`I CAN FEEL DEATH COMING'
EX-INTERPRETER FOR CANADIAN FORCES FEARS FOR LIFE WHILE WAITING FOR SAFE PASSAGE TO KABUL AIRPORT
Abdul Ahmadullah thought he'd escaped the Taliban in June when the Canadian government paid for him and his family to flee Kandahar on a hastily booked flight.
The former interpreter for the Canadian Forces had good reason to fear the insurgents.
He says they kidnapped and beat his oldest son after this country ended its combat mission in Kandahar 10 years ago, forced him into hiding and murdered several other Canadian interpreters.
But after reaching Kabul a month ago, Ahmadullah has been waiting with dozens of other ex-employees of Canada at hotels in downtown Kabul for a flight out, and says the group has grown increasingly terrified.
It is all but impossible to get inside the airport grounds independently given the chaotic crowds and Taliban fighters surrounding the complex. Meanwhile, he says Taliban patrols pass the centrally located hotel Canada has chartered and peer at the occupants suspiciously.
“I'm scared. Who knows, they could come here in the middle of the night and nobody is going to know anything,” said Ahmadullah. “We could be executed, any day, any time, any minute ... I can feel the death coming.”
The Kandahar native says he is deeply grateful for what Canada has done so far in exchange for his perilous work a decade ago, and loves the Canadian people. But he warns that “your government put us in the line of execution,” and wishes it would find another solution for moving its Afghan allies out of Afghanistan.
There was, in fact, some good news Monday for Ahmadullah and other locals approved to leave by Canada but unable to get to the evacuation flights.
Federal officials revealed that Canadian special forces are now operating outside of the airport itself to help get people on flights.
They refused to provide details for security reasons, but some other countries have transferred people to the compound by helicopter or armed convoy.
“We are having success getting folks into HKIA in significant numbers, which has been a significant improvement over the last few days,” said one official in a briefing for reporters, using the acronym for Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Ahmadullah's fate may have been sealed when he first started working as an interpreter for the Canadian military in 2007. Successive jobs carried him through to 2011, when Canada's Kandahar combat mission ended. He provided the National Post letters of appreciation from Canadian officers confirming the work.
“Abdul has worked on a daily basis, often on short notice, assisting in resolving issues both complex and urgent in nature,” said one. “His family and country have reason to be proud of this fine young man.”
But as an essential part of the NATO presence in Afghanistan, interpreters were frequently assassinated by the insurgents.
Ahmadullah applied to emigrate to Canada when the mission in Kandahar wound down in 2011, only to have his application rejected. Then, he said, the soldiers “disappeared like ghosts.”
Weeks after the Canadians had gone, his young son disappeared on the way home from school. Someone claiming to be with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — as the Taliban calls itself — phoned to say they had the boy. The caller asked to meet the father in what he assumed was a trap.
“My wife told me, `If you go there, both of you are going to die.' ”
Ahmadullah eventually offered a ransom through elders who acted as intermediaries and his son was returned, beaten and missing two toenails. One of the elders warned him “you better run for your life, they're coming after you.”
For the next several years, says Ahmadullah, he, his wife and children moved every six months around Kandahar city and he regularly changed his appearance.
Meanwhile, he estimates that 30 interpreters who had worked for the Canadians were shot dead. The Post was unable to verify that claim, however targeted assassinations of Afghans who worked with foreign forces were a common Taliban practice.
Finally in June, the insurgents entered the outskirts of the city in force and Ahmadullah woke up one morning to find they had killed all the officers in the local police station and were standing in their place.
He appealed to Canadian officials the same day, was wired $1,500, and by that evening had reached Kabul with his wife and five children. He called a brother-inlaw to ask him to secure the abandoned house. But by the time the relative got there, the home was a burned shell, apparently destroyed by vengeful insurgents.
Ahmadullah said the family is now living at Canadian expense in one of three hotels booked by the federal government. On Sunday Aug. 15, as the Taliban took over the capital, word went around the hotel that the Afghans should all head to the airport.
HE DIDN'T HAVE HOPE ANY MORE. HE SAID `IF WE WAIT FOR CANADA, WE WILL DIE.'
But it was already a dangerous and chaotic place, and the family saw eight dead people there, said Ahmadullah. They returned early the next morning, unable to get inside.
Meanwhile, frequent Taliban patrols pass their hotel and he believes the fighters recognize them as Pashtuns and probably from the country's south, where the ethnic group is concentrated.
“The Taliban are driving around, staring at us, wondering what's going on here.”
Others in the hotel have tried unsuccessfully since to get inside the airfield's blast barriers. In a story the Post could not independently verify, Ahmadullah said Taliban guards around the airport ripped up one former employee's Canadian visa and beat him, warning that if he came back he'd be killed.
“He didn't have hope any more. He said `If we wait for Canada, we will die.' ”