Afghans in Hyderabad see unsafe future

After I finish my education, I will be asked to leave for Afghanistan. We hope the Government of India will help us, says an Afghan student

Hyderabad: Away from home, worried about their country and families and stressed about their future, over 200 Afghan students in Hyderabad are spending sleepless nights ever since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Anxious about his family’s well-being, a Masters student from a city college, on condition of anonymity, shares in a choked voice: “My family lives in northern Afghanistan. It has been about a week since the Taliban took over that place and I haven’t been able to make any contact with my family. I have had sleepless nights; I can only hope that they are doing alright.”

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Another student who recently finished his post-graduation in Mass Communication from Hyderabad and is back in Afghanistan, says the fear is that the worst is yet to come.

“We have seen Taliban terrorists oppress our people — especially women. And they might continue doing that. When the city of Herat was captured a few days ago, they imposed that girls shouldn’t go to schools or universities. They even asked women of all age groups to wear a burqa. My mother is a doctor, and she didn’t go to the hospital fearing that Taliban militants might be there,” he told Telangana Today.

It is overwhelming for many of them to even put their fears in words. Unsure of what to do next, most Afghan students are hoping the Indian government might extend their visas so they do not have to return home during these troubled times.

“After I finish my education, my visa will expire and I will be asked to leave for Afghanistan. I do not see a future there. In fact, I might be punished by the Taliban as I worked with the Afghan government. They might also discredit my degree. There are many like me. We hope the Government of India will help us,” shares another student.

Fear, however, is not the only emotion among Afghans in the city. They are also very angry with the way their government handled the situation. Blaming the crisis on the administrators, students refuse to even call Ashraf Ghani their President.

“He is a traitor,” says another student living in Hyderabad since 2017. “He fled our nation leaving behind helpless citizens to fend for themselves. I am safe here, but I am still scared for my family and everyone else in Afghanistan. All the work that we put in to build a nation in the last 20 years is undone,” he adds.