The sun is shining, the waves of the Adriatic glisten blue, children can swim in a pool. But the welcoming shores of Albania do not comfort the Afghans evacuated to this small Balkan country of the trauma they have experienced and their uncertain future.
“Physically I am here, but my heart is in Afghanistan,” says Latifa Frotan, 25, who arrived in Albania at the end of August after the rise to power of the Taliban.
This women’s rights activist, a former Interior Ministry employee in Kabul, barely manages to hold back tears when she talks about her relatives in Afghanistan.
Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an average salary of 460 euros, promised to provisionally host 4,000 Afghans, who in many cases dream of a passage to the United States.
So far, almost 700 women, men and children are housed in five-star hotels, with swimming pools, parks and sports courts on the shores of the Adriatic.
“These people fled the terror, they are traumatized and it would be inhumane to lock them up in camps,” said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
But luxury is of little use in the face of their despair.
“We have the opportunity to be here, we have all the services we need, but we are concerned for our family,” says Latifa, at the Rafaelo hotel complex in Shengjin.
She suffers for her sister and for her husband’s sisters. “The Taliban beat women, they beat journalists, everyone’s life is in danger,” he says.
– Land of asylum and exodus –
With 2.8 million inhabitants, Albania, like Kosovo and North Macedonia, did not hesitate to offer to open its doors to Afghans.
For Edi Rama, it was evident in this host country, which received 500,000 Kosovars fled from Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian forces in the late 1990s, but also from exodus, with more than a million emigrants since 1990.
“We are not rich, but we owe it to our Afghan friends and we owe it to our tradition, to our own recent refugee past,” he told local media.
Unlike other Western European countries, where there are sometimes hostile reactions to migrants, no Albanian party raised its voice.
The Afghans “are one of us, they are like family,” says Viktor Nrea, a volunteer ambulance driver at the hotel complex.
“I share with them the pain, but also the joy of living of their children. This helps me to forget the absence of my two children who are far away, emigrated,” he adds.
In the pool, in the shade of palm trees, evacuees are hooked to their phones. The news that only boys will return to high school for now causes consternation.
Excited, Lina Mommadi, a 36-year-old scientist, shows on her laptop a photo of a university class where students are separated by a curtain.
“My sisters used to work and now they stay in their room,” says this green-eyed woman. On each call, he asks his family members to show him their faces to make sure they are okay.
The screams of children playing ball or splashing in the pool are the rare moments of joy.
The hotel is crowned by a replica of the Statue of Liberty, a reminder of the destination many desire, awaiting instructions to apply for a visa to the United States.
The ultimate destination, however, would be to return to a free Afghanistan. “Marching was a very tough decision,” says Elyas Nawandish, 29, editor-in-chief of an Afghan newspaper.
His dream: “one day to be able to go back to work, for me and for my people,” he says.
bme-ev / dbh / bl