Page 30 - Fiji Traveller Issue 1

Illustration:Yalda Yaqubi (courtesy UAF)

“[Conflict in] Afghanistan had been going on for years, some activists and
defenders had lived twice through this crisis; two, three, four generations
have lived through this. It’s like a intergenerational trauma, so they know
what happens before it even happens,” Buadromo observes.
“So, at some level of it is ‘normalised’, but what was not normalised
was this idea that the Americans were going to leave. And a lot of the
activists, especially those outside Kabul, were saying the Taliban is going
to come back and the government infrastructure and so forth was so rife
with corruption, it wasn’t going to hold them back.”
Buadromo says as it was only setting up at that point, UAF Asia Pacific
was not able to pre-position-funds prior to the U.S. withdrawal.
However, as the date for the U.S. departure drew closer, the urgency of
the situation was clear.
“The initial evacuation [of vulnerable activists] was from regional towns
and moving them to Kabul, because they really thought Kabul would hold
back the Taliban,” she says.
“That’s when we started trying to move them out of Afghanistan. That
was really challenging, because different governments prioritised different
personnel; translators, lawyers, and they were mainly men. So we had
to really work with people that we knew, with certain governments, like
foreign affairs in Sweden, foreign affairs in New Zealand, Australia to try
and get some of these women lawyers and high-profile activists out.
“And one of the challenges is, when you move one woman out, you
have to move their whole family. So it’s easy to find a spot for one person

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