Stuck in no man’s land
Since pursuing a medical degree is more challenging in Pakistan due to grade requirements and the tuition fee is astronomical, more and more Pakistani students have been looking elsewhere. Ukraine, while still a part of Europe, is still comparatively more affordable and offers some excellent medical programmes. Over the years, many Pakistanis have flocked to this Eastern European country for this reason. Several of them make their way through its neighbouring Kyrgystan where its capital Bishkek, is often compared to Lahore, due to the sheer volume of Pakistanis in the city.
According to the Pakistani embassy in Ukraine, there were over 3,000 Pakistani students in Ukraine when Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine on 24th February. Amidst the tensions over the last few weeks, many students were panicked that their once promising future in medicine now looked bleak. Many, fearing for their safety, had been debating if they should go back to Pakistan.
In January, through a video posted on their website, the Pakistani embassy had reassured them of their safety, and told them to concentrate their studies. However, the situation began to quickly unravel in February.
Many began to book their flights back to Pakistan and others foraged for food and supplies to hunker down in case the situation grows worse. After Russia’s invasion, hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine fled the country in search of safety. More than 85, 000 people have crossed from Ukraine into Hungary alone.
Young Pakistani students were in the same terrifying and surreal boat. Tauqeer Nasir is a 24-year-old medical student who had moved to Kiev, Ukraine last year from Kyrgystan. He is in his third year at the International European University.
On Thursday morning, he woke up to the sound of bombs just as his phone began to ring. His brother Jamal who is back home with his family in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was watching the news and called his brother panicking.
After speaking to his brother, he investigated the situation further. From his apartment in Kiev, which he shared with another student, Tauqeer could hear simultaneously both the sounds of bombs falling and of warning sirens going off.
Panicked him and a group of friends decided to collect food and other supplies. They thought, they’ll stay indoors and ride out the bombings. Worst comes to worst, they’ll hide in one of the city’s many bomb shelters.
However, over the course of the next day, Tauqeer and his friends fears began to grow and their families began urging them to leave the country immediately. If their fears were to come true, they may not survive here for much longer. The only way was out. Tauqeer and his friends contacted the Pakistani embassy in Ukraine who suggested that they go to Ternopil, which was three hours away, where the embassy had made arrangements for them to escort them to Poland’s border from there.
Lviv border is an hour away from Poland’s border. After arriving in Lviv, Tauqeer and his friends contacted Pakistan’s ambassador to Ukraine to inform him of their arrival. At that time, according to Tauqeer, he suggested they go to Lviv’s main railway terminal Vokzal station, where just like them, thousands of others had gathered hoping to flee to Europe to escape the war. Here too once again, in the skies they could see jets flying over them and hear the ringing of sirens.
At Lviv Vokzal station, there was no sign of anyone from the Pakistani embassy. For a while they hid in a bomb shelter to avoid the shellings as they attempted to contact the embassy. Finally, when they did get through to them, the embassy, also overwhelmed, suggested they hire a taxi and make their way to Poland.
The distance to Poland from the station was about 60 kms. The group covered about 25 kms of distance by taxi and traversed the remaining 35 kms on foot.
Tauqeer and his friends walked on foot as snow began to fall over their heads and their food supplies grew meagre. Pakistanis had been given instructions to register themselves before arrival through a number however, when Tauqeer called the designated number, he was rebuffed by concerned person for calling him at an odd hour. Failing to remember, that the war itself was an odd time.
At the check post of Lviv border, was another crisis unfolding. A deluge of people was waiting desperately to leave the war-torn country. There in a crowd of thousands were Ukrainians as well as many other nationalities, all desperate to make their way out of here to safety.
Ukrainian soldiers stood there trying to manage an unmanageable situation. Who deserve to go first and whose lives mattered more? The soldiers fiercely guarded the borders and only let their own pass. Ukrainians had priority here. As war ravaged the rest of the country, gone were the days of diplomacy and equality, and thus began the game of survival.
In this desperate situation, Tauqeer, along with his friends, waited for hours, hoping to be let out. Tauqeer pleaded to the Pakistani embassy in Poland to come help them. No one came as they didn’t have authority here and wouldn’t be allowed to cross into Ukraine in any case. Supplies had run out and sans food and water, they waited in the unrelenting cold. “If we weren’t going to die tonight from the lack of food, we thought we’d die from the cold,” said Tauqeer. One by one the group kept going to the front of the line to check if anything had changed. They were weak, hungry and losing hope with each passing minute.
As the crowds grew impatient and tried to leave, the Ukrainian soldiers began beating with sticks. Another day came and went and another night was spent waiting but, the lines remained about the same and they were stuck.
Later on, Tauqeer was to learn that some non-Ukrainian citizens had fought with the border soldiers and the soldiers had retaliated by refusing to let anyone pass. After waiting for two full days and two long nights, the crowds began to swell with anger; frustration turned to rage. The crowds began fighting with the soldiers. Some pushed and shoved, others began hitting them with open palms and fists. Tauqeer and his friends joined the fight too. The soldiers, outnumbered, finally let them through to the other side of the check post.
The group ran ahead towards the immigration counter and there too the crowds were in thousands. Amidst the crowds, the friends lost each other. Ukrainians here too, were given priority and the rest waited hoping they too would be let out. Another day and night passed here too.
Somewhere along the way, Tauqeer reached his breaking point. From the cold weather and lack of oxygen, famished from the lack of food, Tauqeer fell to the floor. Tauqeer felt someone was calling his name. The voice drew him and he felt comforted by it. All he wanted was to feel close to this voice, feel safe again. Every time he’d hear the voice calling to him, he charged ahead hoping to find the soprano but his weak from lack of water and food, he fell to the floor.
The soldiers who saw him lying on the road, dragged him to the side, leaving him there to die. Tauqeer would come back to and try to stand up but each time he tried; he fell back to the floor. At this stage, when his condition grew progressively worse, an immigration officer called an ambulance where he was given an IV drip. A stranger in the crowd, another foreigner took pity on Tauqeer, and took his passport and helped him clear immigration.
Once cleared, a soldier shoved him out of the immigration section shouting, ‘Don’t come back! I don’t care if you die, just don’t come back to Ukraine.”
Slowly from here, the group reached group made their way to Poland. Many of his friends at this stage, decided attempt crossing into Germany or elsewhere illegally and only Tauqeer was left alone to enter Poland.
Here, three hotels had been booked in Warsaw for Pakistanis by the embassy. At the time of filing this story, Tauqeer was waiting in one of these hotels where he was staying with three of other friends who had also made it into Poland, waiting for the Pakistani embassy to make arrangements for them to be repatriated back to Pakistan.
When contacted, Ambassador Malik Muhammad Farooq was at Polish border helping Pakistanis enter into the country. “All the students are calling me from Ukraine to help them at Lviv border but I am helpless since that is not my jurisdiction,” he said. According to him, arrangements were being made with Pakistan’s foreign ministry for the students’ repatriation since they were only allowed in Poland for 15 days after entry.
I spoke to 20-year-old Samar Javed after he’d reached Sialkot. Samar also moved to Ukraine from Kyrgyzstan last year and transferred to Uzhhorod National University in Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine after Pakistan Medical Commission’s protest in Kyrgyzstan. If the war hadn’t broken out, in July he would’ve finished his third year of MD.
Samar and his brother, Ali Asghar, booked a flight to go back from Odessa to Sialkot on 23rd February for 12th March. Relieved they went to bed, thinking they’ll be gone before things get much worse. However, on the 24th he woke up to learn about the bombing in Odessa where naturally the airspace was now closed. Samar was in his apartment with Ali Asghar when the Russians began their attack.
They waited at first, hoping to ride it out but after two days, Kiev fell too and they realised that the situation is pretty critical. “I saw a video that there was a bombing at Kiev airport and that shook me to my core. I have walked and stood at the exact same spot as the bombing and that thought terrified me,” he said.
Pakistan embassy shifted from Kiev to Ternopil. Uzhhorod is roughly about thirty minutes by car Hungary however, Liev was the route being taken by most to flee Ukraine, which was nine hours by train from Uzhhorod.
So they decided to head to Hungary. Samar and Ali Asghar stayed up all night and in the morning, contacted Pakistan’s embassy in Hungary on Saturday morning who agreed to let them come by that evening. Only seven Pakistani students were in Uzhhorod and two others were here from Kiev and arrangements were made with the embassy to receive all of them. The Hungarian embassy made arrangements for all them to be received by them.
However, no bus or taxi was willing to take them. Ambassador Muhammad Aejaz contacted them and suggested they go to Chop city about 3kms from the Kpp tysa and Zahony border. Thus, the next morning, Samar along with his brother Ali Asghar and their friend Anum, all headed to the station.
However, at the station that morning, there was a bomb scare there. The army shut down the train station and they waited outside for two hours while the army thoroughly checked the station.
Once they were finally let in, there were just two Ukrainian soldiers manning the customs line. Afterwards they got their tickets and got in the immigration line, where there was a group of ten Nigerian students who kept breaking lines. This angered some of the locals and as well as Samar and his friends. The group kept letting more of their friends into the line, which grew from ten to now 20 students, where they were pushing and shoving to get ahead of the queue. This led to an argument amongst the crowds gathered there. When the soldiers intervened, a fight broke out between them which angered the soldiers, who retaliated by shutting the gate and closing it off for the next six hours. Aside from pregnant women and children, no one else was allowed to go in. Finally, they opened the gate again after many hours had passed. However, there were nearly 700 people had gathered here by then.
At this point, local soldiers only allowed Ukranians to go through. The crowd kept pushing forward and the soldiers pushed them back, asserting their authority. Somehow in the madness, punches fell on the three friends. Anum was shoved and kicked around. A bag landed on her, which felt like a blow, and she began crying. A soldier seeing this, yanked her by the arm and pulled her through the gate. Samar, sensing an opportunity ran after the soldier and told him she was his sister so the soldier pulled him through as well.
Ali Asghar got left behind in the crowd, Samar pleaded with the guard to let him in too but he refused, threatening to send the two of them back too. “They’re animals,” the guards exclaimed. They waited for Ali Asghar for several hours before he finally found a way in, despite the odds.
“It was like a zombie apocalypse. There was complete silence and peace past passport control and a wild rush and crowd on the other side,” said Samar.
Once on the train, it was smooth sailing from there. Deputy Head of Mission Hafeezullah, picked them up at the border and drove them to Budapest.
It was only after Samar and his friends boarded their plane and reached Dubai did their minds and bodies relax. The distance between the war and their trauma was created, they knew they were close to returning home.
“Throughout our journey, we were fighting waves of sleep, our shoulders were swollen, we were exhausted beyond words and even our feet were sore. And of course, we were also traumatised,” said Samar. “We didn’t feel any hunger. Our body was refusing food. The thought of eating would make me nauseous. My body had learned to survive just on water and snacks. But of course, that’s what happens in a war.”
When I spoke to DHM Hafeez, he was driving to receive some more students from the border. At the time of filing of this story, about 15 students had come in to Hungary through the embassy’s help.
24-year-old Talha Wakar is a fifth-year medical student in Vinnytsia National Medical University. When Russia launched its attack, it targeted every single one of Ukraine’s military bases, this included the base in Vinnytsia.
From his student dorm, Talha heard the sounds of bombs falling. As the sirens went off warning them to make their way to the bomb shelters, the students made their way underground.
While several students were debating when to leave, Talha made up his mind to leave Ukraine the very next morning for Lviv. In a group of about ten, Talha and his friends left Vinnytsia and made their way to Lviv in two cars. Just as they were making their way out of the city limits, Vinnytsia’s main chemical factory was also bombed, spreading fumes and poisonous gases all around. While on the highway there was another bombing ahead. They could neither go back to Vinnytsia nor could they keep going forward. Taking back roads and avoiding main target-worthy routes, the group made their way to Ternopil.
A route that would have otherwise taken them four hours took them 15 hours to cross. Amidst a wide-scale black out, the students reached Ternopil in the early hours of Saturday morning where a bus had been arranged by the Pakistani embassy to take them to Lviv border - about a road distance of 128.9 km. About 53 students were on this bus with Talha and his friends. A distance that normally takes about two hours to cross, took another ten hours to cross due to the large-scale volume of people leaving the country.
After crossing a considerable distance, the bus dropped them as the rush rendered it impossible for the bus to go any further. About a distance of 35 kms, the students walked on their own. Talha has no idea how many hours he walked. “It was light out when we began and pitch dark by the time, we reached the border crossing,” he said.
“We were hungry and tired. We had begun to fall on each other from exhaustion but, we kept encouraging each to keep walking just a bit further,” he said.
A large volume of people fled Ukraine through this crossing, many struggling to make it. Several collapsed from exhaustion on the sides of the roads. Since the group of Pakistanis were primarily medical students, when they saw someone fainting or collapsing at the side of the road, they stopped to help. Some performed CPR on strangers’, others passed out glucose to elevate their sugar levels.
“What we went through; watching people die. I can’t express what I have seen and felt,” said Talha. “Only the hope to survival is what kept me going. People kept saying I don’t feel the cold. The fear had numbed us,” he added.
As they reached the border check point, the volume of people grew even higher. Panicked and scared for their lives, people were desperate to leave as soon as they could. Here, every man was for himself. Talha and his friends saw people die here from suffocation but that didn’t sober any of the panic. People were fighting to save their lives.
Talha’s group witnessing the madness, decided they should wait. They went back and found a shelter house, where in the dank cold with no food and limited water, they slept for a few hours and went back to the immigration crossing the next morning.
However, the rush wasn’t any better. The soldiers had decided to let women cross but men were being stopped. Out of desperation some people waiting in the lines, even tried to crawl over the immigration gate but the soldiers struck them and they landed back on the ground with a blow.
However, slowly they finally made it through the immigration gate. There is a long stretch of ‘buffer zone’ between Lviv border in Poland, which is a no man’s land. This was the most dangerous and devasting patch in the journey as no law exists here. Majority of the people escaping Ukraine were dying on these roads. Anarchy prevailed and people were snatching each other’s’ phones and food, and no authority was present to stop them.
At the time of writing this story, 21-year-old Chaudhry Ahsan was still stuck at the train station Zahony border in Hungary since he was part of the group of students who had stayed back in Kiev after the invasion began.
Between 25th February and 27th February, 370,000 Ukrainians alone have crossed the border into other European countries. According to Pakistan Embassy in Ukraine, on 27th February, there were 150 Pakistanis waiting at the border of Ukraine. According to Pakistan’s Ambassador to Ukraine Dr Noel Israel Khokhar, bulk of them were evacuated by February 26th. However, nearly 500 to 600 were still stuck in the war-hit country till February 26th. However, they were stuck there due to the large volume of Ukrainians and other citizens also attempting to cross the border. By March 4th, 1463 Pakistani citizens were evacuated from Ukraine and approximately 30 remained in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Sumy and Kherson.