ISLAMABAD: A minor Afghan girl who was bundled onto an evacuation flight from Kabul in 2021 after her parents died in a bomb blast has been reunited with her family members at a Qatar orphanage.
The little girl, now believed to be almost 21 months old and given the name Maryam by the officials in the orphanage, saw her uncle Yaar Mohammad Niazi, her two sisters, and a brother.
Yaar Mohammad Niazi, who has four children, said that he did not know if they would ever find her again, and now he was overcome” with emotion. “When I held her, I just realized she is alive,’ Niazi said.
The tearful reunion ended a curious search for the little girl Maryam since the chaotic days of August 2021 when the hardliner Taliban took control of the Afghan capital Kabul, sparking a panicked mass flight.
Maryam’s ill-fated parents were among those trying to flee with their four children when they lost their lives in a huge bomb blast followed by the gun battle at Kabul airport, claiming 183 lives on August 26, 2012.
The little Maryam, whose birth name was Aliza, was only a few weeks old at the time her father and mother died in the attack, being claimed by the local chapter of the Islamic State group.
Amid the chaos, a teenage boy grabbed her and took her onto a US military flight taking Afghans and stranded expatriates to Doha, a Qatari official said.
She found a new home in Dreama orphanage Qatar, while her two sisters and elder brother stayed back in Afghanistan.
Maryam was the youngest of more than 200 Afghan children to be evacuated alone on the flights carrying tens of thousands of afghanis out of their country.
“We took them in and provided them specialized care,” said the Qatari official, speaking on condition of not to be named.
“We worked with UNICEF to find if there were any family members of these children.”
DNA tests help Maryam to reunite with family
Yaar Mohammad Niazi and the other three orphaned children were left in Afghanistan, where the hardliner Taliban installed a government for what they call the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
One and a half months after the massive Kabul bomb blast, UN sleuths thought they had the little girl’s identity.
“They contacted us to undergo DNA tests,” Officials in Qatar said.
Transporting the genetic test results between Kabul and Doha to seek a match took more time, as Yaar Muhammad waited for several months to get a passport from the Taliban administration so he could take his family to Qatar.
Now arrived in Qatar, Niazi said he would start the process of moving to the US, together with his wife and eight children in total, including Maryam, to care for them.
Yaar Muhammad said the little girl would keep her new name because it is the one she answers to.
Other children at the Qatar orphanage center have also been reunited with family members.
A three-year-old boy also joined his father in Canada after a senior official from Qatar recognized him from a missing-child photo.
Most of the other children below the age of eight have either joined relatives or been adopted by families in Europe, Canada, and the United States.
The Qatari official said that at one stage, thousands of Afghans were in temporary shelters in Doha, waiting for countries to take them. He said now there are only 15 left.
Hundreds more Afghans are still staying at a US military base in Qatar, many of them more recent arrivals, and awaiting for the chance to find new homes abroad.
