Failure To Connect To Commitment

Families airlifted from Kabul are seen arriving at an airport in Chantilly, Va., on Saturday. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/The Associated Press)

"Slowly but surely the connectivity in Afghanistan will start dropping off. It will be harder and harder to track these guys."

"What's happening now is the equivalent of what happened during the Second World War when we turned back Jewish [German] refugees and said, 'It's not that bad, it's OK'."

"This is where people are going to start disappearing."

Robin Rickards, Afghanistan veteran, Thunder Bay, Ontario

 

"Their life is in danger I pray for them."

"All their kids were so excited about going to the land of opportunity. They were so happy ..."

"Now they are going back to the war zone."

Abdul Ahmadullah, ex-interpreter, Canadian military

 

"The situation in Kandahar is very bad right now."

"The Taliban is looking house by house for everyone who was working for the [former national] government, who was working for the Canadians or Americans."

Azizi (last name withheld) Kabul, Afghanistan

"As a country that prides itself on equality, on women's rights and on taking care of children, it's absolutely mind boggling to me the government hasn't made it a more significant priority."

"The fact is that our bureaucrats are failing us. this isn't business as usual, this is an emergency, this is a catastrophe of global proportions."

Corey Shelson, spokesman, Veterans Transition Network 

The need for humanitarian aid is huge for ordinary Afghans, says Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Half the population is already thought to be in need of aid, he says. (Credit: Associated Press Photo)

Months before the actual August evacuation of vulnerable Afghans out of Kabul with the takeover of the country by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan terrorist Taliban from the duly democratically elected Republic of Afghanistan, the government of Canada committed to withdrawing Afghans who had worked with Canadian forces out of harm's way, in the certain knowledge that the Taliban would seek to punish them as traitors for working with foreign nations.

 

Thousands of Afghans along with their families were identified as former workers for Canada in Afghanistan, and they were encouraged to produce I.D., official papers attesting to their status and to apply online for documentation to Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada for review and ultimate issuance of travel visas. Very few applicants saw their paperwork completed in Canada and were in receipt of the waited-for visas sent to Afghanistan.

 

Canadian veteran rescue groups attempted to intervene, to prod the government agency to work on their files, but in the event, a relative handful of the workers were flown out before the Kabul airport was closed to further evacuations in the face of chaotic and desperate throngs of Afghans attempting to find air passage away from the Taliban and their suddenly-dangerous existence where Taliban forces set out to punish former government elite, government workers and those they deemed to be traitors.

 

Those same Canadian aid groups operated mostly by Afghan veterans who had close contact with the Afghan workers encouraged them to leave Kandahar, the base of the Taliban, and where formerly Canadian troops had been stationed, to travel to Kabul and to wait there for their visas to arrive. The Afghans were housed in safe houses paid for by private Canadian philanthropy and the veterans' groups. 

 

Canadian and Afghan soldiers in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan.  Credit...Anja Niedringhaus/Associated Press Photo

As months went by with little progress in resolving the situation and the Afghans waiting to be taken out of Afghanistan increasingly concerned over their safety from Taliban reprisals, the veterans' groups funding began running out, and they turned to the government for financial assistance. There was no governmental response to their pleas. And the Afghans in hiding in safe houses could no longer remain in them. They were left with little option, with the approach of winter, other than to return to Kandahar.

 

No fewer than 9,500 former employees and their dependents had been approved by the Canadian government to come to Canada to be settled there, yet most remain stranded in Afghanistan. Overland escape through Pakistan is difficult and chancy, since the Afghan/Pakistan border has been tightened and most Afghans lack passports and are still awaiting single-use travel documents from the IRCC. 95 percent of the 1,700 people who lived in the safe houses were forced to leave when funding ran out.

 

There are reports out of Kandahar that Talibs have been hunting down former government officials along with others, hustling them from their homes at night and mounting summary executions.  Former interpreter Abdul Ahmadullah's home in Kandahar was burned down by the Taliban and he has nowhere to return to, so he is hoping somewhere that he may be able to remain in Kabul, awaiting the required visas, with his wife and his children, and hope he will be able to evade capture and death in the interim. 

 

Haqmal (pictured third from the left) worked as an interpreter for the Canadian army in Afghanistan. Photo supplied by Jawed Ahmad Haqmal

 

Azizi, who had worked at a Canadian base in Kandahar, borrowed money to try to remain in Kabul at a safe house where he, his wife and three children fled to from his home in Kandahar a month and a half after news reached him that the Taliban were searching for him. Canadian veteran Rickards spoke of one of the Afghans he is attempting to help as an Asiatic and Shia ethnic group member, persecuted by the Taliban yet considering having to return to Kandahar.

In his opinion the Liberal government in Canada, despite its sanctimonious claims of the imperatives of women's rights and that of children, ignores the fact that those now leaving the safe houses in Kabul for the dangers awaiting them in Kandahar are mostly women and children. It is his view that the Liberal government is simply disinterested in following through on its promises, as yet another instance where it speaks the language of human rights but fails to deliver.

Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the gate of Hamid Karzai international Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021.Wali Sabawoon/The Associated Press