Far from Taliban... snowy Alps beckon

Claviere: When suicide attackers and gunmen massacred crowds flocking to Kabul’s airport, they also severed the escape route that Ali Rezaie hoped would take him to a new life abroad, far from the Taliban and their suspicions of well-educated, middle-class people who worked with foreigners in Afghanistan.

In the chaos, Rezaie couldn’t reach the airport where flight after flight took off without him. The 27-year-old was left with no choice but to take his future into his own leathery hands. Like many other Afghans, he resolved to find another way out and embarked on a forbidding journey of thousands of kilometers to Europe, large parts of it on foot.

More than three months later, Rezaie’s odyssey through five countries has carried him high into the French-Italian Alps, where he is pushing through kneedeep snow to evade border guards.

The Afghan exodus that some feared would flood Europe with migrants after the Taliban swept to power hasn’t materialized. And amid the toothy Alpine crags bristling with icicles, it quickly becomes apparent why: Only the hardiest, most driven and most resourceful exiles make it this far. —(AP)