The Karate Family’s escape from hell

How did a network of Aussies - a soldier, a lawyer, ministers - engineer this Afghan family’s nail-biting escape from Kabul?

Of all the stories of desperation and despair in the aftermath of the Taliban taking Kabul in August, one family’s escape bid stood out. They were known as the Karate Family (named for the mother, a karate champion) and they had to flee the home they had saved up for, leaving all their belongings and extended family, in order to save themselves. Finding routes out of that panicked, perilous city was difficult enough but this family has three children under 10, including a two-year-old.

Guiding them (and about 100 other escapees) out of their own city was a team of athletes and lawyers on the other side of the world, using maps, messages, photos and an extraordinary network comprising an Aussie corporal in Kabul, bureaucrats, MPs, even ministers in Canberra. The efforts of these strangers, the Karate dad says, prove that humanity still exists.