An Afghan refugee currently living in a hotel in the UK more than 230 miles away from her brothers said she feels her family’s ‘lives are paused’ as they await permanent accommodation.
Mawa Koofi, 21, fled Kabul in August last year with five members of her family when the Afghan city fell to the Taliban. Since then, she has lived in two hotels and has also been split up from some of her siblings.
The family-of-six originally moved to a hotel in Selby in North Yorkshire until Mawa, her mother and brother were relocated to a hotel near Crawley in West Sussex. Her 35-year-old sister remains at the hotel outside of Leeds whereas Ms Koofi’s two brothers, aged 23 and 26, were sent to a hotel in Manchester - which is 237 miles away from Crawley.
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She said the year had felt ‘wasted’ because she was unable to do anything while waiting to be granted a permanent base with her family and move on with their lives.
“I stayed in a hotel for 11 months, I don’t want to stay in a hotel for another 11 months,” Ms Koofi, who is set to study International Relations at King’s College London in September, said. “I have wasted a year because my hotel (in Selby) was in a location where I couldn’t do anything.
“When I think back to the year, I just see it as a blank – it’s nothing, I haven’t done anything. You don’t even have the energy to get up from your bed because you know your day is nothing.
“I feel like our lives are paused, I just want our lives to be played.”
She said that being separated from her family has also reopened psychological wounds inflicted after they left their home in Afghanistan.
“With Leeds, all of us were together and we were there for each other,” she said.
“We had a wound from leaving Afghanistan and with each other, we tried to bandage it and we were fine and the wound wasn’t bleeding anymore. But after splitting the families, it’s like the bandages are removed and they’ve started bleeding.
“The memories of Afghanistan come every day and since we are alone, we have more time to think about what happened to us.”
In a letter dated June 27, refugees minister Lord Harrington appealed to councils to help house the 10,500 Afghans currently staying at hotels across the UK, writing: “I am determined to move both existing and new arrivals out of bridging accommodation as quickly as possible to help people integrate most successfully into their new lives in the UK.”
Ms Koofi said Lord Harrington’s push to house Afghan refugees is only ‘a great idea’ if it is going to materialise. The former MP wrote that over 2,000 additional properties are required “to move these families out of bridging and into settled accommodation”.
“This is something that Afghans really want, I hope this one doesn’t fail,” she said. “I want to have that feeling after losing my house in Afghanistan and what I want is to have a house that feels like I’m at home.
“Once you feel like you’re in a house and it’s your own home and you can clean your room, arrange your house, maybe it won’t feel like your own country but you might feel like it’s your house.”
The student added that she and her family have begun to lose hope that they might ever find permanent accommodation.
“There is always hope and there is always a bright light but I want to feel that word again,” she said. “I don’t feel it anymore. No one else does – none of my family.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The response to the crisis in Afghanistan last August was one of the most challenging, intense and complex overseas operations undertaken by the UK, and the largest air evacuation operation in recent memory.
“We are proud this country has provided homes for more than 7,000 Afghan evacuees in such a short space of time, but we face a challenge of there currently not being enough local housing accommodation in the UK not just for Afghans and those in need of protection but also British citizens who are also on a waiting list for homes.
“While hotels do not provide a long-term solution, they do offer safe, secure and clean accommodation.
“We will continue to bring down the number of people in bridging hotels, moving people into more sustainable accommodation as quickly as possible.”
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