Mansouri was in Tokyo, having misplaced within the final 16 within the +80kg class on the Olympics, when a brother, who lives in London, referred to as him.
His sibling’s message was stark: “Don’t return to Afghanistan. I do know the whole lot will go dangerous.”
A coalition of international forces, led by the USA and together with the UK, had been withdrawing from Afghanistan after making a take care of the Taliban, 20 years after eradicating the hardline Islamist group from energy.
Whereas Mansouri was competing in Tokyo, the Taliban made speedy territorial positive factors as US troops pulled out and lowered help for the Afghan military.
Regardless of what he was listening to, Mansouri informed his brother he was going house: “I’m carrying my flag. I’ll reside in Afghanistan till I am protected.
“I’ve to go to Afghanistan as a result of if I am going to London, they might say, ‘oh, he was possibly carrying the flag only for present’. Nevertheless it’s not like that.
“I went to again to Afghanistan and after two weeks the state of affairs received very dangerous.”
The Taliban took over Kabul on 15 August 2021, with the capital descending into chaos. Fearing the return of their fundamentalist rule, Afghans and foreigners rushed to search out room on flights overseas.
Mansouri, who was 19 on the time, mentioned he rapidly realised he wanted to hitch them.
“Embassies closed, the whole lot closed,” he says. “I used to be pondering, how can I keep on my sport life? How can I am going to a different competitors?
“So I mentioned with my dad and my mum and I informed them, ‘If you wish to assist me, you need to go exterior the nation’.”
With a father who labored with the Afghan military and a brother who labored with People, there was a urgent motive past sport for the household to wish to go away – the chance of reprisals.
Mansouri packed two small luggage, stuffing in no matter sporting package he might. His mom, nonetheless recovering from a again operation, father, brother, sister and niece all determined to make the journey.
“The state of affairs was very loopy,” Mansouri says. “Everybody was making an attempt to get contained in the airport and a few of them didn’t have paperwork, nothing. We had been exterior the airport one or two days.
“Kids had been crying and, as possibly you noticed within the information or on TV, the state of affairs was very dangerous.”
Tv footage confirmed frantic scenes as individuals ran on to the tarmac making an attempt to get on to planes and gunshots had been fired into the air.
Some individuals had been reported to have died after falling from the underside of a aircraft they had been clinging to, whereas others had been killed in a crush exterior the airport.
Mansouri and his household ultimately received on a US evacuation flight, not realizing after they would possibly subsequent see the remainder of their relations.
The day after they landed within the United Arab Emirates, a suicide bomb assault on Kabul airport killed 170 civilians and 13 US troopers.
Amongst those that misplaced their lives was Mansouri’s taekwondo team-mate Mohammed Jan Sultani.
Sultani, 25, had left his spouse and two younger kids additional again as he tried to get nearer to the gate and safe their passage out the of the nation. Unwittingly, he was transferring nearer to the blast that will kill him.
“I misplaced my pal, I used to be actually shut with him,” says Mansouri. “I used to be actually unhappy. He was additionally making an attempt to depart the nation. I used to be pondering, what’s occurring?”
The US and its coalition companions evacuated greater than 123,000 civilians in August 2021, with the UK airlifting round 15,000 Afghans and British nationals.
Nonetheless, an inquiry by MPs in 2022 discovered the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan had been a “catastrophe” and that “mismanagement” of the evacuation “probably price lives”.
