Testimony of a French woman brought back from Kabul

Victoria Fontane, vice president of the American University of Afghanistan, was repatriated this Saturday from Kabul. On the set of BFMTV, she recounts the Taliban’s arrival in the capital, as well as the airport that has become a “life-size refugee camp.”

A complete heartbreak. Victoria Fontane, vice president of the American University of Afghanistan, was repatriated this Saturday from Kabul. She was one of the passengers on the fifth evacuation flight from Kabul to France, after making a detour through Abu Dhabi. On BFMTV, she invokes her pain to leave the country so brutally, but she also denounces the ridicule of the international community.

disability

On Sunday, August 15, when Kabul fell under the yoke of the Taliban, the vice president of the American University of Afghanistan said: “Kabul is falling without any effort from the Taliban. People are trapped in their homes,” she said. He remembers. “Everyone feels powerless in the face of what was inevitable,” the academic adds.

Then she invokes the “Taliban double rhetoric”, with spokespersons claiming they want to stay at the gates of Kabul so the city is not taken by force and then the reality on the ground, with the Taliban well on the street, “hand weapons” causing “sporadic fighting” . Then Victoria Fontaine receives many letters from her students, very worried:

“Our students started sending us messages telling us ‘They are here, what do we do? “

Then the academic finds sanctuary in a private company camp with other foreigners. But he was soon attacked by a group of Taliban belonging to the far fringes of the movement, who are actually responsible for the killing of two teachers in 2014, and then the kidnapping of two others in 2016. “As soon as we knew it. It was them, it gave us goosebumps.”

For her, the Taliban are fond of feeling revenge, as evidenced by the photo she received on Saturday evening from the two students in front of her university, with the comment: “We are in the university that studies against Islam.” “We feel insulted,” she breathes.

Life-size refugee camp

Regarding the dramatic images of Afghans trying to escape at all costs by clinging to planes, the vice president of the American University does not hide her disgust with the behavior of the international community: seeing the French helped: “Do something for me!”

Once at the airport, Victoria Fontaine, like other foreigners, was put “in line, sitting on the tarmac.” “When the plane arrives, we have 20 minutes to arrive and we have to be quick.” Around the runway, the French lady sees “endless queues of seated people”:

“It feels like a life-size refugee camp.”

Regarding the dramatic images of Afghans trying to escape at all costs by clinging to planes, the vice president of the American University does not hide her disgust with the behavior of the international community:

“What an insult and what a humiliation for the Afghan people to the end. Spending twenty years with them, welcoming them, dreaming about the future with them and then finally saying ‘Seo that didn’t work, fate let you be and be smarter next time’.”

She explained that for Victoria Fontaine, leaving Afghanistan is a “total heartbreak” because “we leave behind people with high hopes.”