A Youtuber who gives investment advice helped finance the escape of 170 Afghans to Canada.
David Lee, an investor who lives in Texas, helped a group of stranded Afghans get to the Pakistani border after the Taliban takeover last August.
The Hazaras, who arrived in Calgary earlier this week, included filmmakers, members of the Afghan arts community and human rights activists.
They fled Kabul last summer when the Taliban took over the country, but found themselves stranded in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, with no money to get to the Pakistani border. They had a few days to reach a border crossing before it closed, but they had spent all their money fleeing the Afghan capital.
Mr Lee, who had previously financed the flight of a group of 38 Hazaras to Pakistan, as well as food shipments to Afghanistan, was contacted by an Afghan from a humanitarian organization in the United States to find out s he could provide urgent help.
Members of the 170-person group do not want to be identified for fear of Taliban reprisals against their families and friends.
According to Senator Salma Ataullahjan, who was born in Pakistan and has contacts with many Afghans, the Taliban have targeted democracy activists and women, as well as musicians, smashing their instruments and beating them. Ms. Ataullahjan said a professional Afghan musician she knows buried his instrument for fear of persecution.
According to a BBC report, the Taliban have also imposed severe restrictions on what Afghans can watch on television and have banned women from appearing in television dramas. The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice ordered broadcasters not to broadcast films or programs “contrary to Islamic or Afghan values”.
Along with some of his YouTube subscribers, Mr. Lee raised around US$12,000 in a matter of hours to fund taxi fares and other expenses to enable refugees to travel to a crossing point into Pakistan before border closure.
Mr. Lee, who offers investment training on the YouTube platform, had already helped a group of 38 Afghans, including the family of a student from the University of British Columbia, to cross the Pakistani border. He told the contact who had asked him for help that the group only had a few days to leave the country before the Afghan-Pakistan border closed near Quetta.
However, local bus services that could have brought them to the border were interrupted after the Taliban took over.
“They wanted to cross the border, but they were blocked. They had used all their money to get to Kandahar. The taxis demanded prices ten times higher than usual. I had helped 38 other people cross the border and told them, ‘Your group needs to move as quickly as possible,’” Mr Lee said.
“I reached out to my network and a group of people who watch videos of investors, and within hours we got the money — it was about $12,000 for their fees, the mostly for transportation. They managed to get out just in time. A few days later, the land border was closed. »
The money was transferred to Pakistan, where a middleman managed to arrange transport for the group of Hazaras.
The Hazaras are one of the largest minorities in Afghanistan and speak Hazaraqi, a Persian dialect. They are also found in parts of Iran and Pakistan, with a large population in Quetta. Historically, they have been persecuted in Afghanistan, notably by the Taliban, mainly Pashtuns.
The border, near Quetta, closed a few days after the refugees crossed. According to Mr. Lee, some members of the group almost failed to cross it. A man spent three days at the border trying to persuade the guards to let him through. The refugees had their luggage confiscated, which was returned to them on the Pakistani side.
From the border, they traveled to Quetta where they ended up sleeping on the floor of an unheated wedding hall.
In Islamabad, with the help of human rights groups, they were referred to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who guided them to Canada’s “special humanitarian programme” — one of the two set up to help bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada. This program is intended to help vulnerable groups, including human rights activists, women leaders, persecuted religious or ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people and journalists.
In Islamabad, Lee said, Canadian embassy staff interviewed refugees and took biometric data before approving their immigration to Canada.
The Hazaras were among a group of 252 Afghan refugees welcomed to Canada by Immigration Minister Sean Fraser on Tuesday, and were the first admitted under the special humanitarian program.
The day after their plane landed in Calgary, the leader of the group sent a message to Mr. Lee to say that they are now on Canadian soil, safe and healthy.
The group is now in self-isolation at a hotel in Calgary and will travel to Edmonton when they emerge from quarantine, Lee said.
Mr. Lee, who lives in Texas, hopes to travel to Edmonton to meet with members of the group when the pandemic is over.
“I was personally very happy with their arrival,” he said. “Their lives and those of future generations will be changed forever.”