Walsall community leader who escaped the Taliban pledges to help new refugees

He escaped the Taliban and left his home in Afghanistan to travel to a strange land and make it his new home.

Now, 22 years after making Walsall his home, Fahim Zazai has been working to ensure those escaping the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan have all the help and support they need to become valued members of society.

Supporting and helping others has been a life-long vocation for Fahim, whether it was back in his homeland of Afghanistan or his new home in Walsall.

The 42-year-old is the founder and leading figure of the Afghan Community and Welfare Centre, which provides advice and support to residents of Walsall with a range of services, including food delivery and advice on benefits and welfare.

Fahim said the seeds of the centre, which he founded in 2005, had been planted when people came to him in the community asking for help, due to his grasp of English.

He said: "When I first started as a community worker over here, people were coming to me to ask for help with letters to their GP's or the Home Office or going to the Job Centre.

"I started working as an interpreter and found there was a real need for the sort of service that I now run, so I decided to properly form the organisation and it's progressed from my home to the community centre.

"When I first moved here, there was very little support in place for asylum seekers and no money, apart from what I got from the home office, so I feel that the centre provides a vital service for those who need it."

His journey to becoming a community leader began in 1999 when he made the difficult decision to leave his home in Kabul in Afghanistan at the age of 21 with his father, having seen the rise of the Taliban in the country.

He said: "I was born in Kabul in 1978 and lived there throughout my youth, but when the Taliban came into the power, they were looking for young people to join their ranks and, in particular, to become suicide bombers.

"They were showing an interest in me, but that was not something I wanted and, additionally, my father was working within the government with the army, so we decided to leave everything behind.

"To do this was so difficult because you are leaving your family behind and you're going away and not knowing where you are going to end up, so I was sad to leave, although also happy to have been saved."

Fahim said he also didn't know what to expect from the UK when he left Afghanistan, thinking that the country was a solely-white place with no foreigners, but found his new home of Walsall to be more diverse than he expected.

He said: "I ended up in Walsall after being sent there by the Home Office and I had a picture in my head of it being a white-dominated place with no foreigners.

"However, I was surprised when I first arrived to see a man walking around in Asian clothes, then I saw a Sikh man driving a bus and as I walked along, I saw mosques and gurdwaras, so I realised it was quite a multicultural place.

"It gave me hope that I could become a valued part of this society and broke down a lot of preconceptions I had about this country, as I'm sure a lot of people have about Afghanistan."

Since that first day walking along the streets of his new home, Fahim has become a community leader through his work as an interpreter and through the Afghan Community and Welfare Centre.

He still lives in Walsall with his wife Kareema and four children and also became a UK citizen in 2007 and said he loved the country he lived in, but also remembered where he came from.

He said: "Being British gives me the sense I'm part of a community and a part of society and enables me to take part in the democratic process as a citizen,

"It also means I contribute to help support others and give back to society, so I work to help people from Afghanistan who need help, as well as people from other communities who require help.

"I am very proud to have come from Afghanistan and it will always be my home land of course."

For Fahim, the current situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have taken over after 20 years of a protracted war, has been difficult to imagine, but said it would not stop him from doing what he can to help people.

He said: "There are people living there who, for 20 years, have been educated and working in the country and then, in the space of a few weeks, have lost everything.

"It is sad and difficult to understand, but all I can do is offer them my support and help those who arrive to make their new homes here and integrate into the wider society.

"All you can be in this life is a good person and have the ability to be part of the community you live in and contribute to it, obey the law and be social with others."