'They're desperate,' Londoner fears for Afghan relatives as Canada leaves

London, Ont. -

For Tayiba Nasr the developing news Thursday morning from Afghanistan has been painful.

The latest the deadly bomb blast at Kabul Airport.

“I’m really, really scared. I don’t know what’s going on right now,” Nasr expresses from her London home.

Nasr, who fled Afghanistan at 17, has a sister, brother and multiple extended family members still in the country.

All are desperate to flee, and some have been in and out of hiding.

“They were really scared, they were in hiding. And my sister, at one point, she told me she had to escape another direction. With all the gunfire, she was almost killed.”

Most of Nasr’s family and friends hail from Herat, but some she believes are in Kabul trying to get to Canada.

Now, she knows, they won’t anytime soon as Canadian federal officials have announced the airlift will end.

“I understand. If it’s dangerous for Canadians,” but Nasr says another way must be found.

“I don’t know what the plan will be but Canada has to do that because those people are looking forward to getting out. They’re desperate.”

It’s a situation Nasr says she understands - personally.

She visited her family in 2000. At the time, the Taliban was in control. She says she witnessed a lack of “democratic freedom,” especially for women.

The Taliban is publicly pledging to offer more freedoms this time around. But Nasr says her female relatives, many of whom support families, are blocked at their workplaces. Others or are too afraid to show up at their jobs.

“They are scared to come out or go back to their jobs. Cause they’re going to be possibly prosecuted or killed or put in jail,” she says.

Unable to help those she loves in Afghanistan, Nasr is doing what she can to help here in London.

She and others members of the Afghan Socio-Cultural Association have volunteered to help refugees who have just escaped to Canada on relief flights.

Nasr says she’ll work with as many as two-dozen people, already here or soon arriving in London, through the Cross-Cultural Leaners Association.

It is a process, she hopes, will happen, sooner than later, for her loved ones.