Sabir Zazai is a man who understands the terror of fleeing war and oppression in his home country. He put his life in the hands of people traffickers exactly 26 years ago, leaving his family in Afghanistan and taking 12 months to finally arrive in the UK in the back of a lorry.
Sabir knew no English and had made a deal with criminals to be taken to Germany, which, for an unknown reason, didn’t happen.
Penniless, he alighted in Dover on December 8, 1999 – and was promptly thrown into the UK’s bewildering asylum system. Scroll forward a quarter of a century and Sabir is now the CEO of the Scottish Refugee Council, where his lived experience makes him well placed to understand the reality of being a refugee or asylum seeker in Scotland. He also holds a university doctorate and an OBE and lives with his three Glaswegian kids.
Sabir is also a living testament to how those fleeing oppression don’t head to Scotland just to claim benefits and secure cushy homes, as Nigel Farage and his right-wing cronies tell the world. He was enraged by the recent rantings of Reform UK leader Farage, who claims schoolkids having English as a second language was a “cultural smashing of Glasgow”.
Sabir, 51, slammed Farage for his claims, based on a finding that 30 per cent of schoolkids in the city do not speak English as a first language.
Farage’s rant came ahead of a visit to Falkirk, where Reform UK are openly targeting Scottish voters by provoking the unrest that has inflamed the town over the use of a hotel to host refugees. He said: “When I read his words I felt for my children because they speak three languages – is that to be used against them? They speak to me in English, in a Glaswegian accent, and they also speak in Pashto, usually when they want something. But they read, write and speak English.”
He added: “Farage hadn’t fully checked the facts, as he was wasn’t accounting for kids being fluent in English as well as another language, so there is not cultural smashing – the kids are embracing Scottish culture.
“It was an attempt to just divide our society and create fear and division.”
Sabir’s extraordinary life saw him live through deadly conflict in Afghanistan as a young boy after the Soviet occupation fell apart and civil war saw communities living in terror.
His family, desperate to avoid him being forced to join the Taliban, arranged for him to escape to Germany in the back of a lorry.
But a hellish journey trafficked via several countries, saw him land at Dover with other Afghan men, where he sought asylum.
Sabir eventually found himself in Coventry, in the West Midlands, where he was housed along with four Afghan men, who became lifelong friends.
He said: “One of them is an IT guy, two drive a taxi and one drives a bus, all contributing to society.
“We are still very much in contact and we talk about the old days. There was so much confusion and fear and we couldn’t even speak English, so we had to meet a lot of challenges, just to be able to function in a strange, new place.”
The Scottish Refugee Council has taken a firm stance against the controversial proposed use of Cameron Barracks in Inverness to detain up to 300 refugees from early next year.
Sabir said the plan is an extreme measure proposed by Keir Starmer ‘s government that doesn’t reflect the fact that net migration is far lower than it has been in previous years.
He said: “Instead of investing in a fair and effective system that treats people with dignity, the government continues to pursue stop-gap approaches that undermine cohesion. People don’t need camps with barbed wire and fences.
“They need communities. Housing people seeking sanctuary in remote or institutional settings is not going to help. Successful integration, from my perspective, depends on engagement and connection, not isolation behind barbed wire or housing people in disused facilities.”
Sabir said his own experience in 1999 made him feel empathy with any refugees arriving in Scotland. And he pleads for better reasoned plans for settlement that learn from previous successful programmes for people from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria.
He said: “Our position would very much be around looking at community based solutions where people can set roots, integrate and make a contribution sooner.
“When our communities are informed, they open their doors and their hearts.
“When they know who their neighbour will be, when they know where people are coming from and why they’re coming everything becomes less threatening. If that message is communicated properly in places like Inverness and others many people will want to be a part if it.”
