In January 2021, Zahra Shaheer had to get out of Afghanistan… fast. So when she had the rare opportunity to secure safe passage out of danger for herself and her two children, she seized it, even though it meant leaving her mother behind. Now, Zahra and her mother remain separated by thousands of miles, and insurmountable policies that are designed to prevent her mother from reuniting with her family in the new home in the UK.
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Episode 5: Safe Routes for Refugees
One woman’s unlikely journey from Afghanistan to the UK
We take a look back at the history of global refugee policy, and the importance of safe routes as the number of displaced people around the globe reaches record-breaking levels.
Read Episode 5 Full Transcript Below
[AMBIENT NOISE: WATER GENTLY ROLLS TO A BOIL IN AN ELECTRIC KETTLE. THE HOUSE HUMS QUIETLY]
ASHLEY [VO]: This is Into the Mix, a Ben & Jerry’s podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox Creative. I’m Ashley C. Ford.
ZAHRA: Would you like to have Afghani, British tea? I know now the way, how British people serve tea.
[MUX: SLOW, GROOVY LO-FI, WITH PIANO AND HORNS]
[AMBIENT: PRODUCER CHATTING WITH ZAHRA OFF-MIC]
MARTHA: Afghani tea sounds delicious.
ZAHRA: Green, black, ah, saffron?
ASHLEY [VO]: From the moment the team knocks on her door outside of London, Zahra Shaheer is an exceptionally generous host.
[AMBIENT: PRODUCER CHATTING WITH ZAHRA OFF-MIC]
MARTHA: I’ve never tried Saffron.
ZAHRA: Saffron.
MARTHA: Yeah, that sounds delicious. Thank you!
ZAHRA: Okay. You all? Yeah. Sounds good? Saffron tea for you as well. Okay.
She’s smiling and warm, ushering my producers Martha and Taylor out of the cold and into the comfort of the flat she shares with her two young children.
ZAHRA: That – it is some Afghani pastry. I baked last night for you. And some Afghani dry fruit, like green raisins, which you don’t have in the UK. Black raisins and something else.
ASHLEY [VO]: As the grassy, burnt honey aroma of saffron fills the living room — swirling around photos of her parents on the wall, her mother in a beautiful headscarf, her father in an excellent mustache — Zahra tells us that her warm hospitality is part of her identity as an Afghan woman. Today it’s a welcome ritual. One that brings her back home to herself.
“Zahra tells us that her warm hospitality is part of her identity as an Afghan woman. Today it’s a welcome ritual. One that brings her back home to herself.”
ZAHRA: It’s reminding me back home. How I was living in Afghanistan and welcoming my guests and sometimes how people welcome me in their houses and the same way we did when a guest is coming in our house.
[MUX: FADES OUT GENTLY]
ASHLEY [VO]: By the time the team met Zahra at her cozy flat in High Wycombe, England, and we connected via video chat, it had been 18 months since she last stepped foot in the house she shared with her extended family in Afghanistan.
ZAHRA: We had a big house with a big garden and there was many trees. Like apple tree, grapes, and also even almond tree we had in our, our house.
I was not in a school, so we played all the day in the house with my cousins. And it was good time.
[MUX: SPACEY CHORUS OF HIGH VOICES OVER A LOW-FI BEAT WITH GENTLE RECORD SCRATCHES]
When Zahra was 12, the same age her own daughter is now, the first Taliban regime fell… and Zahra was able to go to school. Her mother made sure of it.
ZAHRA: Actually, my mom, she’s an open-minded woman. She’s an educated woman, and while it was Afghanistan’s bright time, and it was democracy in Afghanistan, my mom finished her school and she went to university and she worked for the government. Forty years in different regimes. And three years ago, she was retired. So she always tried for our education, she always supported us with our education.
ASHLEY [VO]: Zahra studied hard, catching up on everything she missed with private tutors, until she graduated at 19. She even sat the exam to continue on to university, but then…
ZAHRA: I got married and then my children was born. First, my daughter was born, and then my son. My husband didn’t let me to go to university. He said, you’re not allowed to go anywhere, and my education has been stopped there.
[MUX: ECHOES OUT DRAMATICALLY]
ASHLEY [VO]: But that didn’t mean Zahra stopped fighting for the future she had always envisioned for herself.
ZAHRA: I was very small when my uncle, he sent a TV from Germany, in Afghanistan for us because we didn’t have a lot in Afghanistan at that time. And my cousin said, you always went in front of the TV and you said that, I want to be like her. I want to be like him. You showed the characters in TV, like presenters, reporters, or maybe sometimes the singers!
ASHLEY: I love that.
ZAHRA: There was a presenter, she was very, very nice presenter, and she presented in a very nice way. Uh, and I always try to see, uh, and watch her programs. Also watch the news. Even while, while I was a 12 years old girl… you know, in that age they don’t like news.
ASHLEY: Laughs. Right!
ZAHRA: But I was keen to, uh, to see the news, what’s happening and how she’s presenting.
ASHLEY [VO]: After bringing her children into the world, and pushing back against her husband, who did not want her to work… Zahra became that woman on TV, delivering the news to the people of Afghanistan.
[MUX: SUBTLE THUMPING BASS LINE WITH STRINGS AND HORNS.]
ASHLEY [VO]: She spent a decade as a journalist there, first in radio, then as an anchor for a television program called “Peace and Security.”
She loved the late nights and the early mornings. She loved deadlines and breaking news. She loved working hard, and knowing that when she was in the studio, her children were with their grandmother, who cheered Zahra on while other members of the family wondered whether this was an appropriate lifestyle for her daughter, who had by then left her husband.
And then, after two decades, the US army, and NATO allies like the UK, withdrew from Afghanistan.
Zahra had to get out fast. A journalist protection program secured her three plane tickets to the United Kingdom – one for her, and two for her children.
That was in August of 2021. And to this day, the fact that there wasn’t a fourth plane ticket haunts Zahra.
[MUX: SHIMMERS OUT]
ZAHRA: (Very emotional) I wish my mom to be with me, especially in this Mother’s Day.
ASHLEY: I wish that for you too.
ZAHRA: I don’t know when I will reunite with her. I don’t know. In life or in death. Because you know, she’s an old woman and always, she’s calling me and she says, “I want to see you before I die.”
It’s my only wish to see her alive. Sorry.
Ashley: Don’t apologize. There’s a humanity to that. And listen: you honor your humanity with your tears.
[MUX: SUBTLE THUMPING BASS LINE WITH STRINGS AND HORNS.]
ASHLEY [VO]: Humanity. It’s what drives desperate people to take dangerous measures to flee even more dangerous situations at home.
It’s humanity that leads people to stock the fridge for people arriving on the other side of harrowing experiences. Like Zahra’s new neighbors did for her, as a new refugee arrival in the UK.
It’s humanity that demands that we see each person who’s had to flee their home as a person first, not as a singular statistic adding to one of the greatest moral and political crises of our time.
It’s humanity that won’t let Zahra rest until she’s reunited with her mother –
[MUX: PAUSE.]
ASHLEY [VO]: – and it’s intentional and inhumane policies from political leaders that are preventing that reunion from happening.
[MUX RETURN, THEN FADE DOWN SLOWLY UNDER ZAHRA.]
ZAHRA: There is no system for people to apply for their families, and there is not any kind of form. And I asked for help: that I need my mom, and it is exceptional case because she’s alone in Afghanistan. And she’s getting sick because she has been struggling with a lot of stress and problems and she’s isolated now, alone in Afghanistan.
But they just said, “sorry, we don’t have any system that you can bring your mother.” It is, it is difficult. It is nearly 18 months. I ask everyone. The council, the home office, the Red Cross, the other charity organizations. But no one is able to help me with reuniting with my mom.
ASHLEY [VO]: And that’s by design – because the UK Government’s policies are set up to punish – not protect – people seeking safety.
[MUX: THEME MUSIC IN. SHIMMERING, WITH GROOVY PERCUSSION]
ASHLEY [VO]: Over 100 million people are displaced from their homes around the world – fleeing for their lives from war and persecution from countries including Venezuela, Somalia, Ukraine and Afghanistan – the highest numbers since records began.
And with increasingly hostile policies coupled with the lack of safe routes out of danger… more and more of those people are forced into dangerous journeys as they desperately seek safety – often with the hope of reuniting with family – any way they can.
Let’s get into it.
[MUX: THEME MUSIC REVERBS OUT.]
DAVID: People should know that refugees are just like them.
ASHLEY [VO]: David Miliband is the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.
DAVID: They are accountants and physical trainers and farmers and housewives and house husbands, and they’re charity workers. And they’re journalists. Uh, they are the full mix because chaos and tragedy and disasters strike in such a random way.
ASHLEY [VO]: The International Rescue Committee - the IRC - is a global humanitarian charity and refugee support organization. After spending a decade at the top of British government, and serving as Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2010, it’s work David felt called to.
DAVID: My dad was a refugee from Belgium in 1940. Germany invaded Belgium in 1940. He came from a Jewish family who lived in Brussels. He and his dad fled to the UK, which admitted him and allowed him to go to school and allowed his dad to work, actually helping to clear out bombed buildings in the second World War.
And in the end, my dad was allowed to stay. And then my mom spent the war in Poland. She’s also Jewish. She came to the UK in 1946, also as a refugee, as a child refugee. And she stayed, she met my dad and then I’ve had the benefits of a country that at that time welcomed those refugees and helped them start a new life.
ASHLEY [VO]: Refugee protection should be granted based on someone’s need for protection. Yet political leaders are introducing policies that grant or deny this fundamental right based on a person’s nationality or method of travel.
Which makes finding a pathway to a safer life extraordinarily difficult and rare.
“Refugee protection should be granted based on someone’s need for protection. Yet political leaders are introducing policies that grant or deny this fundamental right based on a person’s nationality or method of travel.
DAVID: Safe routes like refugee resettlement are a way of undercutting the claims of the people smugglers that the only way to get to a European country or to uh, America is to pay a people smuggler to do so.
ASHLEY [VO]: While resettlement schemes have helped many people – like Zahra – escape danger… they’re being held up by governments as the only way for people fleeing war or persecution to reach safety.
Which is dangerous in its own way. Because even though resettlement schemes can’t replace functional asylum systems, that’s exactly what the UK Government is trying to do.
DAVID: The reality today is that there are about 140,000 refugees a year resettled around the world. So a very small number.
The most frustrating thing is, so many richer countries think that they are being unfairly targeted by refugees, and that they’re bearing an unfair share of the burden. When in fact, the truth is 80% of the world’s refugees live in poor countries, not in rich countries. A refugee is more likely to be in Bangladesh or Ethiopia or Uganda or Turkey or Lebanon than they are to be in the United States or the UK.
DAVID: This is being exacerbated by the fact that asylum processing systems are not well run in the majority of cases, and so you end up with large numbers of people in limbo.
ASHLEY [VO]: So, how did we get here?
[MUX: SPACEY PIANO AND HORNS]
ASHLEY [VO]: The last major international agreement on how refugees ought to be treated came out of the UN Refugee Convention, just after the second World War – the last time that numbers of people needing to flee their homes was so high.
DAVID: Before the second World War, of course, there were refugees. People fled from one country to another, um, as a result of war and persecution. For the first time after 1951 they were given - people who fled for good cause - were given a legal right not to be sent back to the country that they came from.
ASHLEY [VO]: It’s the bedrock of the global approach to people fleeing from danger: you will not be sent back into danger.
Under new legislation, the UK’s conservative government is moving to completely extinguish the right to claim asylum, by refusing to consider claims from anyone who has traveled to the UK via an ‘irregular’ route.
The thing is… safe or regular routes to the UK to claim asylum don’t actually exist.
[MUX: GENTLY FADES OUT]
DAVID: And that is completely contrary to the 1951 convention because what that says is that no one has a right to asylum, but everyone has a right to apply for asylum. And that’s a very important distinction.
But everyone has a right to make their case and to do so in a way that has their individual case properly assessed. The assertion that someone who arrives in the UK in a small boat, or someone who arrives in the US by crossing the border has done something illegal and therefore is denied the right to apply for asylum is not actually the correct reading of the 1951 convention.
ASHLEY [VO]: Governments narrowing or reducing safe routes does nothing to prevent people from needing to flee their home. It only forces them into more danger.
In 2021, the year the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, just under fifteen-hundred Afghans fleeing home reached the UK by boat.
A year later, that number increased to almost nine thousand people. A six-fold jump in Afghans forced to take dangerous journeys because there was no safe route accessible to them.
Meanwhile, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the UK activated a digital visa system that allowed Ukrainians to quickly secure safe passage. There are no Ukrainians crossing the channel by dinghy because they don’t have to.
*Ashley takes a deep breath in and out.*
Here’s the thing.
[MUX: HARD, THUMPING, STAND UP BASS]
ASHLEY [VO]: We are hardwired to fight for our survival in spite of impossible decisions, tremendous loss, and immeasurable unknowns. It’s what forces us forward: onto small boats, through deserts, across borders. It’s what makes us human.
ZAHRA: I, I know some people, they have never experienced violence, war, conflict, so they don’t know why refugees are deciding to go as a refugee somewhere else. I mean, when you are forced to leave your country, your homeland… you have to do that for saving your life. And we have an expression, we call it *says phrase in Dari* which is very, very important. And even it was written in Holy Quran, in our holy book. “When you see danger, you have to save your life.”
“I, I know some people, they have never experienced violence, war, conflict, so they don’t know why refugees are deciding to go as a refugee somewhere else. I mean, when you are forced to leave your country, your homeland… you have to do that for saving your life.”
Don’t think about anything. Just save your life or someone’s life when you can see someone at risk.
Otherwise, if we think someone is at risk and we say, “I don’t care,” it’s not humanity.
ASHLEY [VO]: When we come back, Zahra’s hopes for the future.
[MIDROLL AD BREAK]
[AMBIENT NOISE: PRODUCER TALKING TO ZAHRA]
MARTHA: How are the kids doing?
ZAHRA: They’re doing very well and they’re settling very well now. Their English is better than me. They speak very good English and they’re going to school. They made friends and they’re happy with their teachers. Yes, they, they settled totally with the system. Everything. They’re like a sponge.
I told Sophie, maybe during the interview my children will, um, ring the bell. So sorry for that.
MARTHA: No, that’s okay. That’s great!
ZAHRA: Sorry...
*Children excitedly enter downstairs*
MARTHA: Is that them? *Laughs*
ZAHRA: My children, they are speaking very fast.
*EVERYONE LAUGHS*
[MUX: SHIMMERY, BRIGHT, WITH HAND CLAPS, ORGAN, AND PIANO]
ASHLEY [VO]: Zahra and her children were resettled in the UK in 2021. After spending their first six months in a hotel, they were placed in housing, secured benefits, and folded into British life.
After they moved into their home — where she was moved to see that neighbors had stocked the pantry and left fresh vegetables, meat and milk in the fridge — Zahra was connected to the IRC, which offers orientation courses for people arriving in new places as refugees.
They started with the basics. From grocery shopping...
ZAHRA: In orientation course they told us there is many different markets in the UK. The cheap one. The expensive one.
ASHLEY [VO]: To navigating the train...
ZAHRA: They told us there is peak time and peak off. And if you want to travel and if it is not very necessary you have to be on time at eight o’clock or nine o’clock in somewhere so you can choose the peak off time.
[MUX FADES OUT]
Ashley: Zahra, what is life like for you right now?
ZAHRA: It is good for me. Because it has reason. I’m, I’m very happy in the UK. My daughter can go to school. She can have a bright future. And I have my wishes to start my life again in here, in the UK, and to be a journalist again, to continue my education. So I’m enjoying my life. The only problem was with my mother. And reuniting with her. Only I have that problem. Nothing else.
ASHLEY [VO]: Zahra isn’t the only new refugee arrival in the UK longing to reunite with a family member. And that “one problem” – family reunification – is a big one. In part because without her mother, Zahra feels limited in her employment and educational opportunities as a single mother of two.
[MUX IN: LOW-FI BASS BEAT WITH PIANO]
ASHLEY [VO]: A 2019 study found that family separation is an essential predictor for peoples’ quality of life in their new homes as refugees.
It’s a powerful combination that creates this pain, even for people who claim it as their only problem, like Zahra: fear for the safety of those they leave behind, a sense of powerlessness over the fate of their reunion, and the emotional vacuum of being cut off from family.
Many participants in the study even felt that the presence of family was necessary for good health.
Behind each family reunification case is a traumatized person doing everything in their power to cut through red tape, explaining over and over again why their family is worthy of saving… worthy of access to the safe route they themselves may have benefited from.
DAVID: Our point of view as the IRC is that you’ve got to follow through on the human side of this.
ASHLEY [VO]: David Milliband from the IRC.
DAVID: And when people are in such, when there’s, when there’s these obvious and deep links, you’re making the chance of a lifetime, also the curse of a lifetime if you separate people from their loved ones.
[MUX RISES, THEN FADES OUT SLOWLY]
ASHLEY [VO]: The fact that safe routes are virtually non-existent doesn’t come down to bad luck. It’s policy, and policy makers that are responsible for the decisions that contribute to the instability, anxiety, and trauma that impact thousands of families with refugee experiences.
“The fact that safe routes are virtually non-existent doesn’t come down to bad luck. It’s policy, and policy makers that are responsible for the decisions that contribute to the instability, anxiety, and trauma that impact thousands of families with refugee experiences.”
DAVID: I hope that, um, for people like Zahra, that that justice is done and that they get a chance to complete their refugee journey by the success of their kids, but also by the unity of their family, uh, with their parents. And that’s a really important part of the story. You hope that refugee resettlement is a route to alleviating pain, not creating pain.
ASHLEY [VO]: By global standards, Zahra is one of the lucky ones.
But “lucky” feels like an entirely inappropriate descriptor, when you also know the pain she carries over the choice she had to make, between seizing the incredibly rare opportunity for safe passage and leaving her mother behind.
She will forever carry the weight of her experiences as a refugee. As will her children. And until they can reunite with her mother, their grandmother… the harm continues.
[MUX: BRIGHT WHISTLES AND A CHORUS OF GENTLE VOICES WITH A SIMPLE PIANO AND ORGAN. GOSPEL IN TONE]
ASHLEY: In your dreams, and let’s not just say in your dreams. Let’s say we get to make a vision right now that comes true and you are with your mother on Mother’s Day, what does that vision look like to you? What do you see?
ZAHRA: I just have the wish to go and kiss her hands and thank God and thank all the world how kind they are for us and we are together now.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
ZAHRA: It, it is like a vision for me. How thankful I could be from my God, from the governments, from the world, from the people who helped us with our reuniting.
ASHLEY: You’ve been there for two years. What are your hopes for the next two years?
ZAHRA: To start my education and to be at the middle of my education process.
ASHLEY: Mm-hmm.
ZAHRA: I can start a job now. I am freelancing with BBC and I want to have a job, which I know I have a monthly specific salary that I can, uh, receive. I want to pay my house, rent, everything, and I want to support my life financially, not depending on the government benefit alongside doing my education
ASHLEY: That would be amazing. It’s gonna happen. And what would you like to see change for refugees in general?
ZAHRA: Equality.
ASHLEY: Mm.
ZAHRA: I always ask for equality for all refugees around the world. They should treat equally as other people who are in the countries because a refugee, when he or she’s coming and they give them refugee status, they should have equal rights.
ASHLEY: What are your hopes for your children? What do you hope they remember about their home in Afghanistan?
ZAHRA: Their language. And I am teaching them: do not forget writing, speaking, and reading the language. It is very important for them to keep their native language as well alongside their speaking English, writing English, everything is here in English. Also to keep their culture.
ASHLEY: Mm-hmm.
ZAHRA: When I see sometimes we have some British food, sometimes we have some international food – pizza, something like Italian food or sometimes Afghani food – it’s all make colorful our life. So we, we, we should keep our traditional food, traditional clothes, everything and our culture and the way we are welcoming our guests. It is a part of our culture. They should keep all the things. The cultures when they mix with each other, it looks very beautiful, like a colorful rainbow in the sky. It is my advice for my children always.
[MUX: THEME IN]
ASHLEY [VO]: You can make a difference to the lives of people seeking safety by calling for the expansion of safe routes for refugees and people seeking asylum.
Find out more and take action at the link in the show notes.
Into the Mix is… actually… Zahra, will you help me out with the credits?
ZAHRA: Into the Mix is a Ben & Jerry’s Podcast produced by Vox Creative.
This episode was written by Martha D. Salley.
A special thank you to Sophie Maclean from the International Rescue Committee for her support.
The Vox Creative team includes Executive Producer Annu Subramanian, Lead Producers Martha D. Salley and Bethany Denton, Production Manager Taylor Henry, and Production Coordinator Jessica Bae.
The team also includes Ariana Jiffo, senior manager of creative services, Design Director Brittany Falussy, and post-production stars Greg Russ and Andrew Hammond.
Kyle Neal engineered this episode. Original music by Israel Tutson.
Thanks to AJ Gutierrez for his production support, as well as Joel Carr, and Sarosh Arif.
The Ben & Jerry’s team includes Jay Tandon, Jay Curley, Sanjana Mahesh, Chris Miller, and Jessie Macneil Brown.
I’m Zahra Shaheer.
ASHLEY [VO]: … And I’m Ashley C. Ford. Next month, we’re jumping back across the pond for a story out of Des Moines, Iowa, about a group of incredible students who pushed their school district to remove police officers from their halls.
ZAHRA: Thank you for listening.