‘They need their parents’: Afghans in UK tell of pain of family separation

Evacuees from Afghanistan wait be flown to a safe location in a makeshift departure gate at the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, in September 2021. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

In August 2021, as the UK and US withdrew from Afghanistan, marking the end of the 20-year war, Zulikha Zazai and her family were among thousands of Afghans and foreigners at Hamid Karzai international airport desperate to leave as the Taliban returned to power.

“It was [such a] horrible time for me,” said Zazai, 20, recalling being separated from her parents as teargas was fired into the crowd. “At that time I didn’t feel that I was leaving them.”