As you may know, we set up this fundraiser to help our friend set up his new life in the UK. We started a week ago, with the goal of helping him clear quarantine (4000 pounds) in the UK and put down a few months' rent. What has happened in between then and now has been a desperate scramble to get an at-risk family out of Kabul.

Reza was supposed to leave Afghanistan with his wife and three children to go to London, where he is already studying a PhD. He spent most of the last year of Covid in limbo, because every time he'd manage to secure visas, new pandemic restrictions would push back his trips and the visas would lapse. Each application needed to go through Islamabad, which meant another journey and another attempt at securing a visa. He's lost thousands of pounds in the process.

Nevertheless, everything was set to go two weeks ago. He had visas, money for quarantine, and flights via Istanbul. Then the Taliban swept through the country, and the last four days we've been doing everything possible to get him out. Reza is from the Hazara minority who are routinely targeted for being shia. We got him on a list of Polish evacuees and within a few hours he and the family were on their way to the airport.

What followed next was awful: Taliban checkpoints, misinformation and beatings (Reza was personally beaten). Even a few hours ago, we were still getting messages from Reza saying that they were surrounded by Taliban fighters, people were shooting, children were screaming. In fact, it wasn't exactly clear that they'd get through the gate and we weren't sure whether they'd come out alive. But it finally happened, they got through the gate, they got on a flight, and they have now landed in Poland.

What began as a humble request to help a friend out, therefore, is now something bigger. This family is traumatised, their departure was not supposed to look like this. We ask for you to kindly donate so that we can help them put their lives back together.

Costs will go to - accommodation, possible new flights to the UK (unless they stay in PL), food, clothing, psychological counselling

Yours,

Paulina Olszanka

Warsaw/Melbourne

On behalf of Reza's classmates from GSSR, Polish Academy of Sciences

English below:

As you may know, we set up this fundraiser to help our friend set up his new life in the UK. We started a week ago, with the goal of helping him clear quarantine (4000 pounds) in the UK and put down a few months' rent. What has happened in between then and now has been a desperate scramble to get an at-risk family out of Kabul.

Reza was supposed to leave Afghanistan with his wife and three children to go to London, where he is already studying a PhD. He spent most of the last year of Covid in limbo, because every time he'd manage to secure visas, new pandemic restrictions would push back his trips and the visas would lapse. Each application needed to go through Islamabad, which meant another journey and another attempt at securing a visa. He's lost thousands of pounds in the process.

Nevertheless, everything was set to go two weeks ago. He had visas, money for quarantine, and flights via Istanbul. Then the Taliban swept through the country, and the last four days we've been doing everything possible to get him out. Reza is from the Hazara minority who are routinely targeted for being shia. We got him on a list of Polish evacuees and within a few hours he and the family were on their way to the airport.

What followed was awful: Taliban checkpoints, misinformation and beatings (Reza was personally beaten). Even a few hours ago, we were still getting messages from Reza saying that they were surrounded by Taliban fighters, people were shooting, children were screaming. In fact, it wasn't exactly clear that they'd get through the gate and we weren't sure whether they'd come out alive. But it finally happened, they got through the gate, they got on a flight, and they have now landed in Poland.

What began as a humble request to help a friend out, therefore, is now something bigger. This family is traumatised, their departure was not supposed to look like this. We ask for you to kindly donate so that we can help them put their lives back together.

Costs will go to - accommodation, possible new flights to the UK (unless they stay in PL), food, clothing, psychological counselling

Yours,

Paulina Olszanka

Warsaw/Melbourne

On behalf of Reza's classmates from GSSR, Polish Academy of Sciences