Former allies ponder how to escape.
‘I AM THINKING ABOUT HOW THE TALIBAN WILL KILL ME,’ SAYS FORMER TRANSLATOR
The former Afghan interpreter known as Tony to his Canadian military colleagues at a Kandahar hospital was thinking some dark thoughts late this week.
Canada had just announced its last evacuation flight had left, stranding Tony and seven family members.
“I am thinking about how the Taliban will kill me,” he texted from Kabul through a Canadian friend. “Maybe they will hang me or maybe will shoot me or execute me in a different way.… I am out of my mind.”
Tony was among the thousands of former interpreters, cooks, guards and other employees of Canada and their family members left behind when the evacuation mission ended.
Faced with imminent danger from the country’s new Taliban rulers, they’re now trying to figure out how to escape the dire fate they believe awaits them if they stay in Afghanistan.
Despite public avowals by Taliban leaders that they are not out for revenge, the evidence on the ground tells Canada’s helpers otherwise.
Just in the last week or so, Talibs have killed or wounded 20 Afghans who worked at Forward Operating Base Graceland — a Canadian special-operations outpost in Kandahar city, says Robin Rickards of Canadian Heroes Foundation, one of the private groups trying to help such people.
Advocates for the Canadian allies say their best bet now may be to travel by land — or air if Kabul’s airport reopens to commercial traffic — to Pakistan or one of Afghanistan’s other neighbours, then try to get to Canada from there.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau confirmed Friday that the government can continue to help those Afghans if they reach a third country.
Garneau also said that negotiations are underway with Taliban representatives in Qatar to allow regular flights out of Kabul that could take more of those who want to leave.
But challenges remain, and the government had given little guidance to the stranded civilians as of Friday.
“I don’t have any option,” lamented Tony, who asked that his Afghan name be withheld for safety reasons.
He is being helped by former Canadian Forces nurse Siobhan Calnan and a friend still in the military. Calnan said Tony was an invaluable assistant in the hospital Canada ran for a time at Kandahar Air Field.
Abdul Ahmadullah, who won high praise from Canadian army officers for his work as an interpreter in Kandahar from 2007 to 2011, left for a safe house in Kabul more than a month ago. But he still couldn’t get on an evacuation plane. Now with those flights ended he, his wife and five children are unable to return to Kandahar, where the Taliban have already burned down their house.
“I have nowhere to go. I don’t have a plan right now,” he said from Kabul. “We lost all the hope we have. Nevertheless, we hope the Canadians will not abandon us.… We don’t deserve to die.”
The danger seems clear to him. A family from Khost province moved into their safe house this week and showed him a video of the father, a former Afghan army commander, being shot dead by the Taliban. Meanwhile, he’s seen Taliban fighters lingering outside the safe house, asking residents who they are.
He said he watched two of his daughters playing on Thursday and couldn’t help thinking about having to witness them being executed.
“These people, they’re going to continue to be hunted,” said Chris Ecklund, founder of the Heroes Foundation. “Without a doubt.”
Canadian officials have said that they managed to airlift 3,700 people from Afghanistan out of 8,000 who applied for evacuation, calling it one of the largest such operations ever mounted, executed under extremely difficult conditions.
But former employees of the Canadian military and government represented a small fraction of the evacuees, say the groups of veterans and other private citizens helping them. Most were Canadian citizens and permanent residents, they believe.
Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had not responded by deadline Friday to repeated requests from the National Post for an exact breakdown of who got on the planes.
The Canadian Heroes Foundation and another NGO, the Veterans Transition Network, say the vast majority of the 4,500 ex-workers and relatives they’re aiding were not evacuated.
Rona Ambrose, the former Conservative cabinet minister and a spokeswoman for the VTN, issued an emotional appeal for donations Thursday, saying the group will keep working to get Afghans to safety.
The Canadian Heroes Foundation, underwritten so far from Ecklund’s own funds, is also seeking financial help, the government having declined to provide grants, said Rickards. It’s been spending $11,000 a day to house people in Kabul, he said.
Meanwhile, the Foundation is keeping a “death list” of former Canadian employees targeted recently. Most worked at FOB Graceland, whose location in Kandahar city made them exceptionally visible, he said. Rickards read the National Post names and job titles of cooks, guards and interpreters, 15 of them killed, six injured in recent days.
“They’re killing the kitchen workers,” he stressed.
NGOS agree the best chance of the former Canadian employees and their families is to get to a third country somehow.
But many lack the money needed to reach the border. And before they make that journey, they’re waiting for assurances from Ottawa that the travel documents they’ve already received will allow them to travel to Canada from another country, the groups say.
“We’ve been begging the government for clarity,” said a volunteer for one of the NGOS Thursday, asking he not be named because of his work with government officials.
Meanwhile, most have not even been issued Canadian visas yet.
Aziz, who was an interpreter with the Canadian military for a number of years starting in 2009, urged Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to speed up its process.
He said he submitted the initial documents required for the special visa aimed at ex-employees on July 30, then heard nothing until the IRCC contacted him Aug. 22, a week after the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan. He then had to fill out more forms.
“It took me 20 hours (non stop) to complete and send them,” he said Friday. “After that I did not receive any other email.”