Ex-Soldier Refuses To Leave Afghanistan Without Animals He Rescued, People Who Helped Him
Pen Farthing, a former Royal Marines Commando who founded Nowzad, an animal rescue charity in 2007 says he will only leave Afghanistan with the dogs his NGO rescues and the team who helped him.
Ever since the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban, it has been a rat race, both foreigners and Afghan nationals to get out of the country at the earliest.
But one British man says he will not leave Afghanistan unless 27 Afghan nationals and some 200 animals are allowed to travel with him to the UK.
Pen Farthing, a former Royal Marines Commando who founded Nowzad, an animal rescue charity in 2007 says he will only leave Afghanistan with the dogs his NGO rescues and the team who helped him.
pen farthing/ Twitter
According to their Facebook page, the Nowzad Charity was founded in 2007 by Pen Farthing, with an aim to reunite soldiers with their battle buddies and provide vital animal welfare to Afghanistan.
Cared for over 1,600 rescued animals
Nowzad has cared for more than 1,600 rescued animals and reunited them with soldiers. In the last five years, they provided training to some 500 veterinary students at their facilities. They also employ Afghan women as veterinarians and in other positions.
His clinic trained Afghanistan's first fully-qualified female vets but now he fears for their futures.
If they cannot be evacuated, he fears the teenage daughters of his staff face being captured by extremists and used as sex slaves.
Nowzad Charity
"I don't think there are words to describe what they are feeling right now," he told the BBC.
Recently he took to Facebook, and in a live video appealed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and their local lawmakers to press them to help Nowzad's team.
"Boris Johnson, if you happen to be on Facebook right now watching this, you need to make this happen. We truly created this mess in Afghanistan. ... This could have been avoided, but it wasn't. And I'm not leaving my staff to whatever the Taliban are going to do in the coming weeks," he said.
The call for help through social media has triggered the #NOWZADairlift hashtag.
The charity has launched a campaign called Operation Ark to fundraise ?200,000 to help staff, dependents and the charity's animals leave the country.
Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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