Former Afghan interpreters living in Newcastle continue their pleas for support

Former interpreters living in Newcastle say that the Taliban are going door to door in Kabul taking cars and possessions from families.

One man's mother has been beaten and left unconscious, another man's father is missing, and an entire family was killed in their own home.

Fardin Rahmani, a former interpreter now living in Jesmond, said the process in place for those seeking refuge in Australia is time-consuming and unrealistic in the current climate.

"It is very bad at the moment. We were the interpreters, we gave them our life. We were being called a dog, a spy, a kind of traitor for selling out the homeland. My brother-in-law alerted me, saying the Taliban is looking for families of people who worked as interpreters - if they find out that these families belong to a person who used to work as an interpreter they will not let them go. They will be killed straight away."

Fardin said the US had developed a relatively simple system, where interpreters and their families could share a list of the names of their extended family members and they were helped out, but the Australian Government was still asking for evidence of people's lives being in danger and paper work such as birth certificates and passports.

"We have to accelerate," he said. "The Australian Government needs to do something for us, especially my mother and sister ... they take young women as sex slaves, we can't sit and say they have to leave the country, and then apply for a refugee visa, and wait two to four years to get the visa done with lots of proof and evidence - just collect it on face book and social media to see what is going on in the country."

If families cannot be brought to Australia straight away, they could at least be removed from Afghanistan, he said.

"At least if they can be taken out of the country and settled somewhere else, we are happy to support them - even if they send them to PNG for a while, at least we'll know they are safe and they will come, and we will be reunited together. But at the moment, if we leave them behind they will get killed."

Faisal Ahmady, another former Afghan interpreter who worked with the ADF and has since settled in Newcastle, has two sisters who escaped to Pakistan after being attacked in 2019, and are eligible to come to Australia on a humanitarian visa, but their applications have sat still for two years.

He has another sister still stuck in Kabul, who has tried to get to the airport but has no visa.

"Every single day they are knocking on doors looking for links to the resistance and they are taking people and killing them," he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that Afghans will make up at least 3,000 of this year's 13,750 strong humanitarian program, but critics say that is not enough, and have urged him to commit to bringing in many more.

The UNHCR estimates that up to 270,000 Afghans have been displaced inside the country since January 2021, due to insecurity and violence.

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