The Diary Game 13/01/2022 - The Story of a Famous Photo From 2021: The Child Lost in Afghanistan and Recovered Through Social Media.
The child belongs to a former guard of the US embassy in Afghanistan, named Ahmadi. He and his family, with a total of five children, were preparing to enter Kabul airport in the days when various planes took over Afghan civilians with whom foreign troops had been working in Afghanistan.
Ahmadi and his family reached 5 meters from the airport gate, and the crowd there was very large and dangerous for the two-month-old baby. Ahmadi gave his child to an American soldier over the airport fence, thinking that he would soon cross the gate and retrieve him on the other side.
Right after this moment, the Taliban appeared in the area, a riot broke out, and everyone fled. Ahmadi and his family eventually entered the airport, but never found the baby handed over the fence. Eventually, they all boarded a plane and arrived at a Texas base: Ahmadi, his wife, and 4 children. The fifth remained in Afghanistan and was reported missing.
The child was found in the airport area by a taxi driver named Safi. He had brought his brother to the airport. His brother also worked with the Americans and was evacuated with them. Safi then went home, but found this baby abandoned and took it with him.
Safi, who had 3 daughters at home, always wanted a boy. Finding this baby, he decided to keep it and raise it as if it were his own. He named him Mohamed Abed and raised him all the time, including posting photos of him on his Facebook profile.
The photo of the baby jumping over the fence became famous, as I was telling you. You can also find it in The Atlantic Top of the Year, for example. In November, Reuters dedicated a piece of material to him, and Ahmadi, the child's father, interviewed in the USA, told how he lost his son.
Safi's neighbors in Kabul nodded and remembered the taxi driver who had come with a baby that day from the airport. Maybe they even recognized him in the photos, who knows. They posted this in the comments of the article, and his father found out where the child is.
As he could not appeal to the Afghan authorities to recover his child, he turned to his father-in-law, a 67-year-old man who lived in another province in Afghanistan. He went to Safi, and the source says that he also brought him gifts — sheep's meat, clothes, and a few pounds of nuts — in exchange for the baby.
Safi refused to hand over the baby to his grandfather, demanding that he be evacuated to the United States to be returned. The baby's grandfather probably took his nuts and sheep back and went to the Red Cross organization, but he couldn't help it.
So the man went to the local authorities, the Taliban, and demanded a kidnapping. He accused Safi of kidnapping the child and demanded that he return it. Safi was called to the police, where he stated that he did not kidnap the child, but raised him. The Taliban were not very authoritarian or did not care too much, because instead of saying "give the child back and we don't beat you", they helped him negotiate a deal.
The child's grandfather paid the equivalent of $ 950 for handing over the baby. The money is considered compensation for the months in which Safi raised the child.
Ahmadi, the biological father, watched the video chat when the baby reached his Afghan grandparents and is now being raised by him. I guess it's a happy example of a situation where Facebook helped solve a problem. I am amazed that Internet access is such a thing in today's Afghanistan. Ahmadi is now in Michigan and hopes the Taliban will agree to send the baby.
One day this could be an action movie. With a little adaptation of the script, Dwayne Johnson or someone similar disguises himself in Afghanistan, recovers the child and somehow crosses the border.
In the real world, someone should also ask the soldier in the pictures what he did to the child after he received him over the fence. He put it down, left it by the airport gate, and went to work? I'm not saying, he was really busy, he was with the Taliban and shootings, a few soldiers were killed in those days, but how did the abandoned child get out of the secure area, if Safi could find him?
And in the real world, 1,450 children have been taken out of Afghanistan without their parents.
Info Sources:
Image Sources:
Afghan baby lost in Kabul airlift chaos reunited with relatives
YouTube Sources:
Baby lost in chaos of Afghanistan airlift returns to family after long ordeal | Kabul | World News
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Woa questa storia come dici tu sembra la sceneggiatura di un film, tanti bambini che sono scomparsi e non dico solo così. e la tecnologia in questo caso facebook ha aiutato a trovare questo bambino.