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Almost a year after the fall of Kabul, Shakira Yazdani arrived in Calgary, thanks to support from lawyers and a law professor. But she’s one of the lucky ones. Other Afghans at the law firm she worked at in Afghanistan are still in hiding, waiting to hear about their visa status.
[ARTICLE] From Kabul to Calgary: An Afghan Law Student's Dangerous Journey || Almost a year after the fall of Kabul, Shakira Yazdani arrived in Calgary, thanks to support from lawyers and a law professor. https://t.co/XMnHvFXm1D via @lawdotcomINTL @LawDeanHolloway pic.twitter.com/Ubk9CcIjAc
— UCalgary Law (@UCalgaryLaw) July 21, 2022
Following a harrowing year that included the “most difficult” 24 hours of her life, Afghan law student Shakira Yazdani arrived in Canada on Canada Day to a rousing welcome from students at the University of Calgary Law School, where she will be studying to get her J.D.
Among the more than 100,000 Afghans who applied for evacuation as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Yazdani is a lucky one. Thousands are still trapped and seeking legal advice, advocates say.
When the Taliban took over, Yazdani was studying law at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul and working as a legal assistant with the law firm Shajjan & Associates, which provided legal services to the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
#DayoftheEndangeredLawyerhttps://t.co/5zwpkxCXFi
— Stuart Russell (@StuartR92034479) May 10, 2022
She and her parents attempted to leave Kabul after it fell to the Taliban, but their bus was turned back from the airport. It was another month before she was able to leave Afghanistan with a group of students—but not her parents—with permits organized by the U.S. embassy to study at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan.
The students were driven up to the Pakistan border, where they faced hours of questioning and where Yazdani said some were beaten by the Taliban before officials “miraculously” opened the gates for 10 minutes and let everyone cross.
She and the others “ran through” but she said they could barely walk once on the other side because of the blazing sun, 45C temperatures, and being fully covered except for her eyes. She said she and the group faced more roadblocks from Pakistani border officials, but were finally able to make it through. She was in Islamabad for three weeks before getting her visa to travel to Kyrgyzstan, where she finished her bachelor of law degree while applying for yet another visa—to Canada.
Yazdani’s connection with Shajjan & Associates should have meant that getting a Canadian visa would be relatively easy under the government’s special immigration program (SIM) for Afghans who assisted the Canadian government. A number of her colleagues applied last August and she and others applied less than a month later.
“We never heard from [the government],” she said this week from her dorm room at the University of Calgary.
Saeeq Shajjan, founder and principal of Shajjan & Associates, fled Afghanistan and made it to Canada last September. He expected the other 28 lawyers and staff of his firm to soon follow, but 11 months on, they have not escaped or heard anything from the Canadian government.
They thought it would be “a matter of only a few weeks, but here we are, it’s almost one year since they applied and they are mostly in hiding,” afraid of being hunted by the Taliban for helping Canada, Shajjan said in an interview.
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https://www.cpac.ca/episode?id=6ba137a0-c84a-4704-b04f-61e48b622698
