Desperate to Leave Afghanistan

"While French commandos in buses got their people out, we sent texts [in English] telling our friends to head to the airport on their own. Ten buses screamed out of France's embassy in Kabul early this week, past every Taliban checkpoint along the way, and according to eyewitnesses, zipped confidently through a back-entrance gate and straight onto the chaotic tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Five hundred exhausted and terrified passengers were then loaded onto a French military aircraft which quickly took off."

"All of our allies had eyes and boots on the ground ... at Kabul's airport. Canada did not. It closed its embassy and withdrew all its diplomats and military by jet to Ottawa just as the Taliban was rolling into town."

Kevin Newman, journalist, former anchor, Global National

 

"I'm scared. Who knows, they could come here in the middle of the night and nobody is going to know anything. We could be executed, any day any time, any minute -- I can feel the death coming."

"The Taliban are driving around, staring at us, wondering what's going on here [at the hotel assigned to his family by the Canadian government, in Kabul while awaiting rescue]."

"Your government put us in the line of execution."

Abdul Ahmadullah, Kandahar native, awaiting rescue in Kabul 

"Abdul has worked on a daily basis, often on short notice, assisting in resolving issues both complex and urgent in nature."

"His family and country have reason to be proud of this fine young man."

Canadian military officers letter of commendation

 

"The security situation surrounding the airport has become increasingly dangerous. Violence has become more common and Taliban checkpoints in surrounding area are preventing many from reaching the airport area."

"For those who do make it ... Canadian Armed Forces members have been able to assist eligible evacuees to enter the airport parameter."

Unnamed senior government official

Afghans board a U.S. Air Force transport plane during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Sunday. Officials told media Monday that Canada's special forces are currently working inside and outside the confines of the airport to ensure Canadians and eligible Afghans can get onto planes destined for Canada. (U.S. Air Force/REUTERS)

 

 

Canadian military veterans who were assigned to tours of duty in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, as part of the Western allied forces led by the United States and NATO, have been extremely aware of the imminent danger their former Afghan colleagues would be exposed to. They have been working for months independently of government agencies to locate and contact former Afghan volunteers, interpreters and others working with the Canadian military for the ten years of its presence there.

That same group has desperately urged the Liberal Trudeau government to action, emphasizing the dire reality of a tragedy waiting to unfold. They have been frustrated at every turn. Agonizingly complex paperwork has confronted Afghans registering, proving their past work performance with the military, with the Canadian diplomatic mission as locally engaged employees and workers with Canadian NGOs. One department of government has shunted them off to another. During registration procedures communication lines freeze.

And it soon became distressingly evident that the Government of Canada had made up no contingency plans for evacuation of Afghans who were eventually successful in obtaining visas, much less those whose complex, often confusing paperwork had stalled. Finally, with the Taliban entrance to Kabul imminent, Canada yanked its diplomats out of Kabul and its military, sending them all back to Canada. And no one was left to aid and expedite the rescue of hundreds of Afghans promised evacuation by Canada. 

Messages sent directly from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the cellphones of the registered visa applicants and holders informed them they must make their own way to the airport for airlifting out of Afghanistan, at a time when the Taliban is manning checkpoints refusing to allow even visa holders entry to the airport. Canada prepared two transport planes to land at the Kabul airport and they returned half empty. People were simply unable to reach the airport, as ordered by an absent Canada.

 

More than 1,000 Afghans have been flown out on 12 Canadian flights thus far. Canadian Forces are not bringing people into this country without legitimate documentation, unlike the U.S. and U.K., says a former Afghan interpreter. CBC

 

Abdul Ahmadullah's plight is a case in point. Back in June the Canadian government responded to his need as a former interpreter for Canadian Forces in the knowledge that he was a marked man having worked for the Canadian combat mission Kandahar and he was forced into hiding while simultaneously the Taliban were searching for all Afghans linked to foreign forces. Others, like him interpreters, were found and murdered.

Ahmadullah had reached Kabul a month ago, with his family, waiting with dozens of other ex-employees locally engaged by Canada at downtown Kabul hotels until a flight could take them away. Their wait is interminable and they grow increasingly fearful in an atmosphere of grim suspense, where it has become impossible to reach the airport grounds much less make it inside, without assistance. Massive crowds of desperate Afghans and the presence of Taliban fighters surround the airport complex.

Some other countries working to extract their nationals and Afghans linked to them from Kabul and onto planes have taken people to the compound by helicopter, or with the use of armed convoys. The backstory is that interpreters' lives have been threatened by the Taliban and many assassinated by them. Ahmadullah had applied to emigrate to Canada back in 2011, when the Canadian mission left or as he put it "disappeared like ghosts".

Soon after the Canadians had departed Ahmadullah's young son, on his way home from school was abducted and he was contacted by someone representing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan inviting him to appear at a certain place, to see his son. "My wife told me, 'If you go there, both of you are going to die'." Instead, with the help of Pashtun elders he was able to negotiate a ransom for his son. Who came home badly beaten, missing two toenails. "You better run for your life, they're coming after you", warned one of the elders.

He, his wife and children moved every six months to new locations, attempting to change their appearance as they did -- for the next seven years. In June Kandahar was breached by the Taliban who killed all the officers manning the local police station, and took their place. The day of the invasion he appealed to Canadian officials and was wired $1,500. He and his family left for Kabul. In their absence from Kandahar their home was burnt to the ground.

When the Taliban took the capital on August 15, all those at the hotel they had been assigned to by the Canadian government were informed they should head out to the airport. When they did, they reached a dangerous place of mad chaos, packed with desperate people. They had little option but to return to the hotel to try again the following day, with similar results. Those in the hotel whom the Canadian government has pledged to rescue have tried again and again to reach the blast barriers of the airfield.

According to Ahmadullah, Taliban guards ripped up one former employee's Canadian visa then beat him. He was warned not to return or he'd be killed. "He didn't have hope any more", said Ahmadullah. He said, '[If we wait for Canada, we will die." The Canadian Armed Forces assigned to help extract Afghans has three to four days left to airlift people out of Kabul.

 

 U.S. President Joe Biden has informed his allies that the withdrawal date of August 31 is firm and will not be renegotiated with the Taliban. His concern now is that U.S. troops are vulnerable to attacks by Islamic State terrorists, obviating the potential of conflict with Taliban terrorists since the Taliban refer to August 31 as their 'red line' for foreign departures. And then there is their statement that they do not want any more Afghan nationals leaving on evacuation flights

Hoping to flee the country, people gather outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 20, 2021.   JIM HUYLEBROEK/The New York Times News Service