Narender Singh Khalsa won a seat in Wolesi Jirga or the lower House of Parliament in Afghanistan in January 2019 – just six months after his father Awtar Singh Khalsa and 10 other Afghan Sikhs had been killed in a terror attack. His win in parliamentary elections was hailed as one of the many small steps democracy took in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.
But as the Taliban’s imminent return to power suddenly put in peril all the gains Afghanistan made in its struggle against the lethal cocktail of fanaticism, extremism and terrorism, Narender Singh and his family joined over 167 others to board a military aircraft at the chaotic and overcrowded Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul and flew out to India.
Another group of 146 evacuees were flown to Doha from Kabul and they are likely to be flown to New Delhi by Monday morning.
“Everything is finished in Afghanistan,” said Narender, as he broke down, after landing at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Hindon near Delhi early on Sunday. “We are back to square one now.”
Also in tears was Anarkali Kour Honaryar. “It’s not easy to leave one’s own country,” said the member of the Meshrano Jirga or the upper House of the National Assembly of Afghanistan.
Anarkali has been a passionate participant in democracy’s struggle over the past two decades to regain the lost ground in Afghanistan. She was a member of the Loya Jirga or the grand assembly that appointed the interim government led by Hamid Karzai after the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001. She was also a member of the committee that drafted the new constitution of Afghanistan.
She had scripted history when she entered the Meshrano Jirga as the first non-Muslim member of Afghan Parliament in 2011. She saw the Taliban’s atrocities on women when it ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. That was why she was not convinced when the leaders of the militant organization promised to pursue a different policy and respect the rights of women when they would return to power. “There is no guarantee at all,” said the dentist-turned-human-rights-activist, who, along with her ailing mother, father and siblings, left Kabul onboard the Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft early on Sunday. “The situation is now too bad in Afghanistan.”
The IAF aircraft evacuated several Afghan Sikh and Hindu families, along with 107 Indians. The youngest of the evacuees was an infant girl, Iknoor Singh.
The Taliban militants had detained some of the evacuees when they had reached close to the airport in Kabul on Saturday. They had been released later though.
“I still cannot believe I could finally arrive in India,” said Anarkali, as she thanked the Government of India and the IAF for evacuating her and her family. “I have seen (such evacuations) in Hollywood and Bollywood films, but never thought it could really happen.”
Another Air India aircraft on Sunday brought to New Delhi 87 evacuees, who were earlier flown to Dushanbe by an IAF aircraft from Kabul.
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