Afghan Girl Assumed Dead, Finally Reunited With Her Relatives

In 2021, a little girl in Afghanistan was separated from her parents who died in a bomb blast that happened when the Taliban took control of the nation. The girl was assumed to be dead but she recently reunited with her relatives in a teary reunion.

When the Taliban took over the Afghanistan government in 2021 to establish their regime, the nation went into an excessive panic. People were trying to escape the country citing its oppressive new regime and many Afghanistanis gathered at the Kabul airport. Among them were little Aliza's parents and three siblings, a brother, and two sisters. 

On August 26, her parents died in a bomb blast at the airport and her siblings had to stay back in Afghanistan while a teenage boy helped her board a US military flight headed to Doha, Qatar. Aliza was just a few months old and the youngest among the 200 Afghanistani that US military flights evacuated. She was transferred to the Dreama orphanage in Qatar where she was named Maryam and the orphanage worked with UNICEF to find the children's families.

Afghan Girl Assumed Dead Meets Family

DNA tests were carried out and transferred to and from Qatar and Kabul to identify the children. Meanwhile, Aliza, now Maryam's, 40-year-old uncle Yaar Mohammad Niazi was in Afghanistan with her three siblings, trying to get his passport approved by the Taliban. He intended to move to the US with his wife, four children, and orphaned nephew and nieces to move his family to a safe space. They assumed Maryam to be dead until they came to know she was alive.

Niazi had lost all hope to find Maryam and was more than elated to reunite with her again recently and hold her in his arms alive. They have decided to call her Maryam as this is the name that the girl responds to and are being assisted by social workers to know her.

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