Afghan student desperate to attend U of M classes Visa red tape preventing escape to Canada as U.S. forces beat hasty retreat, Taliban takes control By: Gabrielle Piché Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 16, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2021 (1228 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the Taliban seize control across Afghanistan, including their recent capture of Kabul, the capital city, one University of Manitoba student is unable to leave the country, halted by bureaucratic red tape.

First, Abid Stanekzai couldn’t enter Canada last year because of COVID-19 restrictions and had to attend first-year classes online from Kabul in the middle of the night.

Now, he’s stuck in the war-torn central Asian country because he can’t get his student visa — it requires a trip to Dubai or India for a biometrics scan, and there are no flights out, Stanekzai said.

“Everything happened suddenly,” he said of the fundamentalist Taliban insurgents’ takeover, which has led to further complications for the second-year student.

The militants entered Kabul Sunday. President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan, ending the 20-year western campaign to transform the country into a democracy. U.S. president Joe Biden set a deadline of Sept. 11 to remove all U.S. troops. As a result, the Taliban has roared back into Afghans’ lives.

Stanekzai, 21, just wants to attend classes in person when he can.

“It’s a big treat for me,” he said via email, referring to the prospect of going to school in Canada and leaving the mayhem behind.

He’s hoping to study civil engineering. He planned to come to Canada before the pandemic hit but was stymied as restrictions rolled out. Now, he wants a flight to Winnipeg as quickly as possible.

Even though he has a valid passport, he can’t get a student visa because of a missing biometrics scan (which includes getting fingerprints taken). He can’t take the tests in Afghanistan, nor can he enter Dubai or India, the next-closest options.

Afghanistan’s Canadian embassy is closed due to the unstable situation.

“It may be impossible for him to leave the country now,” said Steve Bigelow, a Manitoban who has been trying to help Stanekzai cross the ocean.

Stanekzai’s family is in the marble business in Afghanistan, and Bigelow is working with them to set up a distribution site in Manitoba.

Abid’s father is hoping to get the rest of the family out, but some have expired passports and need to get new ones, which takes time.

“There’s all these obstacles from our side of the fence, where you’ve got a student that wants to go to the University of Manitoba, and it’s impractical to expect him to get biometrics,” Bigelow said. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to give him a visa? Because he can travel, and then he can go and get the biometrics?”

Bigelow has contacted federal MPs about Stanekzai’s case. He said he hasn’t been able to make any headway yet.

Thousands of Afghans have tried to flee their country since the Taliban seized power. On Monday, several died in a chaotic scene at Kabul’s airport; many made it onto the runway and attempted to board a moving U.S. military plane about to take off and fell to their deaths.

Western troops have occupied the country for two decades following al-Qaeda terrorists’ 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Mariam Omar, the founder and chair of the Manitoba chapter of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, is dismayed by the troop pullout.

“What we see right now is the complete chaos that is unfolding because of the actions taken in the west — or lack of action,” she said.

She worries that women and girls will lose the rights and freedoms they have gained over the past two decades, including attending school.

Reports from the country say Afghan security forces and soldiers have not put up a fight — they’ve simply put down their weapons and gone home, allowing the fundamentalist insurgents to take control with limited violence.

“To see all that progress that (women have) made… be shattered in just a couple of days, it’s nothing but heartbreaking,” she said.

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca