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Well before the evacuation, a generation of Afghans escaped to Europe. The experience has been dire.
Europe
Well before the evacuation, a generation of Afghans escaped to Europe. Their experience has been dire.
By Chico Harlan
September 14, 2021 at 1:15 p.m. EDT
ATHENS — The many Afghans in this city consider themselves lucky — to be safe and alive — and so they begin with those caveats before acknowledging the next part: They have escaped war only to wind up in a different kind of crisis.
One immigrant, who described each day in Greece as feeling like “an entire year,” said he now needs a cocktail of pills for sleeplessness and depression. Another, who works only sporadically, regularly skips meals so her children can eat; even so, one child became malnourished to the point of hospitalization. Another Afghan, Fatah Mohammad, 33, said he sometimes punches himself in the head, raging about his own helplessness in a place where he can’t speak the language and where social services are strained. Though he’s been in Greece since November 2019, he hasn’t managed even to enroll his 7-year-old in school.
“We’re all going crazy here,” Mohammad said, as his son spent a weekday morning playing with a phone.
Though most immigrants who have reached Europe through unofficial channels in recent years have faced hardship, the Afghan experience has been particularly grueling — adding to the calamity of the West’s 20-year war.
“Unless your life is in direct danger in Afghanistan, I’d tell others not to come,” said Mohammad Sultani, 40, who used to own a gold shop in Kandahar province. Almost all the Afghans he knows in Greece are jobless.
{snip}
Sayed Ahmadzia Ebrahimi contributed to this report.
By Chico Harlan
Chico Harlan is The Washington Post's Rome bureau chief. Previously, he was The Post’s East Asia bureau chief, covering the natural and nuclear disasters in Japan and a leadership change in North Korea. He has also been a member of The Post's financial and national enterprise teams. Twitter https://twitter.com/chicoharlan
Well before the evacuation, a generation of Afghans escaped to Europe. Their experience has been dire.
By Chico Harlan
September 14, 2021 at 1:15 p.m. EDT
ATHENS — The many Afghans in this city consider themselves lucky — to be safe and alive — and so they begin with those caveats before acknowledging the next part: They have escaped war only to wind up in a different kind of crisis.
One immigrant, who described each day in Greece as feeling like “an entire year,” said he now needs a cocktail of pills for sleeplessness and depression. Another, who works only sporadically, regularly skips meals so her children can eat; even so, one child became malnourished to the point of hospitalization. Another Afghan, Fatah Mohammad, 33, said he sometimes punches himself in the head, raging about his own helplessness in a place where he can’t speak the language and where social services are strained. Though he’s been in Greece since November 2019, he hasn’t managed even to enroll his 7-year-old in school.
“We’re all going crazy here,” Mohammad said, as his son spent a weekday morning playing with a phone.
Though most immigrants who have reached Europe through unofficial channels in recent years have faced hardship, the Afghan experience has been particularly grueling — adding to the calamity of the West’s 20-year war.
“Unless your life is in direct danger in Afghanistan, I’d tell others not to come,” said Mohammad Sultani, 40, who used to own a gold shop in Kandahar province. Almost all the Afghans he knows in Greece are jobless.
{snip}
Sayed Ahmadzia Ebrahimi contributed to this report.
By Chico Harlan
Chico Harlan is The Washington Post's Rome bureau chief. Previously, he was The Post’s East Asia bureau chief, covering the natural and nuclear disasters in Japan and a leadership change in North Korea. He has also been a member of The Post's financial and national enterprise teams. Twitter https://twitter.com/chicoharlan
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