Paul “Pen” Farthing’s heart pounded when the Taliban rolled up to his animal rescue compound outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, yesterday morning. His worries were far from over when they departed without so much as a knock on the door.
Farthing is scrambling to secure visas for his staff of 25 and their families, many of them women who would surely suffer under Sharia Law 2.0. Pet travel crates sit stacked on a cement patio waiting to be filled by hopeful dog adoptees. In the middle of his interview with Phil Lassman, a dog blogger in Great Britain, a C-17 leaden with foreign nationals thunders overhead. Amid this scene, Farthing plots his ultimate challenge: how to run his interspecies cavalcade past a gamut of heavy artillery and automatic weapons to the Kabul airport, then aboard a plane.
A former Royal Marines commando sergeant and founder of the Nowzad Dogs charity, Farthing is no stranger to combat on multiple fronts. While deployed in Afghanistan, he and his fellow Marines valiantly held the town of Nowzad. Several of his comrades were killed or seriously injured. On maneuvers, Farthing and his troops broke up a fight between two dogs. One of the dogs followed Farthing back to his base. Thereafter, they were inseparable.
This friendship spurred the creation of Nowzad Dogs, the first non-profit animal welfare group in Afghanistan. The charity seeks to reunite servicemen with the dogs and cats who befriended them, and humanely control Kabul's stray dog and cat population through a TNVR program. Over time, Nowzad’s staff has grown to include many women as animal handlers and veterinarians.
In 2009, Farthing left military service to devote his life to Nowzad Dogs. He was nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daily Mirror and RSPCA Animal Hero Awards in 2013. CNN named him Hero of the Year for 2014. Those accolades mean nothing to Farthing now as he ponders the fate of animal companions and women and children under Taliban rule.
“I have no words,” Farthing told Sky News last week. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see everything that’s been worked for over the last 20 years thrown away.”
He also pulls no punches against Western governments for pulling out of the country now.
“[They] gave young generations of Afghans hope for the future,” Farthing said in an earlier Tweet. “They’ve abandoned them to the wolves.”
“It takes a couple of generations of people to actually change a society,” Farthing continued. “We’ve given young women aspirations, the opportunity to go to school. Some of the women who work for our charity were only young girls when the Taliban were removed from power. They now choose their own career paths . . . They want to marry for love. We’ve pulled that rug from under their feet. I’m ashamed to be a part of what’s happened.”
Farthing contends that troop surges by Great Britain and the U.S. to safely remove nationals could have been used to pressure the Taliban to negotiate for peace.
“Why did we just hand Afghanistan back?” Farthing asked. “Somebody, somewhere has to answer for that. The lives lost. The money wasted. The futures destroyed. It’s just not acceptable.”
For Farthing, evacuating alone under cover of British support troops was unthinkable: “I can’t just leave my staff behind . . . We’ve got young women who work for us. What do I say to them? ‘I’ve got a British passport . . . but, sorry, you’ve got to stay.’ My heart says I want to be here.” At the same time, Farthing is concerned that his presence among the Afghan women would put them in danger of Taliban reprisals for working with a Westerner.
Farthing pleaded with several countries, including the U.S, to take in his rescue animals. On July 14, the CDC instituted a year-long ban on the importation of any dogs to the U.S. from 113 countries considered at high risk for rabies. Afghanistan was on the list. The ban stemmed from a sharp increase in the number of puppies imported into the U.S. with fraudulent rabies vaccination certificates.
News of British intervention on behalf of Nowzad was welcome news. But, for Farthing, his animals and staff, time is running out.
“We’ve gotta go now,” Farthing told, Lassman. “There’s no messing around.”
Brit dog vlogger, Phil Lassman, interviews Farthing on 8/21 as Taliban closes in on his animal rescue compound.