“With low noise, the Apagan operation continues”. The prefect Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office for Immigration and Integration, spoke on Monday of the French operation to exfiltrate Afghans to France, set up after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021, to welcome the arrival at Roissy of five Afghan women. They had fled to neighboring Pakistan after the arrival of the new masters of Kabul, who, decree after decree, drastically reduced women’s rights to education, employment and other public freedoms.
This evacuation operation had been demanded for a long time by their supporters. Several organizations are calling on Paris to go further, and set up a “feminist” humanitarian corridor for all those who have fled the persecution of the Taliban. This type of evacuation operation is “made to happen again if other women corresponding to this profile have found refuge in Pakistan”, affirmed Didier Leschi for his part. Le Figaro returns to the profile of these five women who arrived in France on September 4.
Socio-economic researcher Naveen Hashim worked for the government as an advisor to the Minister of the Interior before the arrival of the Taliban. Consultant for various NGOs, she has carried out research in her country on the professional integration of women. “I have worked all my life against Taliban ideology,” the feminist activist who had just arrived in Paris explained on Tuesday on France Inter. “According to them, we are not complete human beings. “That’s why I worked against their ideology and became a target for them.”
This employee in one of the most prominent beauty salons in Kabul received actresses, singers and members of the bourgeoisie of the capital, including many officials of the former government. The Taliban having demanded the closure of all beauty salons, she found herself without a job. She fled to Pakistan a few months ago, where she lived in very precarious conditions.
She is one of the protagonists of the LCP documentary by Margaux Benn, journalist at Le Figaro and Albert Londres Prize, and by Solène Chalvon Fioriti, “How beautiful you are”. “She is divorced, therefore particularly vulnerable”, explains our journalist Margaux Benn. “The Taliban (and the Afghan conservatives, even more uninhibited and violent since the Taliban came to power) take a very dim view of single women and, worse, divorced women”.
Former dean of a scientific university in Kabul, Najla Latif accumulates diplomas. In April, Liberation dedicated a portrait to this widow living with her three children in a 10m2 apartment in Islamabad, Pakistan. Since exile, Najla has sent no less than 765 emails appealing for help to French consulates, enclosing her diplomas and her children’s vaccination certificates. In vain. Her three children were students of political science and physical chemistry in Kabul, and now live in the United States.
Journalist Muzghan lost her military husband in the war against the Taliban a few years ago. Originally from the east of the country, she belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group, the Taliban ethnic group. She arrived in France on Monday accompanied by her three young children, whom she had brought with her to Pakistan where the family “lived in deplorable conditions”, says journalist Solène Chalvon Fioriti, who met her during her exile.
“I bought my visa on the black market. I left my family heartbroken to go to Pakistan,” said Hafsa, who taught English in Kabul at a secret school. Threatened with death, she went into exile alone in Pakistan. Arrived on September 4 in Paris, she is overwhelmed with emotion: “It’s horrible and very hard. You know, when you face a difficult situation and you have no other options, you are forced to find solutions and alone. I lived two years under the Taliban, I couldn’t plan anything. So today, I feel paralyzed, there’s a lot of psychological work to do, a huge amount of work that’s beyond me. »
