By Zohal Azad
UN data indicates a sharp rise in the number of Afghans dying in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Europe. We spoke to a woman whose family nearly drowned about why she took the risk.
When Hadia* and her small daughters boarded a boat off the Turkish coast, she hoped to give them a better future in Europe – far from the harsh restrictions of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
But after days at sea, the overcrowded vessel broke down and started listing.
“We were all terrified, the children were screaming, the adults were crying,” Hadia told Rukhshana Media.
“We passed the night in terror that the boat would go under and we would drown.”
More than 60 people were on board, double the boat’s capacity. But even as it took on water, Hadia said the captain kept everyone shut inside and refused to call for help. Only some of the passengers had life jackets.
When they were eventually rescued after 24 hours adrift, the boat had nearly sunk.
Just weeks before their traumatic experience late last year, 16 Afghans, including a mother and two children, drowned off Turkey’s southwest coast when their dinghy capsized.
Our analysis of UN data points to a steep increase in the number of Afghans dying while trying to cross the eastern Mediterranean.
In the first four months of this year, nearly 50 Afghans perished in three mass drownings between the Turkish coast and Greece’s Aegean islands, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency which records migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.
The toll is more than four times higher than for the same period in 2025. But these figures are under-estimates.
Scattered around the Greek islands are many unmarked graves for migrants who have been pulled from the sea or washed up on the rocky coastline, their names and nationalities unknown.
TALIBAN RESTRICTIONS
Hadia, 27, said she and her husband paid smugglers 28,000 euros ($32,500) to take them to Italy.
The couple had spent more than five years in Turkey where their two and four-year-old daughters were born. But life without papers had become increasingly difficult.
There was no work, rents were high, and the family lived in constant fear of arrest and deportation.
Turkey returns tens of thousands of Afghans every year – a fate Hadia likened to “a kind of suicide”.
Since seizing Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have severely limited women’s lives, banning them from most education and employment, and enforcing draconian rules on dress and freedom of movement.
It was not a future Hadia could bear to think of for her daughters.
Last November, under cover of darkness, the family boarded a small boat normally used for tourism.
The passengers included children and a pregnant woman. Nearly half were Afghans, the rest Syrians and Iraqis.
“Although it was cold outside, we were sweating and could hardly breathe,” Hadia said, but the captain refused to open any windows.
On the sixth night the boat stopped.
“They said it had run out of fuel, but we realised the boat had tilted and water had seeped in,” Hadia said.
“Everyone was crying, shouting. We wanted to contact a rescue group, but the captain refused.
“None of us had any hope of surviving. I said to myself it’s over. Families were holding their loved ones in their arms. I was holding my daughters tightly.”
Hadia’s older daughter, who has a respiratory issue, started struggling to breathe.
“I begged (the captain) to open the window for just a few seconds,” she said. “But he responded angrily: ‘If you are going to die, then die; don’t get us into trouble!’.”
Hadia says they were eventually rescued by a Norwegian boat and taken to Athens. The family have now applied for asylum in Greece.
Still haunted by memories of that night, Hadia said she was well aware of the dangers before embarking on the trip, but she felt she had no choice.
“If we’d stayed in Turkey we would ultimately have been sent back to Afghanistan,” she said.
“I kept thinking what would happen to my daughters’ future if we were returned to that hell the Taliban have created. This was the only way to save myself and my children.”
*Names have been changed to protect identities.
