11:11 21/08/2021
Five sisters among the crowd outside Kabul airport have told MailOnline of their desperate attempts to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban burned down their home.
The young women are Hazaras, a peaceful ethnic group who live in Hazarajat in central Afghanistan among the Hindu Kush mountains. With beautiful colors and delicate features, the Hazara have long been victims of persecution by other groups for decades and more recently by the Taliban.
Aaina Sheikh, 19, a high school student, said she was at the airport with her four sisters and brother. "We want to go to America, we can't stay here safely," she said.
Neither of the women, nor their brother, even have passports, much less visas that would allow them to travel, but that doesn't stop them from hoping for a miracle.
"Until last week we were living happily in our house and then the Taliban came and burned it down. Our parents told us to leave because they feared for our lives." Aaina expressed .
In recent weeks there have been countless reports of the Taliban abducting young women and girls to be their 'wives' or sex slaves.
So the Sheikh women embarked on the 150-kilometre journey to Kabul airport on Sunday and have been sleeping on the pavements ever since, with only their brother Nader, 25, trying to protect them.
Aaina, the youngest daughter, added: We have some money that we are spending, I don't know how long it will last us. We are too young to remember the Taliban before, but our parents have told us how they killed so many Hazara people in the past.
The sisters are all living testaments to the progress of women in Afghanistan over the past two decades.
Aaina's sister Hafizah, 23, was studying computer science at a polytechnic in Kabul, while her other sisters, twins Haëa and Latifa, 20, and 18-year-old Marjaan, are also students.
Now all that progress could be reversed as the US and its allies turned their backs on Afghanistan. /tvklan.al
Source of information @TvKlan: Read more at: www.botasot.al
