'I was reporting on an unfolding crisis as my own family was trying to survive it'

A year since Taliban forces took control of Afghanistan, SBS News journalist Rashida Yosufzai reflects on the fall of Kabul and what's happened to her family there since.

Source: SBS News

Key Points

• SBS News journalist Rashida Yosufzai, left Afghanistan as a refugee with her family in the 90s.
• Now, she shares what the Taliban takeover means for her family still in the country.

The images were distressing enough. Dozens of desperate Afghans, clinging to the sides of a departing US Air Force plane.

People falling from the sky, their bodies later found strewn on neighbourhood rooftops in the capital Kabul.

Hundreds fearful of the Taliban, who’d just stormed the capital to reclaim power after almost 20 years, clambering over each other at Kabul airport in a bid to get refuge out of the country.

And unbeknown to me, my own family members were there too, trying to flee.

Thousands of kilometres away in pandemic-locked-down Greater Sydney, I was in journalist mode, working from home and gathering material on what was happening at the airport for the SBS World News TV bulletin.

I was watching the images roll in on social media accounts, horrified like so many others as the desperation unfolded seemingly in real-time.

Then I got a call from my dad.

Rashida Yosufzai with her extended family in the early 1990s.

Your uncle is at the airport, he said.

I froze. I couldn’t think. I shook my head in shock.

My mind was trying to shift from journalist mode. When I finally could, I tried to picture my uncle in the crowd. I scrolled through the pictures and videos on my feed trying to search for him.

What on earth is he doing there? I asked my dad. Tell him to go home, now, I said. It’s too dangerous.

He’s terrified, my dad told me. He has to get out of the country.

Dad said, thankfully, my uncle wasn’t on the tarmac amongst the crowds. He was inside the terminal building and safe, for now.

But my uncle never made it out that day. He’s still in Afghanistan, as are my other relatives, who, living in regional parts of the country, are under even greater threat.

My young cousins are now confined to a life at home, hidden from the world, because they are girls.

My older relatives, who hold prominent roles in civil society, I can’t talk too much about in order to keep them safe.

On rare phone calls, I hear the fear in their voice and the sudden tone of the call being disconnected.

Rashida Yosufzai and her family in Sydney, in the 1990s.

A year on from the Taliban takeover, my family has seen some of their nightmares come true. A humanitarian crisis that’s left millions starving, an economic crisis that’s made leaders into paupers, and others, directly persecuted by the new regime.

I was born in Afghanistan and fled as a child in the 1990s.

For most reporters covering these issues, it’s often at an arm’s length. These topics, stories, tragedies, are affecting strangers.

On rare phone calls, I hear the fear in their voice and the sudden tone of the call being disconnected.

Rashida Yosufzai

In journalist mode you tell the story with a kind of respectful detachment. But when I’m switched off and back to being a niece, a cousin, a relative, I don’t have that luxury.

I know just how much these issues are affecting these people because it’s affecting my own loved ones.

Around this time last year, I was interviewing vulnerable people - interpreters, women leaders, persecuted minorities - fleeing the Taliban takeover. They were strangers to me but were facing the same situation as my own relatives.

It was an especially surreal moment when I found myself speaking to the brother of a former Australian Defence Force interpreter who was evacuated from Kabul and had found himself in a refugee camp in Berlin.

My other family members were in the same camp, at that very same time. They’d escaped the panic at Kabul airport, boarding a military evacuation flight, and were now being processed like hundreds of others in that crowded camp. I couldn’t speak to them. I couldn't do much for them.

And there’s not much I can do today for those family members that didn’t make it out.

But I hope by continuing to tell the stories of Afghanistan, I can remind audiences of their humanity, dignity and worth.

Some people watching on might be getting ‘Afghanistan fatigue’ after decades seeing so many reports of death and destruction from the country. But trust me, no one is more fatigued than the people from Afghanistan themselves.

After almost half a century of conflict, it’s devastating for those still in their homeland, and shattering for those who've managed to leave and can do nothing but watch.

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