Croatian travel blogger Kristijan Ilicic, on a call for help from his guide from Afghanistan, decided to launch a humanitarian action to rescue him and his family from Kabul, and in just a few days he managed to raise almost $50,000.
“Welcome to Afghanistan, officially the most dangerous country in the world,” Ilicic wrote under the first photo he published during his visit to this country in November 2020.
As during the visit, Christian had a rare insight into the life and culture of the people of this country, he said that he was particularly affected by recent events.
“These days, with stomach cramps and anxiety in my soul, I am watching what is happening in that country. The estimates of the Americans that it will take the Taliban up to 90 days to conquer Kabul have proved wrong. Kabul fell in 90 hours. The president fled the country, and his army surrendered its weapons very easily, ”he wrote on Facebook.
One of the photos from Afghanistan published by Ilicic also shows Noor, a tourist guide who recently left his native Mazar-i-Sharif with his wife, four-year-old son and four-month-old daughter and fled to Kabul, where he is hiding in a friend’s house. . He believes that if the Taliban found him, he would be killed.
His goal is to leave the country, in which Iličić decided to help him by organizing a fundraising campaign on the GoGetFunding platform, and in just a few days he raised $50,000.
“The response has been incredible. Thanks to everyone who helps. I decided on this move because of Noor and his family and the driver who drove me there and his family. Noor was a government adviser in the security segment. He made money from tourists and was targeted by the Taliban. If they find him, they will surely kill him … He has no choice but to flee. He is hiding in Kabul in a secret location. There is complete chaos there, thousands of people are on the borders. Whoever does not have the documents will not get them. The only option he has now is to get a visa for India because maybe soon their embassy will be open, all the others are closed …. nothing is working there. His last option is Pakistan “, said Iličić, who became closer to the locals during his visit to Afghanistan.
“For most people in the West, the first association when you say Afghanistan will be: the Taliban, terrorism, violence … People who live in this beautiful country have been carrying this stigma for forty years. Because of the radicalized minority, which interprets the Qur’an in some arbitrary way. These wonderful people have been on the pillar of shame for decades, left by everyone, in one of the poorest countries in the world,” Ilicic wrote on Instagram.
He went public with a call to help the man and the people he met. “I asked for a minimal donation, a dollar, two … Another great catastrophe of our time is happening before our eyes. Personally, I want to help people whose lives have touched and enriched me. They lived happily, they had their home, their careers. Everything is gone now. My heart is broken. Everything will be published transparently and all the money will be sent to them “, he points out.
