Afghan migrants tell of arduous trek to Poland

Описание: (16 Nov 2021) Two Afghan men who say they crossed the border from Belarus into Poland amid the ongoing migration crisis told of their experiences after being taken into hospital for treatment.
The men, who asked to not be identified and not have their faces shown, agreed to an interview from their beds in a hospital in the eastern Poland city of Bielsk Podlaski, about 50 kilometers from from the Belarus-Poland border.
They say they were studying in Russia before the Afghan government fell, and that's where they left from to start their arduous journey.
It involved four days in the forest, making fires to stay warm, bone-chilling cold, of not being able to eat or drink, and even being picked up by a stranger who tried to move them through the country in the trunk of his car.
"In the forest it is so cold. So, so, cold. There is no water,"
said one of the men. "Four days we were there, it was so difficult, so bad. My legs didn't work. It was difficult."
Their journey came to an end when they say they were found at a police checkpoint. When contacted by the AP, the police would give no details about incident.
They claim they cannot go back to Afghan because they fear the Taliban.
One of the men says his father and mother, who he says worked for the previous government, are now in hiding from the Taliban and still in Afghanistan.
After being found by police, the two were then brought to a hospital where they were treated for exposure and exhaustion.
At the time of the interview, the two were weighing their options.
Both want to continue to Germany where they say they have family and want to study and start new lives.  
But to avoid the very real possibility of being expelled from the Poland they would have to decide if they wanted to try to claim asylum in the country.
Before the police came, they told the AP they had decided to claim asylum.
The police, when contacted, would not give details to the AP about their asylum claim, or if they had claimed asylum.
The doctor who treated the two men, Arsalan Azzaddin, a Kurd who has lived in Poland for 40 years, was sympathetic to the two mens' plight, but after the seeing the condition of them after trying to cross the vast forests of Poland, thinks living in Afghanistan is better than trying to make the journey again.
"Comparing how they are now, they came from a paradise (not a cold forest) to hell (a cold forest). That's how you can compare it. And this is surely (the forest) death," said Azzaddin.

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