Veterans working to ensure interpreters Not Left Behind
Helping finance evacuation from Afghanistan
As Afghanistan threatens to fall to the Taliban, a group of Canadian veterans are helping to finance the evacuation of interpreters and other people who worked for the Canadian mission from their homes to safer places, anticipating evacuation to Canada.
Not Left Behind, a group co-founded by the sister of Canada’s first female soldier to die in combat, said it helped finance the safe transfer of 20 families in just the last few days.
“We’re in constant contact with dozens of families, helping each work through a specific extraction plan while reassuring them that someone actually cares about their safety and well-being,” said Robin Rickards, a retired corporal, in a news release.
“We’re operating very close to the wire financially, between housing, food, clothing, medical expenses, transportation.”
Rickards also described difficulties in getting money into Afghanistan.
The grassroots effort comes soon after Canada said it plans to take in hundreds of people who gave Canadian Forces “essential support,” including interpreters and staff at the Kabul embassy and their families.
Human Rights Watch has called on countries that fought the counter-insurgency war to urgently take in the local people they hired, because they have been threatened with arrest, persecution and murder.
Afghans who worked for member countries of the International Security Assistance Force that fought the Taliban after 9/11 are at heightened risk of mistreatment by Taliban forces, even more than the average Afghan.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Canada intended to accept as permanent residents 45 embassy staffers, 40 interpreters and their families, for a total of 235 people.
Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said Friday that this plan was being developed, but gave no date.
“I know even in the last number of weeks that the situation has gotten worse, that lives are on the line,” Mendicino said. “The most important thing I want to convey with regards to this operation is that we know that Afghans put their own lives at risk by helping the Canadian effort in the war there, and we want to do right by them.”
“These Afghans believed in Canada and it’s shameful that we still have not seen a full government plan and response,” said Kate Rusk, cofounder of Not Left Behind, in a statement. “Individual veterans are stepping in to do what they can in the interim, but both our Veterans and these interpreters deserve so much better.”
Rusk is the sister of Capt. Nichola Goddard, who was killed while commanding a Canadian crew in a battle with Taliban forces in Panjwaii District in 2006. She was the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat. In 2014, a “hero class” patrol vessel of the Canadian Coast Guard was named for her.
The Taliban have taken control of large areas of Afghanistan in the three months since U.S. President Joe Biden announced the country’s remaining forces would withdraw, bringing the war to a close after two decades.
No longer supported by the world’s most powerful military, Afghan soldiers and policemen have lost ground that America and its allies defended for 20 years.
Taliban fighters have been so emboldened as to pose with rifles for photos at the gates of Mazar-e-sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city.
Civilians have fled across the border into Tajikistan, and others are scrambling to get travel documents before the feared collapse of Afghan security.
The Afghan army and police outnumber the Taliban, but are beset with morale problems that have been made worse by recent Taliban advances in the face of little opposition. But there are also reasons to expect the Taliban surge does not have the ability to take the capital Kabul and the entire country by force, and might remain a regional insurgency.
Canada’s combat mission ended in 2011, but some soldiers stayed to help train Afghan soldiers. Several hundred Afghans were resettled in Canada at that time.
IT (HELPED IN) THE SAFE TRANSFER OF 20 FAMILIES IN JUST THE LAST FEW DAYS.