hankyoreh

A man pulls a girl inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. (Reuters/Yonhap News)

A former Afghan employee of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was hired for a cultural and educational project in the Bamyan Province of Afghanistan, says he is afraid for his life after the Taliban took over the country.

He is afraid that his work for international organizations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will make him a target for persecution. He’s a member of the Hazara people, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan.

He walked for three days from Bamyan to the Afghan capital of Kabul, which he reached on Friday. But now he’s afraid because he couldn’t board an airplane leaving the country.

A former employee for a UN agency who is trying to arrange his escape told the Hankyoreh on Tuesday that Koreans have been evacuated from Afghanistan, but locals who helped South Korea haven’t been able to get away.

Afghans climb atop a plane as they wait at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. (AFP/Yonhap News)

“The South Korean government needs to issue a statement calling for the safety of locals who were employed in its projects in Afghanistan and take other measures as other advanced countries have done.”

The South Korean government has provided Afghanistan with around US$1 billion in aid since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, twenty years ago. The South Korean army also sent a medical support team called the Dongui Unit and an engineering support team called the Dasan Unit from 2003 to 2007 and a provincial reconstruction team called the Oshino Unit — Oshino means “friend” in a local language — from 2010 to 2014.

Furthermore, a South Korean hospital at the Bagram Air Base treated around 230,000 patients between 2008 and 2015.

Locals were hired to serve as interpreters and in other roles for these South Korean military units and the hospital.

Sources knowledgeable about local conditions said that around 40 Afghans who worked at the hospital at Bagram Air Base could be in danger because they betrayed the Taliban by working for other countries. Hundreds of locals reportedly want to escape the country and relocate elsewhere out of concerns that they’ll be persecuted for their work with the Korean government.

The US and Canada are setting up programs to evacuate Afghans who were in their employ. France, Germany, the UK, and Australia are also looking into accepting such individuals as refugees.

French soldiers stand guard as French and Afghan nationals wait to board a military transport plane at the airport in Kabul on Tuesday. (AFP/Yonhap News)

Refugee and human rights advocacy groups say that the South Korean government needs to take steps to ensure the safety of Afghans who worked for its military units and other government bodies.

The Korea Refugee Rights Network, an umbrella group representing 29 human rights groups, including Advocates for Public Interest Law, released a statement along those lines.

“The South Korean government needs to immediately determine the whereabouts of the interpreters and other locals who worked for the provincial reconstruction team and related organizations and their family members and to issue visas so they can escape. The government should either make use of the refugee resettlement program or have diplomatic missions in neighboring countries issue visas, so the individuals affected can make their way to South Korea,” the network said in its statement.

By Lee Jae-ho, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]