat Pakistan Latest News
Women protesting on 17 August 2021

KAREN:

It's much harder to monitor now because a lot of the media have been shut down too, many journalists, well, foreign journalists certainly had to flee the country, but many local journalists also either had to go underground in terms of their operations or had to leave. And so it's just a difficult thing to monitor from a distance, what exactly is happening on the ground. There is some evidence on social media of atrocities continuing, but it's not being documented in the way that it once was.

RUBY:

Hmm. Okay and so as this has happened though, many people who have lived in Afghanistan are trying to leave, aren't they? And some of those people are people who Australia has worked with in the past, who I think you could say Australia might have a duty of care to. So can you tell me about that?

KAREN:

Well, there've been enormous numbers of people who wanted to get out of the country and particularly those who had any association with Australia.

##Archival tape
“In the panic to get allied Afghans out, embassies across the globe rushed to issue emergency, temporary visas.”

KAREN:

There are many people who believe Australia owes them a protection because they worked for either the Australian Embassy or the Australian Defence Force or organisations that are based in Australia.
And some of those people have been able to get out with official help or even unofficially get across a border into a third country. But there are still some who haven't been able to and there has been a particular focus on locally engaged employees, people who worked as interpreters or security guards at the embassy who had believed or were led to believe that they were going to get assistance, but who haven't been given visas or some of them got short-term emergency visas but weren't able to get out of the country and have seen visas expire because there's a three-month time limit on the emergency visas that were issued initially in that situation.

Not everybody who worked for Australia in various jobs has managed to leave the country and that is a concern.

RUBY:

So what options do these people have then? And how much time do they have left to access this support from Australia?

KAREN:

Well there has been sort of a willingness on the part of the Pakistanis to allow some of these people who don't have their documents in order to get across the border on the understanding that they will receive help from a third country, say Australia, once they are in Pakistan, to move on. But Pakistan's patience has been running out.
And so there was an agreement reached between the Australian High Commission in Islamabad and the Pakistani Government to get a particular group of people who weren't documented, who didn't have passports, but had been promised visas by Australia across that border. Now, the agreement with Pakistanis can help out on the Pakistan side of the border, but there's still the Afghan side and what was unclear as part of this agreement was what undertakings there might be from the Taliban to assist.

There had been mixed reports from that border crossing about what the Taliban border guards had been doing. Some had been willing to let people through who didn't have all of their papers in order, others had not. So it was a bit of a, you know, a chance operation, a high risk operation. And this agreement had an end time to it, it expired last week.

RUBY:

So the Australian Government was saying to this group of people that, you know, in theory, you can come to Australia, but first you have to do this crossing on your own without documentation?

KAREN:

Yes. And that's where the personal risk was coming into the equation. The agreement that was struck between Pakistan and the Australian diplomats covered 73 people. But my understanding is that there were other individuals who were also trying to take advantage of what effectively was a last ditch amnesty, at least from the Pakistan side, to get across the border before people started to take a tougher view of undocumented migration.

And that was still a massive risk that people were having to take because the Australian Government was also emphasising that they could not guarantee people's safety, that people had to understand that and factor that in if they were going to make that journey.

So, people were being told by the Australian Government, who had been issued with promises of visas and assistance, you need to get across that border by this particular date, by the 8th of August. Otherwise we can't promise that you’ll be received well when you get to Pakistan.

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RUBY:

Karen, there are at least 73 people who may have made this last-ditch effort to cross the border to Pakistan, undocumented, on the understanding that they could get a visa to Australia after that. But how difficult would it be for them to actually do that - to leave Afghanistan without documentation at this point?

KAREN:

Well, extremely difficult. I mean, under normal circumstances, it's illegal to cross an international border without official documentation. We have to carry a passport when we travel and it's the same worldwide. But in a circumstance like the one that prevails in Afghanistan, where there's a government that's swept into power through force, and that is not considered to be legitimate in the eyes of the international community, then I guess other governments make allowances and that's really what's been happening on the ground sort of unofficially between certainly the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. So it is very difficult and, you know, you would be, if you were in that situation, making terrible calculations about what might occur and whether you could make it safely. And there are obviously insurgent risks as well, because we've seen the rise of Islamic State within Afghanistan. Now there's tension between Islamic State and the Taliban.

##Archival tape -- WION
”After four IUD blasts took place in Jalalabad…”*

##Archival tape -- Deutsche Welle
”The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings…”

KAREN:

So we're still seeing violent attacks occurring in different parts of the country. So there's a lot of internal tensions in the country. And then you've got to get through all of those risks and then across a border, into a third country where you would hope you are being allowed to stay temporarily and until such time as you can finalise asylum with a country like Australia. And a lot of the people who were being offered visas via Australia were being told the visa was only for the individual who had worked for Australia and not for their family. So on top of all that anxiety they are having to leave their families behind in many cases. So, a really upsetting and difficult decision.

RUBY:

Yeah, absolutely. And so there is this group of people in this particularly difficult situation of having to decide whether or not to try and make this crossing, but are there other people who might actually want a visa from Australia who haven’t been able to get one and how are these decisions made about who will be given a visa? Is there a hierarchy to this?

KAREN:

Well, we don't have any visibility on how exactly the decisions are made. Other than that, the government, via the Department of Home Affairs, on the advice of the Defence Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs, depending on where these people were working, is making judgements about the veracity of the individual claims and the security risk that individual people might pose. So, it's not easy to tell when people have been rejected, why they've been rejected, because the government doesn't always give them a reason, especially if there is a security element to that, the government doesn't disclose that.

So there are people still in Afghanistan who have advocates in Australia pleading their case, saying, look, they've got all the documentation, you offered them an emergency visa, they just haven't been given the paperwork from Australia to take that last step and get across the border. And they're not going to get into Pakistan without something from Australia saying, yes, we will give you a visa. So there are people still in that situation and I think there are still discussions being had between advocates in Australia and the Australian Government as to whether any more of those can be assisted to cross.

RUBY:

Okay and so for those who don’t make it, or can’t get a visa, what will life be like for them in Afghanistan and what are your thoughts on the future for the country?

KAREN:

Well, I think the present is tough for the people of Afghanistan and I think the future looks tough, at least in the near term. They've been through just an incredible number of challenges already in the last few years, let alone having the war of the past 20 years. But we've seen drought and a famine. We've seen floods, most recently earthquakes.

So there are natural disasters impacting people there, as well as the unrest that is ongoing between these effectively terrorist organisations and the strict regime that the Taliban is seeking to put in place. There's also an absence of proper governance because they aren't qualified and equipped to govern a country properly and the international community have frozen funds and not recognised the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban government, as legitimate. So there's layer upon layer of difficulty for the ordinary people trying to live in Afghanistan.

You know, this is a country with generations of troubles in its history books, generations of invasions. They've always withstood them. The people are resilient and hardened to all of this.

But you have to say the challenges they face at the moment are pretty difficult. And I know people here in Australia who are Afghan, who have family back home, remain extremely worried and distressed. And you’re still hearing reports of people disappearing or being found dead or just not surviving the situation they’re in. And so you have to be pessimistic, I think, about what the future holds.

RUBY:

Karen, thank you so much for your time.

KAREN:

Thanks very much, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

the author Salman Rushdie was attacked and stabbed multiple times during an onstage appearance in New York state on Friday.

Rushdie previously lived in hiding because of a fatwa issued against him by the Supreme Leader of Iran, following the publication of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie remains in hospital but was able to talk on Sunday, according to his agent.

And meteorologists have warned that Europe could be facing its worst drought in 500 years.

No significant rainfall has been recorded in southern, central or western Europe in two months and none is expected in the near future.

I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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