Continuing our series looking behind the headlines of 2021, the former Royal Marine on his perilous evacuation of hundreds of dogs and cats during the fall of Kabul \u2013 and how he answers the sceptics<\/p>\n
From his home in Exeter, Paul \u201cPen\u201d Farthing reruns the events of late summer through his mind. The former Royal Marine, who 15 years ago established the Nowzad<\/a> charity in Kabul to care for animals suffering the fallout of war, still cannot believe that America \u201cwould just throw Afghanistan to the wolves\u201d. When the retreat<\/a> began in August, he realised \u201cthings were going south very, very quickly. We\u2019d got young female staff who had trained as vets, who feared they would be married off to Taliban fighters. Their faces were just horrible to see\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, the Nowzad animal refuge employed 24 Afghan staff. Since Farthing first adopted his own street dog in 2006 while stationed in Helmand, Nowzad had reunited 1,600 soldiers back home with animals they cared for on active service, while establishing a pioneering veterinarian practice and neutering programme. Farthing had been living at the compound since the beginning of the pandemic. Given the charity\u2019s symbolic and practical mission, with Kabul about to fall, it was clear that he had to get both his team and the animals out of harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n