Afghanistan’s top diplomat in Pakistan has launched an urgent appeal for asylum in Australia, saying he will soon have his diplomatic credentials stripped and will be executed by the Taliban following the fall of Kabul.
Sherzamin Kunary, who has four children and seven grandchildren living in Australia, has been the chief of mission in the Islamabad embassy since the former ambassador was recalled last month after his daughter was briefly kidnapped.
Yama Kunary in Kabul with his father Sherzamin Kunary, a senior Afghan diplomat who now wants asylum in Australia.
Mr Kunary has provided a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that appears to have been sent to him by The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which threatens his life and that of his family.
The letter, dated July 26, accuses Mr Kunary of being a “diplomat for an infidel and apostate Administration”.
“According to the Sharia, you and your family’s death is obligatory,” a translation of the letter reads. “You have worked with the infidel and puppet government at your own will. Therefore, you and your family are responsible for your own death.”
Australia is trying to work out how to land multiple RAAF aircraft at Kabul airport to rescue almost 600 Australians and Afghans. More than 250 Australian troops are on standby at the ADF’s forward operating base in the United Arab Emirates.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday said he understood many Australian veterans were concerned about the safety of local interpreters and other Afghans they served alongside during the decades-long conflict.
“We will continue to do everything we can for those who have stood with us, as we have to this day,” Mr Morrison said. “But I want to talk openly to veterans that despite our best efforts, I know that support won’t reach all that it should. On the ground events have overtaken many efforts, we wish it were different.”
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke also announced on Tuesday that no Afghan national in Australia would be deported to Afghanistan while the security situation in the country remains “dire”. But the fate of Afghan diplomats such as Mr Kunary, 64, is unclear.
Mr Kunary said the risk to him and his family was “extremely high and we can be targeted and killed at any moment by the Taliban”.
“I cannot return to Afghanistan and I cannot remain in Pakistan due to the specific threat to my life and that of my family from the TTP,” he said.
“I was informed last night that the Taliban group based in Peshawar together with TTP are planning to come and attack the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad and take the flag down and take it under their control.
“As I am the top diplomat of the collapsed Afghan government, they will execute me inside the embassy, or they will attack me and my family outside the embassy and kill us. The Taliban can locate my place of residence and kill me and my family inside the house.”
Mr Kunary applied for a contributory parent visa to move to Australia in 2019, but has now sent an urgent application for a humanitarian visa after the Taliban captured Kabul.
“I ask the Australian government to grant me and my family a humanitarian visa on urgent basis as we will not be alive for long if we remain in Pakistan,” he said. “My four children and seven grandchildren are in Australia and all of them are Australian citizens and I would like to join them.”
One of Mr Kunary’s sons living in Australia, Yama, said he feared that as soon as his father lost his diplomatic status he would be killed.
“The day he loses the protection anyone can come and shoot him and kill all of my family,” he said. “There is no way he can go to Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban are active in Pakistan.”
Labor Leader Anthony Albanese said the government needed to commit to offering paths to permanent residency or citizenship, saying the idea that minority groups like the Hazara community could ever return wasn’t realistic.
“We need to give them the certainty of Australian citizenship on a permanent basis, rather than some pretence that somehow their circumstances are temporary,” he said.
Nawid Cina, acting general manager of Mahoba’s Promise, a not-for-profit organisation that helps women and children in Afghanistan, said the Australian government needed to evacuate those most at risk as well as open up a dedicated refugee intake for Afghanistan.
”The Australian government needs to do whatever it can to evacuate whoever has been connected to Australia – even if they have not been formally connected to the government,” he said.
“If you were to come and apply the stringent and strict existing refugee law processes – they won’t accept anyone. It needs to be a process that is expedited for Afghans.”
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