Charlotte Bellis, a 35-year-old pregnant New Zealand journalist abandoned in Afghanistan by her own left-wing government due to its coronavirus quarantine rules, said on Saturday she had no alternative but to ask the Taliban for help.
After several days of consternation and embarrassment, New Zealand finally agreed to let Bellis come home on Tuesday.
Bellis published an op-ed in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday chronicling her ordeal. In the piece, she ruminated on the irony of being the female journalist who dared to ask the Taliban regime what it would do to “protect the rights of women and girls” on the day of its “inauguration” last summer – only to find herself pleading with that regime for help half a year later when New Zealand refused to let her return.
“What no one has known, until now, is that I conceived a little girl a week after that press conference. For years I had been told by doctors I would never have children. I threw myself into my career and made my peace with it. Now, during the fall of Kabul, a miracle,” she revealed.
