The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Saving a Family from Afghanistan

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

I remember when my friend, journalist Claire Berlinski, first contacted me about a tragic situation regarding a family trapped in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. She knew that I had helped a young girl interested in physics escape to the US to study years earlier and hoped that I might assist in this case. If ever one imagined a family appropriate to bring to safety, this would be the one. The mother was a women’s rights lawyer before the takeover, and the husband worked for a French firm. The Taliban had broken into the Bar Association Office and found records of lawyers, who were being sought for arrest. One older son, and five young daughters in danger of being married off if they were discovered.Their original escape plan was foiled when the airport was bombed just before their planned departure. Because Claire lives in Frances the older boy had reached out to her for help, and she sent out a call to her followers to provide financial assistance to help the family.Claire contacted me because she knew I now lived in Canada, which has a well-established refugee program. In spite of this, for two years I was not able to find a single sponsoring agency who had a sufficiently large slot allocation to assist. Finally, after over a year, with five generous individuals who agreed to act as guarantors, Jewish Immigrant Aid Services in Toronto indicated they had the slots and would sponsor a refugee application for the family, provided we raised the necessary funds to guarantee support for family for their first year in Canada—a government requirement. After five months of fundraising, we achieved the goal, and the full application was submitted to the government of Canada. I have always found it poetic that the organization in Canada that has been willing to help save this Muslim family is a Jewish organization. Perhaps, in the midst of all the horrible antisemitism that has blossomed in the world over the past years, this provide a useful example that religious differences need not always be a source of discord and hatred. That was 18 months ago. In spite of having fulfilled at the requirements, the backlog of cases is such that we knew it could take up to two years for the application to be processed. In the interim the family was able to travel to Pakistan. But their visas have expired and Pakistan is now deporting Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan. The family is in hiding in Pakistan, not able to leave their house. The girls are growing and one of them managed to learn enough English to get a prized scholarship to study online at a US university abroad, where she is studying psychology, as the law degree that she really wants is not available. The family agreed to be interviewed for this podcast. Their images have been washed out for their protection, and their names have been changed as well. We are hoping this podcast will help spur some of you to provide support through Claire’s online site to help provide essentials for the family while they are in hiding, and that it might also help motivate some of you who might live in Canada to help us lobby the government to ensure that their case is resolved as quickly as possible. Thanks for watching, or listening, and for any help you can provide. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

If there's ever a family and a group that deserves to be saved, this is a family. Hello and welcome to the Origins podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. This is a very special podcast today with a very special group of people who I have come to know over the last three or four years without ever having met personally and who one day I hope to be united with in a safe and peaceful environment, a family that has struggled for some time just to have. have safety and to be able to have the rights that everyone else has. And it's a difficult situation. And one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is to talk about what's been happening, to try encourage people not just to help to support this family and their plight to be free, but also maybe to encourage you to contact, if you're in Canada, members of parliament,

who can then contact me to try and get some action on this case, which has been sitting for years and years. And every month we wait, things get more dangerous for this family. Now, for the safety of the family, I won't identify them and will have assumed names simply for their safety. But I want to talk about the situation that they've gone through so you can get a sense of what's been happening. Claire Berlinski and I have been working for, I think now at least three years, maybe longer, to try and help this family get to safety. At each stage, there have been difficulties at each age there's been dangers and those dangers continue

and I want to talk to the family about that. I want to first talk to the young man who will call Subir Subir if you could wave and then here are your sisters if you could pan the camera with them if you could all wave hello

and it's a wonderful family and I one day hope to be with you all and thank you for appearing on this podcast today. Subir why do you tell us about the situation in Afghanistan before and why you had to leave. Thank you, Oslo. It's my pleasure that today I and my sisters are with you in this podcast.

And thank you so much for giving this opportunity. The situation in Afghanistan was normal before Taliban taking over Afghanistan. As known to all, the Taliban is a terrorist, jihadist, too, and they don't leave to any human rights and women rights, and they don't respect these rights. Before Taliban take over, my sisters were in school and we had a normal life. Also, I was a student of computer science and my father was a worker in an organization to provide health care services to the people. But when Taliban take over Afghanistan, the situation is completely changed. Let me just interrupt for a second. Your mother was also a lawyer. Yes. Yes, I should say that my mother also has a bachelor degree in law and political science. also a member of a Lelphilishu program that was funded by the U.S. government that was a capacity

building on women to increase the services of justice for the people who needed. Also, my mother was a member of Afghanistan Independent Bar Association in Afghanistan for one year and worked as a freelance defrancerer in Afghanistan and provided illegal aid services to vulnerable women and girls in Afghanistan. When Taliban take over Afghanistan, the situation completely changed. On the first day, they took control of Afghanistan. They closed the schools for girls. They completely erased women and girls from society.

And the situation is completely changed. In one day, we lost everything. We lost her freedom, especially for women in regards. after Taliban takeover, every day they increased pressure on women and girls. But the most difficult part for us was the day that the Taliban attacked Afghanistan Independent Bar Association office in Kabul, and they got access to the database of foreign defense lawyers who worked for women rights, for girls' rights, that things was completely in opposition of Taliban beliefs and ideology. And since they take over the Afghanistan Independent Moral Association and got access to the

database of defense lawyers, they started searching and arresting former defense lawyers to punish them because they work for women and they work on the law and elimination of violence against women. Taliban believes that this law is preying from the Western and it is an opposition of their Islamic beliefs. So our situation changed. And we changed our house multiple times, and we were in a very bad situation mentally. To me, were at the high fear that if the Taliban fine to my mother, they should punish her.

Because of these reasons, and also my sisters were by risk of early marriage and forced marriage, and also they lost their opportunity to study, to college, to go to school. This all reason caused us to escape from Afghanistan, lift our country, lift our families, lived our everything. And now we are in Pakistan. Now, before you go on,

escaping was not quick, and it took some time. And in fact, while you were in Afghanistan is when you first made contact with Claire Berlinsky. Is that correct? Is it also true that you were originally scheduled to leave on a plane,

but something happened? then? Could you just talk? Yes. When Taliban take over, my father worked with a French organization in healthcare section for seven years. I will try to find some contact with French authorities to evacuate my family from Afghanistan to France. And I contact with Dr. Glehrleynski on Twitter. And I thought that she is from France. She's French and I request from her to contact with French authorities to provide us to give us opportunity to evacuate us from Kabul to France. She tried a lot.

She contacted the Ministry of France, but the situation was abnormal on that time. We didn't succeed to secure a place for my family and evacuation flights. Claire at that point started to try and help the family maybe to get out of the country while it was safe and to raise some money from her followers to support you. And that's when she also reached out to me because I had, I think she had known because it was a fairly prominent bit of publicity when I had earlier helped a young woman from Afghanistan leave the country and get access to the university where I taught. So she reached out to me. But it took some time.

How long did it take before you were actually? actually able to escape the country? It was almost like 15 months or 16 months, I think. 16 months during the time you were in hiding and trying to get out. Now, during that time, I remember already we were beginning to try and think of how to find a place for you to emigrate, to be refugees. Clearly, given everything you've said, the dangers you're in, experience your mother and your father and your sisters, clearly high priority to be able to escape and to be

refugees and seek asylum. But the situation, as we all know, is become very difficult internationally to be a refugee. And around that time, we began to try and think, because Canada has a program for asylum and refugees, to try and work in Canada and to bring you to Canada, which is one of the reasons Claire reached out to me. And we began, I think even before you got to Pakistan, to try and seek a system that would help us bring you to Canada. I can't remember if it was before you got to Pakistan or afterwards. Maybe you remember when we first began to do this. But that was already over three years ago.

Is that correct? It was the middle of 2002, I think. Exactly remember, but it was in 2022. Okay, so that's four years ago. Yes, that's what I was thinking, because four years would be about right. I began to explore in this country, in Canada, ways to support you. And there are mechanisms to do this, but they're not easy.

And as you can understand, and is understandable for people who live here, in order to be able to sponsor a refugee family or refugee, you have to be able to show that they can be supported for some time as they acclimate to the country. And that requires a variety of different hoops to jump through. You can get a group of individuals who work themselves, or you can try and work with a sponsoring agency that works directly with the IRCC and,

through the government to sponsor refugees. The Canadian government allocates a certain number of slots to each sponsoring agency, often churches or religious organizations, to be able to sponsor refugees. And those agencies need a group of individuals in the location in which the refugees will come to apply and to be able to raise the money necessary to support them. This is all very difficult because you have to find a group of people. and then also you have to find an agency that has slots, and there are very few slots that are available.

We tried for over a year in various locations with various groups of people. First where I lived in Prince Edward Island, but Prince Edward Island is a small place, and there were no sponsoring organizations that had any slots there. We tried a variety of organizations, and actually, and Subir was very helpful in this regard.

because you were working constantly to look for possibilities. And I believe it was you that first discovered the agency we worked with eventually, right? Yes. That was the most difficult part for our team to go ahead.

Finding slots is difficult. For the first week, it tries a lot to get slots from MCCO, I think. You reached out, you told me where to go, we applied, and we constantly got negative responses.

Your family is not a small, family and therefore it's a commitment of slots. Each time we hoped and hoped and we wrote, and then the organization said, no, we really, we don't have the room. Finally, and this is particularly perhaps poetic in my mind and demonstrates the importance of recognizing how we're all one, independent of our cultural, religious or geographical differences, you discovered and we reached out to the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society in Canada. And I think it is absolutely remarkable and wonderful that in principle they were willing to consider making slots for your family.

Again, this was not obvious and it was not clear that it would happen, but they indicated that it might happen. We applied, we spent a great deal of time meeting with them, making applications, and it wasn't clear. And finally, I think it was almost three years ago, finally we heard that they would grant a number of slots to sponsor us if we could have five individuals who would agree to be the individual sponsors in the location that you will go to in Canada, in Ontario.

I think it's okay, safe to say in Toronto, if we could raise sufficient funds to support the family for one year, which is the requirement that the agency has to show to the government, they would help us prepare an application to the government to bring you over. That was three years ago. And some of you may know that I, with the Origins podcast and Claire with her organization, did a campaign to try and raise money. And eventually we were able, through the help of a variety of friends,

and many of you who are watching, helped us to be able to raise sufficient funds to be put aside to support this wonderful remark. family. You'd think that would be the end of the story that everything would happen beautifully after that. That was almost three years ago. Once we raised the money, it took time, a great deal of time for Subir and his family to put together the necessary credentials and documents to apply. And why don't you talk about that process and when you heard and eventually you were approved? And how long ago was that approval? Why don't you talk about that process, Subir? We spent almost two months to prepare the application to submit to IRCC, and we submit our application on December at the end of almost at the end of December 2024.

Unfortunately, we got our pre-approval on January 2025, and after one month, we passed the biometric step to I-stretched step to BercC. Since that time, we are waiting to get updated from IRCC. So you got pre-approval, and that means the process is going through the Canadian government right now to get final approval for a visa. Now, at this point, you needed to get pre-approval there because in Pakistan, through Canada, because Pakistan was not providing directly what was required. Is that right? The IRCC was not able in Pakistan to directly provide you with what you needed. Is that correct? It's working on applications.

But we didn't directly went to embassy to pass biometrics. We have a contract with an organization by the name of VFS Visa Facilitation Center services, I think. They collect our biometrics. Okay, we won't talk about those details too much. But in any case, you got pre-approval and you have a situation where you now can show you have pre-approval to seek refugee status here in Canada. That was in January 2025. that's now 17 months ago and during that time

things are still going through the Canadian government, no one, including the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society. I just heard from them this morning are given any updates about the status of the application or when your visas will be approved for you to come. So we're all in limbo

and we understand that perhaps if an MP reaches out to the organization, that maybe will at least find out the status, but none of us can find out the status directly in spite of having tried this. Now, during these 17 months, you have been basically in hiding in Pakistan. You had a visa to be in Pakistan, and now the situation Pakistan is getting more dire. Do you want to describe that a little bit? Yes. Since one year, the Pakistan government stopped the extension

of a visa for Afghan refugees here in Pakistan. They start a massive deportation of Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan. This is the reason that we are hiding in our house to save ourselves from the detention and deportation by Pakistani police back to Afghanistan. And this situation makes our life very horrible because we don't have tried to walk freely outside of our house. And this put a lot of pressure and stress and depressed. my family here in Bix.

When do you also talk about in the interim, your sisters have been trying to maintain their education. At least one of them got a scholarship to be able to study online, a very difficult to get scholarship, but she was able to do it because she worked so hard. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? She is here. Sit in my, beside. No name. No names.

Yes. Now, what is scholarship besides? Hi. Hi. have you mentioned about my scholarship. How did I get the scholarship? And I mentioned the name of the university or not? No, we don't need to.

I bet it's a, okay, go on. Okay. Before getting the scholarship, I'm standing forward and wanted to improve my English first because they are versed online and the language is English and the languages are in English. Your English is wonderful. It's amazing how well you were able to learn English. Sorry, go on.

Thank you. I'm sorry, and friendly my English applied for scholarship. After passing the dualingo English test, I was accepted at the university. So now I'm at the second year of the university and called a sophomore student. Should I talk about the major? Yeah, you can talk about what you're studying. Absolutely. That's no problem.

Go ahead. Please do. So I'm studying. I have chosen my major in development studies. First, I had chosen law, but a university stopped offering this major and substituted with another major. For that reason, I changed it to development studies with a minor in data science. So that's all. Well, it's wonderful. It's amazing. You were able to learn all that and study hard enough to be able to.

Those scholarships are not, those admission is not easy. It's a very difficult situation. And that on your own, you were able to be able to do that. is just remarkable, especially under the stress you're in. And I'm so happy you're able to have that opportunity, at least online. And I cannot wait until you have the opportunity to be in a place with other students and meet them directly and flourish. Because if you can do that alone, just imagine what you could do

if you were given the support that every other student and every other family has. You will be a wonderful citizen and a wonderful contributor, along with the rest of your family, to our society, if we can just get you over here. Thanks for that story. Okay, Subir, the current situation, as you say, is dire, and we're hoping that with this podcast, we can do two things. The longer there, the more support we need to help get you what you need to live in the situation you're in. And I'm hoping that with this, the listeners to this podcast, and also Clares will help continue to perhaps provide us with some funds to help continue to support you during this difficult time. and we will add here, and Claire will probably post an addendum to this podcast

that will combine with it to indicate where you can go to put funds in. But also people can see the situation that we're in. Now, of course, you're not alone. There are many families from Pakistan, and many have stories that are difficult. And we tend to hear from the media that because there's so much discussion of immigration and people being flooded, we tend to hear only the worst things about immigration in the news, both in the United States and in Canada. But I thought by putting a human face here,

we could see how wonderful it would be to be able to bring people who are in dire need who can contribute to our society, who can be wonderful citizens, and who can have a chance for the first time in their lives to really flourish as human beings with great potential as everyone in this family is. And I'm very proud that Canada has this program,

but it's extremely frustrating that it takes so long. And of course, there's great pressure current times to continue to slow the movement of immigrants and refugees. And so I'm hoping that people who view this podcast will be able to also contact the government and be able to indicate how important it is to be able to provide these people, the opportunities that they should have and that Canada promotes as a free and open society. I'm hoping that actually you can reach out to your local MP if you're Canada and you can have your MP reach out to me

and they can email me at Lawrence at Origins. And we'll put that down also in writing on this once we finish the podcast. And hopefully we'll be able at least find out the status and find out how quickly we can work. Everything is in place. The funds are in escrow to support this family. There's no drain on Canadian society

and in fact quite the opposite. The minute Subir and his family arrive, not only will they have the necessary financial support, but they'll begin to be able to contribute to the society. And I cannot wait one day to all of us to be together in a room celebrating. If there's ever a family and a group that deserves to be saved, this is a family. And I hope that you will join Claire and I in helping do whatever we can to bring Subir and his family to Canada. Everything's in place. It's just a matter waiting for the wheels to slowly turn.

turn, and every day we wait, they are in danger in Pakistan. So please help put whatever pressure you can. And I really appreciate Subir and your sister is agreeing to appear today on this podcast. I know even that is a little bit dangerous, but it's always wonderful to see all of you. And I hope, as I say, one day we can physically be together. But please hang in there. You've got a lot of people here who are wishing you well. and hopefully after this podcast comes out even more people.

So I wanted to thank you all for being here. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add, Subir. Thank you so much, Mr. Lawrence. We are so grateful to you to Dr. Clairr-Lensky and all of your friends and people who will contribute with us this long way, this difficult situation. We always grateful to you and all people who support us at this difficult situation.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And I should say, indeed, thanks to Claire. And thanks to the group of people who, again, won't name a wonderful group of friends of mine in Toronto who have agreed to act as the local supporters. And to all of you who have provided support through the Origins Foundation or through Claire's organization in the past, a number of individuals stepped up when it was really necessary. I've learned that if you can save one life, it just feels to me like the most important thing that I could do. And here we can save more than one life and make. and change the world for a group of people who can help improve the location they're in when they come to Canada. So thank you. Thank you once again. Thank you. I'll have a wave. You can pan to your sisters again, pan the camera, we'll all wave. And one day we'll be together. One day, we'll be together. Bye-bye. Adorable. Okay, thank you very much. And hang in there. We'll keep working. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks so much, Mr. Lawrence. Thank you.