The six Bangladeshi nationals working at Afghan Wireless had to make several attempts to fly out of the Afghan capital as the Taliban took charge and consolidated their power.
A bomb attack threat scuppered their first attempt to reach the airport. On their second, an attack claimed by the Islamic State killed 169 Afghan civilians and 13 US military personnel.
On their third attempt, the group braved fighting and gunfire to reach the airport and evacuated safely.
Razib Bin Islam, a member of the group, gave an account of the harrowing experience to bdnews24.com.
Razib, an engineer, oversaw the PBX network and Contact Centre of Afghan American company Afghan Wireless, the top mobile phone and internet service provider in the country.
“We always believed we could get home if we could just get to the airport,” Razib said.
“We never lost our courage.”
Razib joined Afghan Wireless in 2007. Initially, there were many Bangladeshis working at the company, but only about nine were employed there at the time of the Taliban takeover. About a hundred other foreign nationals worked at the company.
When the Taliban approached Kabul in August, taking nearby provinces one by one, Razib and his colleagues were still at work. On Aug 14, as the situation deteriorated, the company decided to move its foreign staff out of Afghanistan.
It booked Emirates Airlines tickets for six Bangladeshi members of staff, including Razib, to leave on Aug 16. As they were taking their COVID-19 tests for the trip, Kabul airport suspended all commercial flights.
“We got our negative COVID-19 test results around 7.30pm on Aug 15. Just after that we received a message from Emirates Airlines informing us that all their flights from Kabul had been suspended,” Razib said.
The Taliban took over Jalalabad, a prominent province in the east, on Aug 15 and surrounded Kabul. They began to enter the capital later that day.
To avoid any bloodshed, the Afghan government announced a ‘peaceful handover of power’…