Pop star who fled to UK feared being raped by Taliban as she narrowly escapes capture – World News

Afghanistan’s biggest pop star feared being raped by Taliban fighters as she fled Kabul.

Aryana Sayeed, who was a judge on Afghanistan’s version of The Voice, narrowly avoided capture as she escaped on Tuesday night.

The British citizen trembled with fear when a Taliban fighter stopped her car near Kabul’s airport, however she fortunately evaded detection.

The Taliban have previously tried to kill Aryana due to her high profile career and work as a women’s rights activist.

The 38-year-old was so scared of the militants she previously made a pact with her fiancé Hasib Sayed that he would kill her before she could be captured.

She told The Mirror: “I’m not scared of dying. I was more scared of getting caught alive and being ridiculed, paraded in front of the cameras or being raped.

“The Taliban are sexually frustrated that’s why they blow themselves up for the promise of 72 virgins.”

When Miss Sayeed came face-to-face with the Taliban for the first time on Monday she trembled with fear.

She and her fiancé had just left Kabul’s airport after unsuccessfully trying to board a flight during Monday’s chaotic scenes.

The singer said: “When we walked out of the airport we saw the Taliban in front of us. One of them was standing in the middle with his hands behind him, scanning people.

“I looked into his eyes, he was only around four to five metres away from me. The rest of them were shooting in the air.

“I get chills every time I remember that moment. We were walking through bullets and gunshots and I was thinking ‘they are going to stop me now’.”

She escaped without being recognised but suffered another terrifying encounter when she returned to the airport the next night.

Aryana and her fiancé went to the airport in separate cars which were filled with women and children.

She said: “There were at least five checkpoints on the way. There were burnt out cars and Taliban all over the place.

“At one of the checkpoints they stopped us and one of them put a light in the car and looked at our faces.

“My feet and hands were shaking like hell, I was reading my prayers and hoping he wouldn’t ask for our names and documents.

“But when he saw the child he told us to go.”

Her fiancé’s cousins took the couple to a section of the airport where US troops were said to be accepting evacuees.

However as they approached the gate they found a two-kilometre queue of desperate Afghans trying to flee.

Hasib, 39, took the couple’s documents and went through the gate alone, before passing back word to Aryana that she could come through.

The singer said people in the crowd begged her for help as she passed through the revolving metal gate.

She said: “One guy who was 15 or 16 said ‘can you please say I’m your brother’. I told him ‘I would happily do it but they won’t accept you without a passport’.

“Some people were leaving the queue as their wives and children were fainting as there was no oxygen because people were packed in so tightly.

“Next to me there was this little baby screaming. I thought the baby was going to die.”

Aryana said she held the baby in her arms just as she was about to pass through the gate.

When American soldiers asked her if the child was hers, she faced an impossible dilemma.

She said: “They asked ‘what about the baby’. I thought I could save it by saying it was mine but then I thought what if I took it inside and the mother could not get through?”

She tried to convince the American soldiers to let the tot and the mum through the gate, however the troops refused.

“When I got through I burst into tears because of that baby, it really hit me,” she said.

“Apparently I was the last person they opened the door to that night.”

After a few hours Aryana and Hasib boarded a C-17 US Air Force plane and finally left Kabul.

As the plane took off for Doha, Qatar, Aryana said that while she was grateful to be alive she could not help but feel terrible for those left behind.

She spent two days in Doha before flying to Kuwait and then eventually Washington DC.

The singer said her ‘heart and feelings’ are still with the thousands of Afghans trying to escape.

In a direct message to the UK’s Prime Minister, she said: “I’m hoping that Boris Johnson will not forget Afghanistan.

“It’s chaos and the people need help. People have flocked to Kabul from other provinces and don’t have shelter or any food to eat.”

She also called on Mr Johnson to put pressure on Pakistan for supporting the Taliban.

“The UK should cut help to Pakistan and enforce sanctions,” she said.

“Pakistan is the main problem for our country. The Taliban get their help and support from Pakistan.

“The Taliban are illiterate, they have no education. The real brains behind them is Pakistan.”

Aryana also said Boris Johnson’s decision to welcome just 5,000 Afghan refugees over the next year is not enough.

She said: “5,000 refugees compared to the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced is only a drop in the ocean.”

The singer came to the UK as a refugee in 2000 and she is now encouraging Mr Johnson to show the same kindness she received to other Afghans.

“I was born in Kabul but I left Afghanistan with my family when I was eight-years-old after a rocket landed in the front yard of our house,” she said.

“We went to Pakistan and then Switzerland but we were rejected as refugees and had to go to the UK.

“We got to Germany in the back of a lorry and then took a ship from Belgium to the UK.

“I’m forever grateful to the UK for giving us shelter when we didn’t have a home. I remember when we got to Dover everyone was so friendly and kind.

“I was very lucky to get to the UK and hopefully the country will be as welcoming to all these other people who don’t have homes any more in Afghanistan.

“I believe the UK will be as the country is kind to refugees.”

Aryana plans to visit family in the UK before she finally returns to Istanbul.

The couple bought a home in Turkey three years ago so they could be closer to Afghanistan, where Aryana used to spend the majority of her year.

Before the Taliban seized Kabul, Aryana had been in the country of her birth for about eight months.

She had just launched a clothing line in the capital and opened a store in the city a month ago.

The pop star vowed to stay in Afghanistan and it was only when the Taliban swept across the country that she booked a flight out of Kabul.

She witnessed the chaotic scenes at the airport on Monday after security guards and soldiers left their posts.

“Thousands of people rushed the planes,” she said.

“My fiancé and I managed to get inside one which was filled with a thousand people on top of each other.

“Kids were screaming and crying and there was no air to breathe.

“I said I can’t do this and we got off. It was only then we realised there was no pilot.”

When they returned to the terminal, rumours started circulating that the Taliban were heading for the airport.

Although she was wearing a headscarf, with only her eyes visible, the singer was petrified that she or her husband would be identified.

In previous years Aryana, who became a judge on Afghan Star in 2015, had been targeted by the Taliban.

Describing the assassination attempts, she said: “There were so many times. One time the National Directorate of Security (secret service) told me a bomb car was driving around Kabul looking to kill me.

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“Another time a woman was ordered to kill me inside the TV station. She got about 10 metres away from me during a show.

“She was interviewed in prison and said she would do the same thing again if she was released.”

Aryana is heartbroken about the fate of Afghanistan but intends to keep up her work to inspire future generations.

She said: “Afghan Star is no more. But I’m still going to inspire Afghans through my music.

“I’m not sure what will happen to them. They should stay strong and not give up.”