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The Current Transcript for October 28, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

Mr. Speaker

Speaker 2: This is coal. Don't be afraid don't be scared. There's not a word for colour phobia officially, Mr. Speaker, but that's the mality that afflicts those opposite.

MATT GALLOWAY: In just days, world leaders will gather in Scotland to discuss the steps they'll take to address the climate emergency. Burning coal is considered the biggest single obstacle to slowing a changing climate in an hour. Why getting rid of coal is proving tricky around the world, including here in Canada. Also this morning, it has been two months since the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan. Countries have been trying to get their translators and other local workers out. But for those left behind, these are desperate times.

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The Taliban are going for house searches and they are taking people out with themselves. I don't know what will happen next. They will be headed me or something.

MG: In 30 minutes. An investigation from the Fifth Estate on how the Canadian government knew months ago about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and why Canadian military veterans are now stepping in to help. We start, though, with a papal visit that comes with demands for an apology and much more. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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An apology from the Pope must come with concrete action, says residential school survivor

Guests: Evelyn Korkmaz, Lynne Groulx

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We're hoping, of course, that he will set out next steps to be taken by the Catholic Church entities here in Canada and our people to repair the many arms and injuries that were suffered by our people. So the apology is important, but it's one issue. There are many issues beyond that.

MG: That's Phil Fontaine, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, reacting to yesterday's news from the Vatican. Pope Francis has indicated his willingness to come to Canada to meet with indigenous leaders. Pressure has been growing for the pope to apologise for the abuses and deaths a church run residential schools following the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves this summer. Evelyn Korkmaz is a survivor of the St. Anne's Residential School in northern Ontario. Evelyn, good morning.

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Good morning.

MG: As I mentioned, the pope has expressed a willingness to come to Canada. When you heard that, what was your reaction?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Well, that's the first word that stood out was the word willingness. It's not exactly a commitment that he's going to come. And also, there's no guarantee that, you know, he's going to apologise. It wasn't mentioned in the announcement that he's coming to Canada to apologise.

MG: If he does come to Canada, what do you think that would mean for residential school survivors like yourself?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Well. It would be an acknowledgement of wrongdoing on behalf of his organisation that he represents. I think as well, it's a moral obligation. The pressure is on him, not just from the indigenous community, but from across Canada. A lot of Catholics people have, you know, shown their desire to stand with us and say this is so wrong. We had no idea, you know? So yes, it's a moral obligation and I think his back is to the wall, to be honest with you.

MG: Because of of what we've seen over certainly the last several months. When you think of, you know, the little shoes, children's shoes that are, for example, on the steps of so many churches across this country.

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Well, how can you close your eyes to two hundred and fifteen unmarked graves on a school grounds? What other school ground in the whole world has a graveyard rather than a playground? I can't think of any, anywhere.

MG: What would you want to hear from him if he if he does come here and then speaks to survivors like yourself, what would you want to hear from the pope?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: I think he needs to do more than an apology. I find when you have done wrong, you apologise immediately. This is like, we've asked him for years to come over. I went to Rome in 2019 and asked him to, you know, come to Canada to apologise. You know, we shouldn't have to do that. He's the leader of a moral institution. He should know better. And when he does come, I want him not to just apologise, but he needs to release the documents that he has in his possession of the history of the residential school era in Canada. And the reason why I say that is we need to find out what harms were done to the survivors in residential schools across Canada, as well as to identify the bodies that are buried on our school grounds so we can. Tell their families and so they can bury them with dignity and respect. He also should implement in his apology that he is going to pay the $30 billion promised in the residential schools settlement agreement. That would be the moral thing to do.

MG: You mentioned that you went to Rome in 2019 and demanded an apology. What happened?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: I don't even get a response. I asked him on an international press conference. I helped form an organisation called Ending Clergy Abuse. It's an international organisation that comprises of 28 countries that have been affected by clergy sexual abuse. So this is a global epidemic. It's just mind blowing how somebody can, an organisation can continue raping around the world, little innocent children. And we think an apology is okay. People were murdered here. This is a crime scene. Not something you can say, I'm sorry and just move on. You have to take ownership

MG: is back is against the wall now. And so do you find that this is the moment for ownership? I mean, are you confident that they given what you've said, that this will be a true moment of ownership of what has happened in this country?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: No, I'm not confident at all in him coming over here, and, you know, they play with words, it's just like, you know, it says the pope has a willingness to come to Canada. That doesn't mean he's coming. There's no commitment in there. I have a willingness to travel around the world, too. But that doesn't mean I'm going. Right? So they play with words, and, you know, this is something they should have done a long time ago, not something that they're doing to, because they have their backs against the wall now. They're losing a lot of people in their- They're losing a lot of followers, you know. So this is just to, I forget the correct word, but you know, it's in the managed control or ...

MG: Damage control.

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Damage control.

MG: Let me bring. Stay with us because I want to bring, if I might, one other person into our conversation to talk further about this. Lynne Groulx is the CEO of the Native Women's Association of Canada. She's been listening to our conversation thus far. Lynn, good morning to you.

LYNNE GROULX: Good morning and thank you for calling me in.

MG: Thanks for being part of this. As Evelyn has mentioned, I mean, in the Vatican's announcement, there actually is no mention of an apology, just the willingness to come to Canada. What happens if the pope comes to this country and doesn't apologise?

LYNNE GROULX: Well, you know, as Evelyn was saying, there's there's no real commitment there in the words that have been said so far. But honestly, I think if the pope presents himself here with just words and empty, you know, empty words that do not have, you know, an unfettered and an unreserved apology, I don't think that's going to go over well, not just with the survivors and intergenerational survivors. I think with Canadians, he needs to come here on Canadian soil, you know, and do this unfettered apology. And also, as Evelyn was mentioning other things, they need to get involved in programming and in healing reparations, releasing the school records. You can't do that much damage that has been called now a genocide - we know it was a genocide and it's ongoing - and not be involved in in in repairing the harm that you have caused at your institution has caused.

MG: In 2015, Pope Francis went to Bolivia and he apologised there to indigenous people for the church's actions. He said, and these are his words, "There was sin and it was plentiful, but we never apologised. So I now ask for forgiveness". Are those I mean, is that almost what's demanded? What's expected in this country? Are those the sorts of words that you would expect the pope to use when he comes here?

LYNNE GROULX: I think so. I mean, that apology has to be unfettered without restriction, and there has to be that request for an apology. But also, I think the expectations are high here that there will be also other actions involved here, which is a direct announcement of some kind of actions or plan that they have on how they're going to do this, what they called a pastoral process of reconciliation. What does that mean? You know, for the survivors and families, you know, what that means is repairing the damage and using those documents, the docket,

MG: the documents are key. We've talked about this before with with other survivors, with those who helped to try to get those documents. If you have that information, then what does that? What does that mean?

LYNNE GROULX: Well, I mean, I think anybody could understand, you know, if you have a child and that child went to an institution, a school and you don't know what happened to that child, you don't know the abuse, then you want to know any parent would want to know what happened. The child never came home. Or if the child came home, you know, severely traumatised, you need to know it's a part of a human being, a human human being and being a parent, being a family member. So it's so critical.

MG: Evelyn, I heard you in the background, go ahead.

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Yes. First of all, I want to say the pope has said that he's already apologised to the indigenous people. What he has to realise is there's many groups of indigenous people who were very diverse. That was in Bolivia. He needs to come to Canada, where the crimes were committed. Crimes were committed in Bolivia, too. He has to go to each of these countries that crimes were committed to children and apologise. So I don't believe that we are meshed in to that apology, even though this is what he is claiming. The other thing is these documents are very important. These documents tell the true indigenous history of Canada. These documents will identify these bodies that are buried on our school grounds and identify which families they belong to, where these families can finally have closure. This is criminal. You know this, it just blows my mind.

MG: Given that you said it's criminal, I mean, should there be further investigations into the criminality of this?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Well, if these bodies were found in a downtown Toronto school? What would happen? Think about it. There'd be police all over the place. Don't you think? We know who committed these crimes. There should be consequences. There should be action then. You don't find a crime scene and then just say, Oh, okay, well, we'll accept an apology, thank you.

MG: Lynne Groulx. There has been in terms of consequences. There have been calls as well for financial reparations attached to an apology. Do you think that that needs to be part of the actions beyond an apology?

LYNNE GROULX: Certainly, certainly. I mean, there it is, part of our reparations.When you've done the harm. But as I've mentioned, you know, maybe there's two prongs to that. One is the criminal. You can't go beside that because some of these cases were may have been, you know, murder to that extent. And then and then there's reparations as well that can be done in terms of financial reparations and investments in long term programming and healing programming and supports that are needed for community. There's a lot that can be done to really show that an apology is a serious apology. Like I said, you know, the government invested that much money. You know, I'm seeing investment in that's in quotations in building these schools. They now have to put an investment into healing as well. So there's a part for the government, and there's certainly a big part for the church to play.

MG: When you talk about those programmes, what would that look like for the survivors and for family members or survivors?

LYNNE GROULX: And that would be up to the communities themselves to say what kind of healing programme they want and what kind of healing programme they need in their communities. Because, as Evelyn was mentioning, it's different for different communities. I know in B.C. they're looking for an actual healing lodge, a healing centre community centre. So that would be to the communities too to say this is how we want to do our healing and this is the support that we need.

MG: There will be a delegation of indigenous leaders and residential school survivors that will meet with the pope. Phil Fontaine is going to be with them. That's going to be happening in December. What do you hope, Lynn, they will say to the pope in light of what you have been saying?

LYNNE GROULX: Well, I'm sure they're going to express what we're expressing right now that how significant and important it is for the pope to come here, not empty handed, to come here with an unfettered apology. These are part of diplomatic relations when groups or leaders, you know, go in advance of a visit. So I think that each one will represent their community or different groups maybe that they're representing, but they will express the importance of him being here and having a clear action plan and not not just some words that he wants to say.

MG: Evelyn mentioned that in some ways, the church's back is against the wall and Th Pope's back is against the wall. People have been calling for this apology for many, many years, not just coming out of this summer, but from years before. Why do you think it's happening, at the very least, that the pope is coming to Canada now?

LYNNE GROULX: Well, I do believe, as everyone mentioned, you know, there's that much pressure now because Canadians also in the world, the world is watching what's going on and hearing about it. I mean, we're in a time of technology, the media, the social media is reaching everywhere. They do have their back against the wall in that sense, right there. They have been very, very slow, much too slow to do not to come forth. And now there's this pressure. Now that you cannot hide the evidence, physical evidence has literally come forward, unfortunately, you know, out of the ground is the remains of the children. I think that's what's causing this pressure now to happen. But again, the community, you know, we're hearing that the community really wants this apology so long. You know, it's coming late, but the community wants it. So we're respectful of that. For those who do want it and those who do not. But it's coming from pressure, I believe, from political and community pressure.

MG: Evelyn Korkmaz. If an apology were to be offered, would you accept it?

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Oh, boy, I would accept it, if, he pays the $30 million promised in the IRSS agreement. If he releases the documents, which were also promised in the IRSS a agreement. And if he also puts more money than the $30 million into this project, because this is going to be a very costly project to uncover the unmarked graves on each location of the residential schools across Canada. There needs to be a lot of a lot of healing. Now, whether you actually get closure before you leave this Earth is another story because it takes a lifetime to heal from trauma. So it affects the entire generational group that they will have to continue to fund these healing for the next generation, because unfortunately, we as survivors have had damaged our children and because of the harm that was done to us.

MG: Lynne, I could hear you agreeing in the background just briefly, I mean, what is your sense that that people would accept this apology, that they would be open to hearing it now?

LYNNE GROULX: I mean, I'm just listening to Evelynand it's so, so, so difficult if you are that person who did attend and I did not. But just the harm is so severe because it's not just the generation who attended, it's intergenerational, as Evelyn was saying. We pass on the harms that are done to us often unconsciously, we'll pass will pass that on. And it's so it's not it's not going to end just with an apology. It may just begin just the first step into beginning some kind of a process, but it is a process and it's going to have to come with a lot of sincerity and a lot of direct actions to show because there's that much harm that's been done. It's really a very, very significant. I don't even have words to say because we're on the front lines every day in the organisation and we see it every single day. We continue to lose. People are still losing their lives today relating to experiences from residential school or intergenerational, either through suicide or addictions or any kind of other diseases that develop from, you know, chronic trauma from it. So that's where we are.

MG: I'm grateful to speak with you both about this this morning, and we'll talk again as perhaps this visit gets closer in the meantime. Thank you very much.

EVELYN KORKMAZ: Thank you.

LYNNE GROULX: And thank you.

MG: Evelyn Korkmaz is a survivor of the St. Anne's Residential School in northern Ontario. Lynne Groulx is the CEO of the Native Women's Association of Canada, a national Indian Residential School Crisis line is available for anyone who needs support. It's a 24 hour crisis line, you can call it at 18669254419. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We're back in six minutes and we'll head to Afghanistan to talk about what Canada knew when when it came to the fall of that government.

The Fifth Estate investigation shows Canada was urged to rescue Afghans long before U.S. withdrawal

Guests: Gillian Findlay, Tim Laidler

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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Still to come ahead of COP 26, we dig into the coal industry and what's preventing a global coal phaseout. First escaping Afghanistan.

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The Taliban are going for house searches and they are taking people out with themselves. Probably they'll knock my door and they will take me out. I don't know what will happen next. They will be headed me or something. They will do something with me or they will shoot me at that point.

MG: That's one of the thousands of Afghans left behind after the Taliban took over the country this summer. We aren't identifying him due to safety concerns. He had done work with the Canadian military and was in hiding hearing, as you just heard there, that his life was in danger. Thousands like him are still waiting in safe houses. They're funded by Canadian Veterans Associations, and the Fifth Estate's Gillian Findlay and her team have been looking into this story. They've uncovered new documents that show what the Canadian government knew about the plight of these Afghans and when Gillian Findlay is with me now. Gillian, good morning.

GILLIAN FINDALY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do we know about that man that we just heard from and his family? Was he able to get out? Were they able to get out of the country?

GILLIAN FINDALY: Yes, he did get out, Matt happily. He arrived in Canada earlier this month with his parents and two of his siblings. It was a very long journey, and we document that in the story tonight. This is a man who worked as a contract construction boss. His job was in Kandahar back in the early 2000s, expanding naval bases there. When Canadian troops left in 2011, he knew he would be at risk for what he did. He was at risk for what he did. People knew who he was. He eventually left Kandahar. Nevertheless, he was threatened many times over the years, and in 2017 he was actually attacked. His throat was slashed. He barely survived. But now, yes, happily, he is in Canada.

MG: What was the understanding that Canada had with people like him, people who had worked with the Canadian Forces and knew that that work could put them at risk?

GILLIAN FINDALY: It was never a formal contract, but as one of the Canadian generals we interviewed for our piece tonight says, you know, we treated these people as family and like family, there was an understanding that we would take care of them. There was always an acknowledgement that these people took great risks allying themselves and were seen by many Afghans and certainly by the Taliban. You know, they were seen, as were the Canadian forces, as invaders and therefore the enemy. And because of that, if NATO's efforts failed, they were going to need protection. This was a stood even by Stephen Harper's government back in 2011, when he made the decision to end Canada's war in Afghanistan. He actually set up a special immigration programme for people just like this who had worked for Canada and its military. Nearly 800 Afghans came to Canada under that programme over a couple of years. So there was a programme and but it had a lot of restrictions as as many immigration programmes do. And this is something that the Liberals in opposition at the time complained about. The case of the man that we have been talking about here this morning. His years of service fell outside the dates that were specified in the programme, so he didn't actually qualify. But he did have a very good friend who was a Canadian reservist and someone he worked closely with in Kandahar at the time that man applied to bring him to Canada, under other avenues and, despite the work you've done and the danger that he had been in, for years, he was unsuccessful. That changed this summer when the Taliban retook the country and the Canadian government decided it really did have to get serious about this issue again.

MG: Well, what has the Liberal government? Because the Liberals have been in power since 2015, what have they been doing to help people like this, people who are in grave danger?

GILLIAN FINDALY: Well, when you hear many of these Afghans and many of the veterans who have worked with them and sometimes spent years trying to get them to Canada, they say the liberals haven't done much. It just didn't seem a priority for them. As an example, as part of our research, we obtained a trove of correspondences with the documents that you were referring to in your introduction, is correspondence between a backbench Liberal MP named Marcus Bluesky. He's from Thunder Bay and the Immigration Department, and eventually with the Immigration Minister. Powlowski had been approached by a constituent, a reservist who was having no luck helping to get people, Afghans he'd worked with to Canada. So he agreed to look into it and see what what he could do. And you can see in the emails that go back years the trouble that he had getting anyone's attention on this issue, including ministers and his growing frustration, especially, I think, last fall when the Americans President Trump announced that the U.S. would also be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. That's when the panic started to set in. And you see in these these documents the growing frustration, the growing fear, and still nothing was done.

MG: You spoke with a staffer in that MP's office, Robertson Oben, who really got involved in this. Take a listen to what he had to say.

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I was getting emails from the interpreters that I knew, you know, saying, Mr. Robert, we're really afraid. I'm scared my children get killed. I'm scared my wife's going to get raped. You know, grown men begging me for their life, saying, Please, you have to help me. You have to do something. You have to get Canada let me in. It started to affect me psychologically, and I'm talking to Marcus every day, and he's getting extremely stressed as well and really pissed off, right? And essentially, you know, he said, Look, look, I got to put something in writing, I want there to be a record and I agree with him. So that's what we need to do. We have to make sure we can hold the government accountable.

MG: Strong language there, Gillian. Tell me more about what those emails and the internal communication showed.

GILLIAN FINDALY: Well, the communications were obviously meant to be private, so Powlowski wasn't pulling his punches. You know, he told the department about the threats that he was hearing from these people, the fact that some of them have been attacked. The fear is that they would be killed. They felt, he said, that Canada had forgotten them. And he said, you know. And he challenged his own government. He accused it of being too slow to bureaucratic, not understanding the urgency of what was happening and what was about to happen. It is an interesting fellow. You know, he's a doctor and has worked in many places in the developing world. In one of his most blistering emails that sent not only to the immigration minister but to five other Liberal cabinet ministers. He asked them, he says, You know, what are we going to say when the national media starts asking why we didn't save these people who risked their lives for us? And he says, You know, if I can do C-sections sections of a little island with no running water, no electricity, then surely our government can do this if we want to. And the question is, that remained unanswered for many, many weeks, the question is, do we want to?

MG: The government was also taking heat from outside its ranks. There were retired generals who are trying to warn the government of what was happening and the fact that they needed to take action. Those generals wrote a public letter. What did the letter say?

GILLIAN FINDALY: These were three retired generals, as you say, each of them had experience in Afghanistan and that included General Dave Fraser, who led Operation Medusa, which was arguably NATO's most important campaign in the war. The letter they sent in July warned of cataclysmic civil war. Those were the words they use cataclysmic civil war in Afghanistan, and they predicted that without immediate assistance, Afghans who had served alongside Canadians that they had commanded in their terms their though those people would die.

MG: What sort of response did they get from that letter?

GILLIAN FINDALY: No response, at least not initially, according to General Fraser. A few weeks later, however, the government finally did announce its own special immigration programme for Afghans that Canada had left at risk, very similar to the one that the Conservatives had enacted back in 2011. The problem was at that point, it was almost too late. Less than three weeks later, Kabul fell to the Taliban. The enemy was now in control and these people were trapped. And Matt, you probably remember the scenes from last August of desperate people at the Kabul airport trying to escape, throngs of people trying to get past checkpoints to get into evacuation flights, hanging onto planes, falling off of planes. You know, it was chaos. And in the end, thousands of Afghans and their families who would have qualified under Canada's new newly announced programme just simply couldn't get out.

MG: How did what this country was doing at that time, as you say, as the country was falling and people were desperate to get out? How did Canada's actions compare to what other countries were doing?

GILLIAN FINDALY: Well, it depends a lot on who you talk to, but even the government has admitted this was not a huge success. I mean, firstly, Canada, for the first number of days, was absent. As the Taliban moved into Kabul, the Canadian embassy staff moved out. The claim is that there was no one there to help Afghans to coordinate. Other countries had troops on the ground to get their people past the Taliban checkpoints and diplomats at the airport to help process them get them onto planes for days. Canada had none of that. What Ottawa was doing was was sending emails to these people, you know, they were giving them the paperwork that they needed to flee, but then simply telling them, You don't go to the airport, wear red - and you'll remember all those scenes of people standing outside the gates wearing red scarves, you know, waving their Canadian passports. One instance, they were standing in a sewage pit, as General Fraser told us, you know, it was a mess. And as a result, there's now an estimated 20000 people Canada should have been able to help get out.

MG: Gillian Findlay is a host with CBC's The Fifth Estate. I want to bring somebody else into our conversation. Tim Laidler is the president of the Board of the Veterans Transition Network. It is a charity that helps veterans transitioning out of the military. He's been listening to our conversation. Tim, good morning to you.

TIM LAIDLER: Hi, good morning. You were in Afghanistan in 2008. How would you describe the relationships that you formed with the interpreters that you worked with?

TIM LAIDLER: They essentially became part of our units. They actually wore Canadian forces uniforms alongside us in my job. I'd be on guarding supply convoys through the Kandahar province so we can go through a small town. There might be a vehicle crash in front of us. We have to get out of the vehicles and move people along. You're relying on your interpreter for the safety of your entire unit to tell you who somebody you can trust, who's somebody you have to keep an eye on. And obviously to translate all the messages to try and get through a scene like that. So they're absolutely essential and become really good friends with them.

MG: I was going to say, I mean, when people describe them as being like family, that's accurate to you?

TIM LAIDLER: Absolutely. Yeah. Like, you know, one gentleman who's here in Canada, got here under the other programme, we'd spend their night shifts, the other 12 hours long just sitting and talking and, you know, know everything about him and realise just how much we have in common, even though he was born on the other side of the world in a completely different culture. We have way more in common.

MG: When did you realise that these folks were in danger and that they needed to get out of the country?

TIM LAIDLER: Well, we always knew it. But at the beginning of the summer is when I really started to get the messages from the interpreters and through the Veterans Transition Network. Hundreds of veterans who we were in contact with were also getting messages from their interpreters back in May, June, July, saying We're really worried about how the pullout is going. The Americans are leaving the end of the summer. We don't think it's going to be safe here for us and our families. We need to find a way to get to Canada.

MG: And so given that come August, when you start to see those scenes at the airport and what Gillian was describing in terms of Canada's response and what people were being asked to do, what was going through your mind?

TIM LAIDLER: I was furious. We had we had formally got involved as an organisation when the generals asked us earlier in the summer because. In order for people to get out, we knew they had to go to the consulate, which was in Kabul, so they had to leave the rural areas, they had to leave Kandahar and do the 10 hour drive up to Kabul, and some of them didn't have any family there. And that's when we started working with Canadian Dave to find secure accommodations for everybody to live. Our plan was to have them siege in Kabul and get their paperwork done at the Canadian consulate and ultimately get on the plane. And a lot of embassy staff who had access to this programme first, they all managed to take advantage of that process and they got out of the country first. And we were left with, when it hit, August, was thousands of people in our financial care living in Kabul, trying to get onto the airfield.

MG: I've spoken with other veterans about this and they've said that it's a sense of betrayal that they feel and that that we as a nation invested ourselves and we, those interpreters trusted Canada to take care of them and that we in some ways betrayed them. That's strong language. But do you think that that's accurate?

TIM LAIDLER: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Abandon them, betrayed them. Anybody, any Canadian knows what it's like to try and do government paperwork. Now imagine doing that on limited Wi-Fi, on your cell phone, in a single room with, you know, a large family, extended family of parents and everything and crying kids and being told you need Adobe X to fill out the forms. The latest version of Adobe and you can't do it on your phone. You have to somehow find a laptop. It's just so cruel to put people through that sort of stress and the flash of pathway open to them and have a vast majority not be able to figure out the paperwork in time and you get to aeroplanes.

MG: Your organisation is trying to help people who are there on the ground and get them to safety. The safe houses are a big part of that. How many people do you have who are being protected in those safe houses?

TIM LAIDLER: There's almost 2500 people who are spread out across Afghanistan that are that are in some form of safe housing.

MG: And who pays for that?

TIM LAIDLER: It's been the Canadian public. Donations have come in through our website. Some great corporate sponsors have stepped in, but just Canadians who care, who have put their own money forward and paid for room and board for over 2000 people for the last three months.

MG: So just to be clear, this is not the Canadian government that's paying for these safe houses. These are these are donations that you have been able to gather to help house these people.

TIM LAIDLER: That's right. All donated money from hardworking Canadians.

MG: What happens when the money runs out?

TIM LAIDLER: Well, we're unfortunately at that point now where we're having to make some hard decisions. It's never really been clear exactly who's allowed to come to Canada under the special immigration programme. You know, we've heard a lot of talk about women's rights activists, LGBTQ Afghans, this group. Unfortunately, we have not seen them getting approved to come to Canada, and they're at the point now where we're only able to financially support people who are going to be approved to actually come and the rest of them or, you know, in the process through some of the partners who are working with letting them know that we can't support you forever and you need to start making alternate plans.

MG: What does that mean? Alternate plans? I mean, if they're not in the safe house, what could happen to these people?

TIM LAIDLER: Oh, they could be killed, for sure. Like, that's the brutal reality. The life of a woman with no husband.,You know, they've been widowed or something else has happened, it's not good. They can't work. They're not safe. It's hard to go to the bank to get money. Every single aspect of their lives is coming much more difficult. And the only thing we can hope is that they can find some extended family to take them in.

MG: You've also been working to try to get people to Pakistan. Tell me a bit about how you're doing that.

TIM LAIDLER: Well, we're definitely looking at getting people who've been approved to come to Canada out of the country. There's numerous different ways to get the most different land crossings, different places to take them. But we all know Canadian Dave and his expertise has helped us find a path out of the country, which in this case are supported by the Canadian government to get people the appropriate border crossing documents for whichever country they're going to try and go to.

MG: How difficult and dangerous of a journey is that for them to try and get out of the country?

TIM LAIDLER: It's extremely dangerous. You know, they have to go through multiple Taliban checkpoints. You know, we've given them all the proper documents to cross a border. Most people need to carry those documents in paper form because it's very easy for them to lose their cell phones on the trip and they need to show it at borders. So if they're thoroughly searched, they're going to be discovered on who they are. And at this point, it seems to be a bit random, just kind of depends which Taliban unit searches them as to how they deal with them. It's a risk any time they meet the Taliban.

MG: What is it like for you to try and help them along from a distance? I mean, how are you even monitoring where they are so that, you know, when they're safe?

TIM LAIDLER: We're in contact with them, and we use every piece of technology possible to help track along how people are moving so that, you know, we can let them know if there's a new security alert, if there's a threat of a suicide bombing like we saw at the airport.

MG: Given what you're doing and the desperation that people on the ground are feeling, how cautious do you need to be that you are providing support, but you're not giving people kind of false hope as well, because people are for obvious reasons, as you've described, are desperate to get out of the country?

TIM LAIDLER: Oh, everybody has been given false hope. Think when this programme was announced like all the- like a young Afghan girl here is 40000 Afghans are eligible to come to Canada, including women's rights leaders in their mind. They think they qualify to come to Canada and they reach out to us and ask for support. And they say, So how do I qualify? How?Tim, just tell me how to apply to IRCC and come to Canada? And when I say, Well, we don't actually know how you can apply here, try emailing this address and they do. And it's now three months later, and they haven't even had a response from IRCC, they have false hope given to them by our government. And we've begged the government to start [unintelliglbe] applications and to set out a clear parameter on, you know, if it's a women's rights activist, how many years do you have to be a women's rights activist for in order to qualify for this programme? We need to quantify it so that we can tell people and put it up on our website to say, Look, you need to have this many years of service. You've had to have this level of senior job within an NGO, even just some basic guidelines. But instead, we have this system where it just seems very open and welcoming. And the vast majority of people don't get a reply from the email address that they try and use to start the process.

MG: What does it tell you, just finally, that all of this is happening despite, as Gillian was saying, warnings for months that things needed to be and perhaps longer than months, that things needed to be done faster, that that that you could not wait around and that we're seeing now the results of not moving quick enough, what does that tell you?

TIM LAIDLER: Yeah. You know, something that keeps coming up, we keep hearing is, well, you know, the government has to be careful not to let any terrorist in. So I think there's a prejudice against Afghans to think that there are higher security risk than other groups of people who are coming to Canada, when we turn around and say, Look, the Afghans, we're letting in hold a letter written by a Canadian soldier that they've served with for months, if not years. That's a security, the way more security vetted than any other group of people we've ever brought into Canada. And, you know, 30 million Afghans. And I think the last count they had, there was about 70000 Taliban. Vast majority of that country is not Taliban, not Taliban supporters. And we saw that when they worked with us.

MG: Tim, good to speak with you about the work you're doing. Thank you very much.

TIM LAIDLER: Thank you.

MG: Tim Laidler is the president of the Board of the Veterans Transition Network in Vancouver. Julian Finlay with the CBC's The Fifth Estate, is still with me. You sat down with the then immigration minister, Marco Mendicino. What did he say about Canada's response to the situation we've been hearing about?

GILLIAN FINDALY: Well, his response to what happened in August, which was, you know, which was, by everybody's estimation, not a success. He acknowledges that it wasn't perfect. He says, definitely there's lessons to be learnt. You know, all governments have said they were taken by surprise how quickly the Afghan government collapsed, how quickly the Taliban moved in and took over control. The generals that we talked to say, Yeah, of course it maybe it happened faster, but that's what leadership is. That's what planning for. Why wasn't the government prepared? Why did you not have even embassy staff there to deal with problems as they occur? So that's one part of it. The second part is what are they doing now? And you know, Mr. [unintelliglbe] was not no longer the immigration minister. So this will fall to whoever comes next. They are very proud of the fact that they managed to evacuate. They say thirty seven hundred people over those few days in August 20, them being Afghans, you know, brought them to safety in Canada. But that still leaves thousands, tens of thousands more who are still vulnerable, who still have a certainly legitimate claim to to come to Canada, where it should be considered as having a legitimate claim. What's Ottawa doing to help those people out now? The message seems to be essentially, look, if you qualify and it's going to take us a while to decide whether you do or not, we'll help you. But first, you've got to get yourself. How do you as a vulnerable Afghan at this particular point in time, get yourself out of out of the country. The work that Tim and his group had been doing is, you know, is heroic. I mean, they have actually put into place the infrastructure to save people, to get them out. And now what they're asking is for the government to help fund them. They've been applying and lobbying and trying to get some government funding for months. The minister in our interview said that some would be forthcoming, but he's no longer the minister now and and the money as we speak is not there. So it's a big question that I don't know what's going to happen.

MG: Gillian, thank you very much.

MG: Thank you.

Gillian Findlay is a host on CBC's The Fifth Estate. For more on this investigation. Tune in to the fifth tonight on CBC Television at nine p.m. Well, coming up after your regional update, everyone knows that getting a lump of coal in your stocking means you've landed on the naughty list. So why not the same designation for those countries still digging coal out of the ground and burning it for power. Ahead of COP26, we will take a look at the coal industry and the roadblocks to phasing it out. Why can't we shake coal? We'll find out. Coming up in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

The bumpy road to phasing out coal around the world

Guest: Norbert Winzen, Binnu Jeyakumar, Raad Alkadiri

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

First, I want to say that I'm very grateful to have been invited here to get a chance to meet these people, even though this is a place, that's so much full of sadness, I find it very hopeful and inspiring to see the dedication and the engagement with all the people living here who are fighting to keep these villages and who are fighting against climate and environment, violence and destruction.

MG: That's Greta Thunberg speaking in Lutzerath Germany last month. That village is amongst six in Germany in danger of being destroyed to make room for coal mining. For decades, German laws have allowed coal companies to expand and push people out of their homes, all in the name of the national interest. Germany is Europe's second largest consumer of hard coal and the biggest in lignite or brown coal, and the push to phase out coal globally is one of the top priorities at the upcoming COP26 summit. We'll hear more about that in a moment, but first, Norbert Winzen is one of many people being asked to leave their homes to make room for coal production. His farm is close to one of Germany's largest open pit coal mines. Norbert. Hello.

NORBERT WINZEN: Hello, Matt.

MG: Could you describe what the mine that you live nearby looks like?

NORBERT WINZEN: Yeah. You can imagine we're now living in an area which is very flat. There are no mountains, no hills. And then if you stand in front of this open pit mine, it's two hundred eighty metres deep and it's a really a really big hole. And it's just in our backyard, so about 300 metres away from my home you have the edge of the the mine and its big machines looking like the dinosaurs trying to get your home

MG: 300 metres away. That's incredibly close.

NORBERT WINZEN: It's very close. It's sometimes, you know, sometimes the big machines are down in the hole, but sometimes they're just on the edge. And then it's really high machines like 50 60 metres high and looks like big animals grabbing the property.

MG: What sort of impact has that had on the area around your home, when the machines and the pit are that close?

NORBERT WINZEN: For the people, it's just you are. You have to to deal with that all of your life. Since I was born, my father and my grandfather were displaced by the same mine to the place where I was born. And because there's the mindset and for me is there's no coal under your new ground. But now we are affected the second time. So my whole life I knew about this. So a lot of people are getting crazy, getting sick before fighting against the mine, and they don't want to lose their homes. But for the environmental things, we have no groundwater, for example, 280 metres deep, so they have to take away, pump away all the groundwater because otherwise the mine would be a big lake. So all the trees are have no water or a lot of trees. We need to cut it because they are too. They have no water to stay alive.

MG: You've been asked to relocate who has told you that you should move to LA?

NORBERT WINZEN: It's a German law and this law is since, I guess, 80 years. So it says if it's good for all people, some people have to leave. And Germany still says lignite mining is good for all people because of electric power. And so some of them have to leave. But we're talking about in our region about 30000 people in the lot over the last 40 50 years, and now there are still three thousand people left and we have to move.

MG: Would you be compensated for moving? I mean, would they buy your property and buy your house and buy somewhere new for you to live?

NORBERT WINZEN: The first one, yes, they will buy our house and they will compensate it, but they are not buying a new house for us, so they give us the money and say, good luck. The only thing they do is they might help you to find a new property, but it's not like they are taking care and they are talking to you and help you and give you psychological advice or something like that.

MG: Where would you go?

NORBERT WINZEN: Good question. We would like to stay and fight against the mine. Yeah, we are in this area since our family since 300, 400 years, so it's hard to go far away. We will stay there, the kids are in school, they have their friends there. So we maybe find a new place around, let's say, 20 kilometres from our place now. But it's not the same village, so our relatives are far away, then, and our friends are far away. If you are grown up in a small village, yeah, you're just a village boy or village girl and you will you choose to live there.

MG: How long do you know? How long do you have before you'll be forced out, do you think?

NORBERT WINZEN: First of all, they said 2022 we had to leave, but now, I guess it's because they see all this changing things in climate discussions, the local government in our area said, OK, you have time until 2026, so we will see what's happening until then. But in 2026, you have to leave.

MG: There is this huge climate conference that's happening in Scotland and coal will be discussed at the climate conference. What do you hope comes out of that when it comes to Germany's reliance on coal?

NORBERT WINZEN: I don't know exactly what Germany is known in the world, I guess. Some may say Germany is a green country there are looking for environmental things and so on. So my hope is that Germany's lignite coal mining gets to know by the world, and I hope that the lignite mines they will be stopped sooner as it's wanted from the German government, who says 2038 so much too late. What will happen in 70 years if you are still going in lignite mining and burning coal dirty coal?

MG: Do you feel like you're fighting a losing battle to try and stay in your home?

NORBERT WINZEN: Hard question. It takes all of my life and of my family's life and of our neighbours life. And if I would think I have no chance, I would not fight. But I see that 10 years before I would say No, there's no chance. It's just you're wasting your time of life if you fight against that. But now, for example, Greta Thunberg, you say that she was in our village few weeks ago, and no one would care 10 years ago. But now all of a lot of journalists, a lot of politicians are focussed on our area. So my hope is maybe they will stop this thing.

MG: I wish you the best of luck, and I'm glad to talk to you. Norbert, thank you very much.

NORBERT WINZEN: Thank you. Thank you.

MG: Take care. Bye bye. Norbert Winzn is a farmer in Kleinberg, Germany. Germany is not alone in its desire for coal in the midst of the climate crisis. Binnu Jeyakumar is director of clean energy at the Pembina Institute, which is focussed on transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources. Been a good morning to you!

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How bad is call for the climate crisis?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Very bad, the coal is the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, so the largest cause for climate change is coal. And this is why research and a lot of scientists have said that in order for the go global temperatures to stay under 1.5 degrees of warming, we need to phase out coal by 2030 in developed countries like Germany.

MG: There are two sides to this. And just briefly, I mean, we should explain, I mean, there's power generation and there's the mining of coal for things like steel production in terms of that phaseout. Which one is more urgent or is it both?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: For a sure bet, those are two different things the coal used in steel production doesn't actually have readily available alternatives. And I should say a lot of the leading steel manufacturers are still committing to reducing their carbon footprint, but the path ahead is difficult. Coal used in power generation is a different story. First of all, most of the coal mines in the world go towards power generation, so it is a big issue. But the good news there is that there is a lot of low cost commercial alternatives. So in terms of urgency for where we phase out, coal is definitely in the power sector. We have great alternatives available and we know absolutely that we need to phase it out by 2030 in developed countries.

MG: Which countries are most reliant still on coal for power generation?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Yeah, that's a really important question. There are countries like China, India, Japan, those are amongst the top three that are reliant on uncles. And China, for example, is about two thirds in India, adding three quarters. And yet there are a lot of challenges and challenges we can get into that now.

MG: What about Canada? I mean, where's Canada in that map?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Canada is actually doing really good. We actually have a really good story to tell about coal. I just want to say there's a three main driving forces that have helped Canada and are also changing the dynamics in the countries that I mentioned that are dependent on coal. You know, you talked about coal and climate change. Everyone recognises that. So there's a lot of climate commitments that are moving countries away from coal. Coal also causes a lot of health problems because of air pollution. That was one of the main reasons Canada said on its path for phasing out coal. The third thing is the poor economics of coal. Around the world, about half the coal plants are losing money right now, so. And like I said, there is cheaper alternatives available. Canada has taken advantage of all of these and has actually made quite a bit of progress in phasing out coal. Matt, if you and I were having this conversation even just 10 years ago, the plan would have been to phase out the last coal plant in Alberta by 2061. And today, Alberta's plan is to phase out coal by 2023.

MG: But just to be clear, I mean, coal is still being used here for power generation in this country. I think some people may be surprised to hear that given, as you said, how terrible it is for the environment.

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Yeah, no. It's a good point, Matt. Yeah, overall, in Canada, about a tenth of our electricity comes from coal, and it's very uneven across the provinces, which is why people might have the perception. You just said, you know, we have provinces like Ontario that actually phased out coal in 2014, and we have provinces like in Nova Scotia, where almost half their power still comes from coal. But we are starting to see progress there. Nova Scotia, actually. Just yesterday announced that they have put forward a legislation to phase out coal by 2030. Yeah, it is, the progress is uneven across different provinces, but overall it is promising. There's one holdout, one plant in New Brunswick that still has plans to operate beyond 2030. But beyond that, what we've seen is strong signals from government, good policies, companies understanding the economic reality of coal that's all pushing us towards 2030 phase out.

MG: Globally, why can't we shake coal?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Yeah, that is a really important question. The challenges are different in different countries, I think, particularly as hard in developing countries. You know, many of the coal plants are newer. They're often bullied by public financing. So even as they're losing money, they have artificial mechanisms keeping them floating. These countries have to meet rising demand. Many of their climate policies are still nascent, so their coal power is actually not priced at the proper cost for coal. I would say at the same time in these countries, you're starting to see a lot of opposition forces like you heard what Norbert was saying. Similarly, there's a lot of local resistance to new coal in all of these countries that are highly dependent on coal. And many of them are actually committing to net zero targets, which they won't be able to achieve without coal. They are. I mean, if they continue depending on coal, they're all facing a lot of international pressure. And there is a big move to actually end public financing on coal. A lot of investors are moving away. So what you see is this dichotomy of short term sources like this energy crunch that's happening in the last couple of months even and longer term trends and public concerns. So to me, the takeaway from that is that we actually need practical solutions that can address these short term energy countries, but also set a path for a long term framework that moves us away from coal. We need to see more international cooperation to support their transition strategies, see technology transfer and financial support for just transition.

MG: Well square that, though- I mean, it's not just developing Country Square that with what's happening in Australia, this is the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison being asked by a reporter last month about his country's coal industry.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Will Australia resist or argue against any global agreement to put a limit a time, date and expiration date on the coal industry?

SCOTT MORRISON: This is critical to Australia's future and we'll keep on mining. Of course we'll keep on mining, we will keep mining the resources that we're able to sell on the world market. Now we obviously anticipate that over time, well, demand for these things may change. But I tell you, the other thing will do is that isn't sure will work, particularly with developing countries to ensure that they are able to engage in a positive transition of their own energy economies.

MG: So Australia says it's going to keep on digging. Joe Biden's climate plan has been torpedoed in the United States because of in part Joe Manchin, who has ties to the coal industry. If the big discussion at COP is going to be about a coal phaseout, what does it say when countries like Australia, and parts of the United States, can't get off coal, can't get off their use of coal?

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Yeah, I think that this points to some of the political difficulties with coal, you know, there are other ties that just like you mentionedn, there are coal jobs that are associated. There are communities that are currently dependent on coal. And so you see a disconnect in some of these short term policies versus the longer term, what's good even for countries like Australia and the U.S. and so, yeah, again, it comes to finding solutions for them that work in the short term as well. And I think this is why we need to kind of look at the longer term picture. Even in the U.S., they have retired more coal plants in the last decade than they ever have. And overall, the coal power generation in the U.S. is declining Australia. The sentiments that were expressed in that interview there, there's a massive disconnect with the reality of the economics of coal and the benefits of clean energy like even in different regions of Australia, like South Australia, investing in a huge way in storage and solar. And that is the way forward. I think in the short term, yeah, you have to enter into these political negotiations like what you're seeing in the U.S. to try and get over that hump. But I would say the long term are for a coal is towards a global coal exit. And what we need to do is make it go faster.

MG: Binnu, good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

BINNU JEYAKUMAR: Thank you.

MG: Binnu Jeyakumar is the director of Clean Energy at the Pembina Institute Core, just one part of the global energy picture, and she mentioned what was going on when it comes to the energy crunch. The past few months have not been smooth sailing for oil and gas sectors, either. We are in a worldwide energy crunch, rolling power blackouts in India and China, high home heating bills in Europe, high prices at the gas pumps here in North America. Raad Alkadiri is the managing director for energy, climate and resources at the Eurasia Group and is in Washington, DC. Raad, good morning to you.

RAAD ELKADIRI: Good morning.

MG: What is the energy crunch?

RAAD ELKADIRI: That's a very broad question. I think we could probably sort of turn it into, you know, what are the factors, at least, that are driving the energy crunch? I mean, what are the factors that are leading to this really sort of increase in costs across the energy complex?

MG: And so what do you see there? What are those factors?

RAAD ELKADIRI: I think they could probably be sort of boiled down to four. I mean, one is what we're going through in some ways is is a traditional commodity cycle and the commodity cycle that is, you know, born of supply deficits, both in hydrocarbons and obviously sort of gas supplies in Europe and China, but also sort of deficits in terms of renewable power production, particularly in Europe. I think the weather oddly enough and separating that from climate, but the weather has had a very important impact. You had a cold winter in 2020, which drove down storage in parts of Europe and also drew down storage in China. And oddly sort of reduced winds during at the beginning of the second half of this year in Europe actually helped to sort of bring down renewable energy generation. You have the impact of the long tail of COVID, in the sense that sort of disruptions in terms of operations, in terms of maintenance in parts of the hydrocarbon sector and parts of the fossil fuel sector. More generally, it's starting to be felt again in supply and a drop in supply and a supply reduction. And finally, I think what you were talking about just now, the sort of energy transitions policy and, you know, arguably perhaps a mismatch between the pace of ambition in a number of countries as they have tried to accelerate and try to put in place policies that will accelerate energy transitions with market fundamentals and with the availability of different fuels. I think what you're looking at is in some sense, inevitable as a crunch as you go through, you know, commodity cycles are a fact of life. And commodity cycles, you know, we've seen sort of spikes and we've seen propitious falls in energy prices in the past. I think what's different this time is obviously the prominence of climate policy and that overlay both in terms of the options that governments have to respond to insufficient supply, but also the options that sort of investors have in the signals that investors have, which, you know, in a natural commodity cycle like this would have probably driven investment in new supply.

MG: That crunch has real world impacts. I mean, you talk about blackouts, you talk about high heating costs. We're going into winter right now. And all of this happens to your point. At the same time that governments and countries are trying to figure out what a transition looks like, what's a just transition could derail the crunch. Could it derail those plans to try and be aggressive in terms of moving toward more renewable sources of energy?

RAAD ELKADIRI: I think the challenge is always going to be ensuring short term market stability and avoiding real disruptions, or at least addressing real disruptions while you're implementing long term climate and energy transitions policies. And that is, you know, almost what we're seeing is a sign of things to come that you will have periodic crunches and you will have periodic periods of excess capacity as well and large price swings as you put this into place.

MG: if the wind doesn't blow for the turbines, does that put extra pressure on those who are moving towards renewables? I mean, you could imagine that that's, you know, a powerful narrative for critics.

RAAD ELKADIRI: I think what you've said, I think what you've seen as you take it back and it's absolutely a narrative for critics. And what we have seen in part is the real drawbacks of renewables coming to the fore. But I don't think governments are going to move away from that commitment. I think what you've got is, you know, the challenge of aligning politics, which is a matter of weeks with energy transitions, which is a matter of decades and the extent to which, obviously, government leaders have to respond to immediate crises and have to take measures to immediate crises while keeping an eye on that longer term picture. That's a real challenge for governments. That is not an easy thing to manage anywhere. But I think what we've seen in terms of the reaction, certainly in Europe and what we've seen in terms of the reaction in China is to take short term measures to address the crisis. I think to look at the situational factors, an address, the situational factors. And in the longer term, though, to sort of make greater commitments on the energy transition front, on the renewables front, on the gasification front and use that as a way of putting in place new policies and driving in new directions

MG: just in the last minute or so that we have, I mean, coming out of COP, do you think that world leaders who will be there will have the stomach for that long game when they see their own populations facing the effects of the energy crunch?

RAAD ELKADIRI: I think, you know, governments, particularly in democracies, respond to their populations, you know, their elected and they can be removed. And you know, there are real issues as as we put there are real issues in terms of price. I think what it what it does in terms of cop is slightly changed the tone of this cop, which was all about accelerating and reinforcing the move to energy transition. I think it will elevate energy security issues. I think the real danger is that it reduces the ambitiousness of critical short term measures. I mean, what we need are real policies to be implemented by 2030, not just commitments for 2050. And that balance may be changed as a result of what we're seeing now. And it will give added potency, I think, to the voice of fossil fuel producers and hydrocarbon producers to warn of the, you know, the economic impact of accelerating the energy transition too fast. So it's obviously going to have an impact. You can't avoid the energy crunch being a subject, but it will, for world leaders, obviously, there is also that that long term, longer term view and that is what they're there to discuss and that is what they're there to try and reach agreement on.

MG: We'll talk more about this, certainly as COP unfolds. Raad, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

RAAD ELKADIRI: Thank you.

MG: Raad Alkadiri is managing director of Energy, Climate and resources for Eurasia Group. That is The Current for Thursday. As I mentioned more certainly on what's happening at COP and what will unfold in days and weeks ahead on this programme. Q is up next on CBC Radio one, Alan Cumming has lived an extraordinary life and you know that because he's just published a second memoir, not his first memoir, but his second, and he will tell stories to Tom Power about time with the Spice Girls, Stanley Kubrick working on Cabaret and more. That's coming up in a moment on CBC Radio one. Before we go earlier in the programme, we were talking about the attempts, desperate attempts being made by former Afghan interpreters to escape that country. Now that the Taliban has taken over, interpreters are not the only people forced to flee. The Afghan Women's Orchestra, Zohra, did not exist under the last Taliban rule where playing music was banned. Now, many of the current and former members have fled, fearing for their lives and hoping to continue to play music abroad. This is how former conductor Zarifa Adiba described what happened.

SOUNDCLIP

Everything is just like a movie, like a horror movie that is going on, you know, so I see my friends, they are breaking their instruments. They're they're breaking it before Taliban get to them, you know? So for them, I don't think that music is at the moment, their comfort. But it's more of a risk for now.

MG: We'll leave you today with Zohra's performance from 2017 in Davos, Switzerland, and the power of music even under threat. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

Thursday October 28, 2021 Full Transcript

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