Relying on Canada...

"In two months I won't be able to fly because of liability issues with airlines. This whole situation is a nightmare, it feels like we're not living real life."

"How can a government of the free world look down and leave me and my husband to live one more day like this?"

"Every day it feels like I don't think I can do this another day, but we push on."

"People [in Pakistan] are suspicious of me because of my husband's ethnicity, especially the men, who know I'm pregnant and that my husband is far away. They say disgusting words to me."

"Women pretend to be my friend just to get personal information, like that my husband fought Taliban. Here, a lot of people support Taliban."

"I don't go outside anymore. I hide all day. I know some Afghans on special measures had everything paid for, but after all this we want only a stamp."

"I know if my husband comes back to Pakistan, he will end up in jail or dead. I just want my baby to have a dad."

Former Afghan interpreter (name withheld)

A former Canadian Armed Forces interpreter, unnamed in concern for her safety, in an undated photo. She is six months pregnant and stranded in Islamabad, in her agonizing journey through Canadian bureaucracy.  Submitted photo

Canada committed to bringing all its former Afghan assistants, office workers, locally engaged diplomatic staff, language interpreters with the Canadian military, to safety in Canada when the Taliban returned to power to transform Afghanistan once again from a nascent democratic model to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under its fundamentalist aegis. The Taliban are known to hunt down Afghans who worked for the former Afghan government, members of the Afghan military, and above all, those they consider traitors; Afghans who worked for foreign countries stationed with a NATO/U.S.-led contingent in the country.

Some Afghans numbering in the thousands were fortunate enough to have been flown to Canada in a universal rescue undertaken by all western nations as they decamped from the country on the cusp of the Taliban's conquest. Others were far less fortunate, following orders of operation issued to them from Canada's Immigration and Refugee ministry, but which were fairly useless, leaving these people behind in fear of their lives at the hands of the Taliban. Paperwork is the fundamental stumbling block.

This woman interpreter married to a Canadian soldier is awaiting but one stamp on her passport to enable her to be brought to safety.She had followed Canadian instructions to leave Afghanistan for Pakistan on a visa, but her Pakistani visa was running out and she is in a helpless, vulnerable position. Pakistan views former helpers of foreign countries only marginally less favourably than the Taliban whom, after all, the Pakistani military and Inter-Agency intelligence group fostered, armed and protected.

The Pakistani government would not hesitate to return a former Afghan interpreter to Canadian forces to her country of origin. Where the Taliban would be prepared to take her into custody and her fate, following that, would be anyone's guess. Her own guess is none too hopeful. This woman's husband desperately urges and awaits action on the part of the bureaucrats of Canada's Immigratation, Refugees and Citizenship ministry. Action that has not been forthcoming, and whose lack of movement places this pregnant woman in danger for her life.

She has already been accepted into a special immigration program which grants Canadian Armed Forces interpreters the right to come to Canada as landed immigrants and eventually to achieve citizenship; she would be joining her Canadian husband in Canada. Instead, she languishes in fear and suspense awaiting rescue from Pakistan. She is fearful of going out in public. Simple excursions such as shopping or a medical visit place her in danger.

She and her husband barely managed to secure a rented place to stay from a reluctant landlord who demanded a steep fee for the privilege. In the interim her visa to remain in Pakistan expired and the potential of deportation looms. The lapsed visa makes is more difficult for her to find new lodgings. All the promises for swift action from the government of Canada have come to nothing.

Half a year after they returned to power in Afghanistan, Taliban arrests of Westerners are growing in frequency. Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

Abandoning the Liberal Government of Canada's Promise to Afghan Civilians

"In our conversation today you suggested we shouldn't be so involved and should step back and 'let the  professionals  in the Ministries handle it' or something to that effect."

"I hate to tell you, but everyone on the ground considers our government's management of this amounts, so far, to be a total disaster."

"It is, however, a little galling to suggest our office is an impediment and the Ministries are doing a great job."

"These men [Afghan civilians who worked for Canadian diplomats and Canadian forces] have not only provided their own countrymen with selfless service at their own risk, but are in part the reason why many soon-to-be Canadian citizens are alive and able to apply to these special immigration measures." 

"Retired General Thompson, who used to command the special forces, called me this A.M. and said he was 'livid' when he saw the video [depicting Canadian soldiers ignoring GAC-approved evacuees at Kabul airport]."

"The fact we continue to place getting the paperwork right above saving lives, outrageous as it is, seems to me classical Canadian government bureaucracy and therefore not totally surprising."

"Separating families, like parents from their children, is however, something that I would think is totally un-Canadian."

"I know that our government can't, for security reasons, reveal its plans and that we need to 'have faith' that we are doing everything we can to help the Afghans we claim to be trying to help. I am however, sorry to say, starting to lose faith."

Marcus Powlowski, Liberal Member of Parliament, Thunder Bay-Rainy River, mid-August, 2021

"I am astounded that a member of the embassy biometrics team, or members of the embassy staff in general, would even have access to the names and nicknames of those who are working with using this capacity [referring to an Afghan  interpreter by his underground nickname identifying him as an Aman Lara operator]."

"I'm appalled that this information would be shared in this casual manner, and with no apparent understanding of the impact communicating this knowledge in such a manner could have."

Drummond Fraser, Aman Lara co-founder, retired lieutenant-colonel

Afghans who appear to have documents approving their evacuation to Canada plead with troops to let them in to Kabul's airport last week, while standing in an open sewer. Source: Handout Photo 

During that brief period when the Taliban was speedily taking over districts and provinces, villages, towns and cities in Afghanistan on its way to reaching its final destination, the capital Kabul, to oust the legally constituted government supported by Western powers, allies Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom undertook dangerous and determined missions to rescue their personnel and remove them from the path of the incoming Taliban, and with them the Afghans and their families who had worked for them as office workers and interpreters.

Canada spoke quite a bit about its moral and ethical duty to rescue the Afghan civilians who had worked with Canadian diplomats and military, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured everyone that he had the matter well in hand and would never abandon the Afghans whose lives were in danger from the Taliban who would make every effort to root them out, imprison, torture and kill them. No fewer than 23 Members of Parliament collectively approached the Liberal government to make haste.

On the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, and the days that followed to the end of August when all foreign troops were to leave the country, a prodigious effort was underway to rescue thousands of Afghans to ferry them out of harm's way and ultimately bring them to the countries which they had assisted during the NATO presence in war-torn Afghanistan. But in Canada, the prime minister saw an opportunity to call a snap election and turned his attention to persuading Canadians to give him a majority government.

It had been known for months that the Taliban agreement with the U.S. for troop withdrawal meant that a narrow window existed to extract the vulnerable Afghan civilians who had brushed away risks to work with foreign countries, and that moral indebtedness dictated they be taken out of harm's way. A Canadian veterans' group had taken steps the government had not, establishing a group they called Aman Lara, to rescue Afghan civilians whom Canada owed a debt of gratitude to, and their families.

 

Evacuees termed Canadian Entitled Persons — many interpreters were left behind — sit in a Canadian Air Force C-177 Globemaster III transport plane for their flight to Canada from Kabul on Aug. 23, 2021. Photo by Canadian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS

 

This group of veterans had attempted repeatedly to infuse the government with a sense of mission and timing, and failed. Member of Parliament Powlowski was brought into the rescue fold when Drummond Fraser, a co-founder of Aman Lara, a retired lieutenant-colonel, apprised him of a threatening phone call one of their safe-house coordinators in Kabul had received: "Who works for infidels and taking people out from our country and sending them to the infidel country...Don't worry, we will be soon your guests."

Which alarmed and motivated the Member of Parliament to initiate his own efforts to infuse the government with a sense of urgency. Concerns were raised of Taliban spies infiltrating safe houses, used by the Aman Lara group to house vulnerable Afghans and their families until they could be air-lifted out of the country to safety. Evacuation for most, however, never took place. Although recommendations for the immediate transport of Afghans with established links to Canada should take place expeditiously to a safe third country while their safe have in Canada was being processed, hundreds had little option but to go into hiding.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had its bureaucratic routines and paperwork, and Foreign Affairs Canada had its preoccupations and the Canadian military lacked orders to act with alacrity, and so nothing was done to evacuate desperate Afghans though they themselves flooded local internet cafes to complete their applications as instructed and in the process were inadvertently exposed to Taliban collaborators.

Afghan ex-employees of Canada awaiting rescue

In one instance a Canadian embassy staffer openly referred to an Afghan by his underground nickname during a biometrics appointment, identifying him as an Aman Lara operator. The Prime Minister's Office lectured MP Powlowski to extract himself from involvement in the matter, that matters would proceed at their pace and all would be well. Even as panic and confusion in the capital of Kabul grew with Afghans terrified of their future prospects hunted by the Taliban.

Nothing stopped MP Powlowski from reiterating  his concerns, made all the more urgent by new revelations that very few interpreters were being allowed aboard Canadian relief flights. All the more shocking with the appearance of a video showing approved evacuees being turned away by Canadian forces at the Kabul airport. Afghan nationals were forced to stand in an open sewer waving their passports, visas and government-issued letters guaranteeing safe passage on relief flights. Few made it out.

And that timing coincided with the Taliban conducting door-to-door searches of homes looking for so-called 'collaborators and traitors'. That category also matched the position of Afghan civilians who had worked for the former Afghan government, and members of the Afghan military as well. All considered to be puppets of the West, enablers and unfaithful to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan represented by the Taliban.