Here’s what Lawrence wrote when this aired this podcast on his Substack:
I remember when my friend, journalist Claire Berlinski, first contacted me about a tragic situation regarding a family trapped in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. She knew that I had helped a young girl interested in physics escape to the US to study years earlier and hoped that I might assist in this case.
If ever one imagined a family appropriate to bring to safety, this would be the one. The mother was a women’s rights lawyer before the takeover, and the husband worked for a French firm. The Taliban had broken into the Bar Association Office and found records of lawyers, who were being sought for arrest. One older son, and five young daughters in danger of being married off1 if they were discovered.
Their original escape plan was foiled when the airport was bombed just before their planned departure. Because Claire lives in France, the older boy had reached out to her for help, and she sent out a call to her followers to provide financial assistance to help the family.
Claire contacted me because she knew I now lived in Canada, which has a well-established refugee program. In spite of this, for two years I was not able to find a single sponsoring agency who had a sufficiently large slot allocation to assist. Finally, after over a year, with five generous individuals who agreed to act as guarantors, Jewish Immigrant Aid Services in Toronto indicated they had the slots and would sponsor a refugee application for the family, provided we raised the necessary funds to guarantee support for family for their first year in Canada—a government requirement. After five months of fundraising, we achieved the goal, and the full application was submitted to the government of Canada.
I have always found it poetic that the organization in Canada that has been willing to help save this Muslim family is a Jewish organization. Perhaps, in the midst of all the horrible antisemitism that has blossomed in the world over the past years, this provide a useful example that religious differences need not always be a source of discord and hatred.
That was 18 months ago. In spite of having fulfilled at the requirements, the backlog of cases is such that we knew it could take up to two years for the application to be processed. In the interim the family was able to travel to Pakistan. But their visas have expired and Pakistan is now deporting Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan.
The family is in hiding in Pakistan, not able to leave their house. The girls are growing and one of them managed to learn enough English to get a prized scholarship to study online at a US university abroad, where she is studying psychology, as the law degree that she really wants is not available.
The family agreed to be interviewed for this podcast. Their images have been washed out for their protection, and their names have been changed as well. We are hoping this podcast will help spur some of you to provide support through Claire’s online site to help provide essentials for the family while they are in hiding, and that it might also help motivate some of you who might live in Canada to help us lobby the government to ensure that their case is resolved as quickly as possible.
Thanks for watching, or listening, and for any help you can provide. Here is a GoFundMe link to support them.
My longtime readers are very familiar with this family. They have made it possible for them to live. I think this will be the first time you’ve heard their voices. I wish I could show you their faces, too, but it just isn’t safe yet.
Here is the story, as it unfolded:
(Scroll down for the update from Islamabad.)
As you’ll hear, their situation has become frustrating beyond words. Their approved application has stalled somewhere in the bowels of the Canadian bureaucracy—at the very last hurdle. We’re unable to get any information about why, or how much longer it will take to issue their visas. Meanwhile, Pakistan has stepped up its campaign to deport Afghan refugees. They’re hunting them down so efficiently that this family is, once again, terrified to leave their house.
We’re desperately seeking someone with a contact in the Canadian government who can, at least, honestly tell us what’s happening and what to expect. We’re not asking for someone to do special favors for us. We’re just looking for information. In this, I’m sure, we’re hardly alone. But it would make all the difference in the world just to know what’s happening. Some of you have already tried to put us in touch with people you know. They’ve been as helpful as they can possibly be, but they haven’t been able to get through the wall of silence either. So we’re casting the net again, hoping that somehow we can find someone who knows someone who might be able to put us in touch with someone who understands what’s going on.
Meanwhile, they still need your help. The funds you’ve contributed are waiting for them in a trust fund, managed by JAIS, in Canada. But they need to money to live while this interminable wait continues. I don’t know how much they’ll need, because I have no idea what time frame might be realistic.
Millions of refugees, around the world, are trapped in this limbo. The asylum system, carefully constructed in the wake of the Second World War, is broken.
This family is as deserving as a family could be. They did everything the West ever asked of them. They face an unthinkable future because of it. They want nothing but a chance to be good citizens of a safe country.
Canada has by far the most generous policy toward refugees in the world, but obviously—even more so, owing to the US’s refusal to accept any share of the refugee burden—they’re overwhelmed. And this family risks falling between the cracks. If you know someone, please, get in touch.
And please donate here. I hate to ask again. I hate everything about this situation, except for the generosity you’ve shown this family, which moves me deeply and reminds me that no, we don’t live in an unremitingly evil world.
The GoFundMe Link
To be clear, this has nothing to do with “marriage” as we understand it. This means, “abducted and raped by the Taliban for as long as they remain alive.”
