| Case:Ilham from Afghanistan Start date: march 7, 2021 Support: living costs and support to get a permit to stay somewhere Budget needed: monthly €350 for living costs plus budget for a permanent solution Ilham is a member of this community. If you want to get in touch or have a question for him, you can ask him directly via his profile page. |
Ilham fled Afghanistan to Turkey on a student visa. As long as Ilham can afford to study and live in Turkey, he will not be sent back and have to face the threats of the Taliban. In the meantime SUN is trying to help him to get a visa for the US, since he has worked for the US government.
An abusive father that didn’t accept his doubts about religion, and his job for a US company, that will put his life at risk when the Taliban takes over in Afghanistan, made Ilham to decide to leave. On a student visa he is now in Turkey. But that’s only a temporary solution. SUN is searching for options for him to get permanent residence, or flee to a country where he can request asylum.
March 2021 – For many of us higher education is a choice to better ourselves. For Ilham it is a matter of life and death. Ilham, a young Afghan, is registered as a student at a university in a small city in Turkey. If he doesn’t continue his studies he loses his residency permit and will be deported to Afghanistan.
“That means death sentence,” explained Ilham in a recent conversation with IAA. “I would need to pay them and study or they will cancel my residence permit.”
Tuition for Ilham (an alias to protect his identity) is not just necessary for him to continue his studies but necessary to stay alive and away from people who wish to harm him because he is an atheist.
“I am an atheist activist type of person,” he said.As a young boy in Afghanistan Ilham came to question his beliefs. An abusive father started beating him from the age of 4. He didn’t understand why Allah would allow this type of abuse. Always a bright child, Ilham speaks Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan), Dari (sometimes called Afghan Persian) and English. His linguistic abilities got the attention of the U.S. government, which hired Ilham as a Linguist/Analyst for their operations in Afghanistan. This came crashing down late last year when Ilham admitted his atheist beliefs to his father. This resulted in a horrible physical interaction with is father that left Ilham badly injured. And then the Taliban found out about Ilham’s work for the U.S.
