“‘There are many deaths near me and the Canal has turned blood color.’ This tells us the last of the girls who should have entered with our group and who unfortunately remained outside the gate of the Kabul airport during the suicide explosion “. It is the hot story that comes from Cospe, a Florentine NGO that owns several projects in Afghanistan until 2019. The attack, he explains, “comes at the height of tragic days in which we tried to rescue as many people as possible between our collaborators, collaborators and their families “. After the explosion, therefore, “we finally learned that most of them have finally managed to enter the airport, moving from that Abbey gate where the victims are now counted”.
It is about “a group of about 30 people, including about ten children. Among them also the group of footballers who left Herat on Monday morning at dawn, and of cyclists, followed in Italy by the Road to Equality association. safe, with food and water and waiting for a flight to arrive in Italy of which, however, we do not yet have certain news “.
Like Cospe, in coordination with Aoi and together with other NGOs “with whom we made up a single list of people to be evacuated – explains a note – we kept in touch with the people out there all the time, constantly communicating their position to the parà of the Tuscania who from inside the airport manage the operations and the other authorities “, such as the ministry of defense and foreign affairs, who follow the developments of the evacuation from Italy and whom we thank for their great work together with the consul and the body. of paratroopers “.
The difficulty of entering the airport, “manned by the Taliban and crowded with those who are trying to escape in every way – reads the note – unfortunately discouraged some members of the group who could not resist hours of insomnia, hunger, thirst and in precarious hygienic conditions, without services and immersed half the time in the canal that separates the street from the actual entrance, the ‘dirty river’ of many messages. Many had to give up, others got lost in the crowd “.
The deadline of August 31 “imposed by the US for leaving the country, the threats of the Taliban who are increasing checks on the access routes to the airport and the violence against those who try to leave” Afghanistan (“have killed three people in front of my eyes “, wrote a girl of the group),” pushed us to encourage our contacts to face this odyssey to embark as soon as possible. Now, however, we hope that all those who have not made it, too the weakest and most at risk of life in the emirate’s afghanistan, may reach Italy or Europe thanks to safe humanitarian corridors “.
They are “activists and activists, independent journalists, lawyers, collaborators in various capacities with international organizations. They are women, representatives of minorities and the voices of civil society and all those who have worked for a different Afghanistan in schools, health care, in society and have always opposed the totalitarian regime and the fundamentalist thought of the Taliban. Today we must guarantee them security and freedom “.