When the Taliban came to power last week, Afghans working for the United Nations watched many of their foreign colleagues board planes to leave the country.
But their own increasingly desperate pleas for help – or at least somewhere safe to stay if the Taliban target them for their work for an international organization – are ignored, according to interviews and emails seen by BuzzFeed News.
Angry current and former staffers say the UN, which has been operating in Afghanistan since 2002, does not appear to have a plan for staff of thousands of Afghan nationals to leave the country and has offered them a some alternatives but have to hide at home while the warriors can search for them.
In phone calls and text messages, four Afghan nationals working for the UN told BuzzFeed News that the UN had failed to provide them with safe housing in Kabul, prompting some to seek shelter with loved ones. They point out that Afghan nationals working for the UN are at much greater risk in the country with lower wages than their international counterparts, and that their work may be subject to harm. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Taliban fighters have ransacked many UN compounds since their stunning sweep to power last week.
“They are very, very conspicuous in communities,” said one former international UN staff member, who asked not to be named. “The Taliban know exactly who these people are.”
The UN did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary general, said in one day August 18 press conference that the United Nations cannot easily evacuate Afghan nationals from the country because it is “not a visa-issuing country.”
He added that the UN is doing its best for national staff and their families. “There are all sorts of administrative barriers that have to be negotiated and discussed,” says Dujarric. “But the national staff is at the forefront of what we’re trying to do every day.”
Organization about 300 international and 3,000 Afghan national staff in Afghanistan, working for the United Nations mission in the country as well as agencies such as the United Nations Development Program and UN Women. The organization said on August 18 that about 100 international employees would temporarily leave Kazakhstan.
United Nations-focused news site PassBlue report on friday that Afghan citizens who work for the organization feel “alone and petrified.” New details in this story about Afghan personnel begging for help to escape the Taliban to no avail – even as one listener was told that militants were in his vicinity. where he is – raises more questions about whether the United Nations has adequate plans to protect local personnel as the Taliban ramped up their military offensive against the Afghan government starting in May .
“They had months to prepare for this,” said the former international officer.
An Afghan employee, who works in the operations department of a United Nations agency, said he and his colleagues raised the issue of evacuation several times in the chat box of a Zoom meeting with colleagues. and superiors last week, but received no response. (BuzzFeed News is withholding the identifying details of all four Afghan employees interviewed for this article to avoid endangering them.)
“They usually read the chat box,” he said. “This time they see the chats but try to change the subject and get things done.”
The officer said he asked his superiors if the United Nations would help him and other Afghan staff with valid international visas. But he was told that the organization could only try to get him out, forcing him to leave his wife and young child behind.
“What does this mean?” he say. “How can I leave my family behind when I leave the country? That’s unacceptable to me or to the national staff – it’s against humanitarian values, it’s against human values.”
Other Afghan staff members also described similar meetings.
“They were just playing a game with us. There is a meeting every week where they say they are ‘trying their best’, said another Afghan staff member of the United Nations Development Project, who works on gender equality. “What kind of effort is this? If small embassies can evacuate staff, why can’t the UN? ”
It is not clear how many international UN staff have been moved out of Afghanistan, but four staff members told BuzzFeed News that senior international staff had been evacuated and appeared to be mostly Afghans. Go.
Liam McDowall, spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama), tell PassBlue that the United Nations is pushing other countries to assist with visa applications and requests for temporary stay from Afghan staff members and their families.
Unama did not return calls or emails for this article.
Employees interviewed by BuzzFeed News also said UN officials have told them they are campaigning for visas so they can move to other countries, but some say they feel too much little, too late.
“This is not the time to apply for a visa,” said an Afghan official working with UNDP. “We have UN ID cards, they can discuss with other countries to make an immediate evacuation.”
One UN employee, who urged the UN to evacuate female Afghan staff over concerns about the Taliban’s abuse of women, told BuzzFeed News she had asked Afghan staff to help during town hall meetings and through local and global employee associations.
“No one heard us,” she said. “No one is listening.”
“They told us we had to ‘stay and deliver,'” she added, citing the UN’s tagline for its presence in Afghanistan.
United Nations report move some its Afghan personnel to Kabul to reduce their risk but not to put them in safe positions.
The former international officer, who spoke directly to the Afghan staff, said: “They didn’t let them stay in a permanent compound, they were given their own equipment.
International Bank evacuate Reuters reported on August 20.
A group of United Nations trade unions and employee associations start a petition called on the UN secretary-general to take “all necessary measures” including evacuation to protect staff. It has nearly 5,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We had to protect the human rights of all, and now we do,” said Arora Akanksha, a United Nations auditor who is campaigning to become the next secretary general. are leaving their own to fend for themselves. “Shame on the UN and its leadership.”
“This whole ‘stay and convey’ message that the UN is promoting, we should ask ourselves who is staying?” she added.
An Unama employee who said he was hiding in a remote location told BuzzFeed News Taliban fighters were asking neighbors about his whereabouts. He has worked on sensitive political projects and he believes he can be targeted.
“Everybody here knows I’m working with Unama,” he said. “I am a famous person.”
He told BuzzFeed News that he has asked his department to move him to a safer location where the militants will have a harder time identifying him by talking to residents. local, days before Kabul fell to the Taliban. A few days later, after the militant group took power, a reply arrived advising him to hide at home, according to emails he shared with BuzzFeed News.
“I was like a captive,” he said. “I can’t go out, I can’t see anyone. How long can I stay here? ”
