Confused Yet? Canada Has Everything Under Control

"I don't know [whether to advise Afghans to remain at safe houses in Kabul or attempt to escape on an allied military or civilian flight]."

"I'm saying: 'Try to stay alive. Try to get out if you can'. But I don't think any of us have any concrete answers for them."

Stephen Watt, Co-founder, Northern Lights Canada refugee group

"[Afghans who applied under the special program should] shelter in place, given the volatility of the situation."

"Should individuals decide to assume the risk of travelling, the Pakistan government has indicated they will try to facilitate Canadian-sponsored individuals' entry into Pakistan on request of the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad."

Foreign Affairs Canada

"We have still around 900 [people] in safe houses waiting for IRCC [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] to approve their applications and decide what to do next."

"We've got good contacts at the Canadian Embassy in Pakistan. We can build the route line. We can do it. We just don't want to build it and then strand 1,000 people in Pakistan for two years and have to hire immigration lawyers. So we need to know decisively and quickly."

"I'm just horrified we treated our closest allies this way, all the people in Afghanistan who stepped up and put their lives on the line."

"The vast majority of them have been left behind so far. We just need to do better, and we need to move fast to get them out of the country."

(Retired) Corporal Tim Laidler, advocate for Afghan refugees

Taliban fighters stand guard in front of the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan. Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP

Of the 8,000 Afghans who worked as interpreters, clerks, cooks, cleaners and in other positions for the Canadian military, diplomats and NGOs, under three thousand were able to make their way to the airport in Kabul, get through security and be transported out of Afghanistan, out of reach of retributive Taliban 'justice' poised to reward Afghans whom the Taliban consider to be traitors for having worked for foreign interests during the U.S.-NATO-led mission in Afghanistan which originally routed the Taliban from government.

The Taliban as fundamentalist Islamists with zero regard for human rights, had plagued Afghans under their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rule up until 2001, with strict interpretation of sharia law and harsh punishment for anything seen as infractions; women without face coverings, women appearing in public without male escorts beaten; music and dancing forbidden, anything Western forbidden, unshaven men flogged, public executions as just punishment for failing to uphold the values of the Taliban; above all no schooling for girls, and women forbidden to work outside the house.

 

A man weeps during a mass funeral for members of a family killed in an accidental  U.S. drone strike targeting ISI suicide bombers in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Afghans who for the past two decades have grown accustomed to, and grown up within a quasi-democracy with equality and individual rights and an appreciation of freedom, abhor the new reality of a return to Taliban rule. But it is those Afghans who had committed the grave treasonous act, as the Taliban see it, of working alongside Western interests in governing the country whose lives are in grave peril, and for whom their former Western allies promised rescue.

The shocking immediacy of the Ghani government collapse and the desertion of the national police and military enabling the Taliban to march uncontested into Kabul caught the Western allies off guard in their lack of preparedness to expeditiously rescue the tens of thousands of Afghans to whom promises had been made, many of whom had secured visas for their international destinations. Canada was among those that failed to react in good time, despite ample warning.

Within Canada, groups comprised of military veterans, refugee advocates and others who had lobbied the government of Canada for months to step up in response to an oncoming tragedy once the Biden administration announced its end-of-August deadline for retreating from the country, despite the entreaties of the Afghan government when it was well known a collapse would be imminent without the protective presence of a foreign military contingent, primarily the U.S. In Canada, the refugee advocates' pleas went unanswered.

They remain determined to restore Canadian honour by continuing to advocate, pressing the government to commit to greater efforts on behalf of the Canada-linked Afghans, and to do all in their power to manage events on the ground through long-distance contacts with the ongoing aim to rescue those who are threatened by death, courtesy of the Taliban. Given the current confusion the advocates are uncertain how to proceed without government commitment.

 

Afghans wait in long lines for hours to try to withdraw money, in front of a bank in Kabul on Monday. The Taliban have limited weekly withdrawals to about $200 US. (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/The Associated Press)

 

Despite the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau having been under pressure of constant criticism for its lack of alacrity in acting and advancing the cause of pulling Afghans out of danger, a special immigration program has proven incapable of rising to the occasion, plagued by problems both technical and bureaucratic. Canada's foreign affairs department has issued conflicting advice to the remaining Afghans awaiting flight from death.

The uncertainty of the government-issued conflicting messages and frustration over thousands of applications from former interpreters, local staff and family members to Canada's Immigration Refugee and Citizenship department is evident in its failure to act, to adequately advise, to provide updates to people on the status of their applications. In the absence of application approvals, the aid groups determined to act where government will not, find themselves at an impasse.

There is an estimation of 500,000 people; among them Canadian citizens, former allies among those planning to pursue any avenues that might lead to escape from Taliban revenge. Afghans who are very well aware that an additional risk awaits them in the form of the Islamic State terrorists well ensconced in Afghanistan. On Monday rockets were once again fired at the Kabul airport, intercepted by U.S. anti-missile defences. And now the U.S. forces and their diplomats are no longer present, as of Tuesday.

According to the United Nations, the entire country faces a dire humanitarian crisis. There is drought, mass displacement, and COVID-19, and they are cut off from foreign aid, the very agencies that warn of the Afghan health care system on the verge of collapse.

Taliban fighters arrive at the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military's withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. The departure of the last U.S. plane late Monday marked the end of America's longest war. (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/The Associated Press)