- I have not had time to edit this information but think it is essential to get out to people. The most important thing you can do right now we have outlined here.
- Daizy Maan 7:25 PM
Banks are shut in Afghanistan can you do something. I remember you built a way for thousands of people to be paid offline during the Ebola crisis right? You’re smart [….]. I need to send money and I need those people to access it. - Hey Daizy. Our systems are really only good for long term help. We are rapidly exploring options to help the refugees population that is ballooning with our NGO partners, but the catastrophic breakdown inside Afghanistan and the stoppage of the flow of US dollars makes short term intervention almost impossible even with the best will in the world. If you need to help people to get out to escape reprisal killings and sexual violence this is something else altogether. Otherwise we are left with waiting a few weeks for the situation to calm down a bit and the outline of a Taliban government to establish itself, this then lets us bargain to let people out and let funds flow again. I’m sorry we can’t be of immediate help 🙁 if you need to try to get people out, let me know.
- Daizy Maan: How do I get people out of Kabul? Trying to do both
- Can’t be done immediately unless they have visas to outbound locations. These may be possible to obtain depending on their status.
- If they have no grounds for a US/UK/EU/AUS visa then they should photograph all the evidence of their collaboration with NATO, NGOs etc, transmit them to are trusted party outside and then destroy them. Delete the photos from their device. Establish a comms plan with regular established check in dates. Then take the device and it’s charger, put them in a plastic bag and then hide them in a dry place.
- Obviously they will have to lay low in their local communities and hide until such time as things normalise a little and land borders reopen to trade.
- The comms plan lets us on the outside start working on ways to get them funds and get them out via Pakistan using whatever network of sympathizers can be organized.
- The Taliban likely don’t have the sophisticated surveillance needed to pick and utilise this sort of burst communication to hunt people down. The window is very small
- And eventually they will need to restart remittances and cross border trade, and that’s the opportunity to get out to a prearranged location in a neighbouring country where onward arrangements can be made
- If they have grounds for a visa it’s a different story. It’s not clear what is happening on the ground but load out and processing is still happening at the airport at least with the British ambassador still signing visas.