Days after the Taliban retook Kabul in August 2021, Abdullah, his heavily-pregnant wife, Zahra, and their two young children went into hiding, locking the door of their house and rationing out the supplies they had left inside.
The couple were well-known targets to the Taliban: they had both worked in prominent positions within the office of the now-former president Ashraf Ghani and had been involved in peace-building charity work. Though the UK government had launched Operation Pitting and the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), the Ghulam family, who had not worked with or alongside the British government, were ineligible for evacuation through either scheme.
