Afghan military pilots, on run, feel abandoned by U.S.
As Kabul was falling to the Taliban in August, the young Afghan air force pilot flew his PC-12 turboprop from Afghanistan to neighboring Tajikistan to escape. Like other Afghan officers who fled in dozens of military aircraft to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the pilot had faith that his American military partners would rescue him.
“We believed in the U.S. military and government — that they would help us and get us out of this situation,” said the pilot, a lieutenant, who, like other pilots in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
The lieutenant is among 143 Afghan pilots and crew members now detained by Tajik authorities. They are English speakers trained by the U.S. Air Force, and they are counting on the U.S. government or military to evacuate them and also to help evacuate their families back home in Afghanistan.
Several thousand other Afghan air force pilots and crew members are in hiding in Afghanistan, feeling abandoned by the U.S. military, their longtime combat ally. They say they and their families are at risk of being hunted down and killed by the Taliban.
“I stood shoulder to shoulder with my American allies for five years — but now they have forgotten us,” an Afghan air force captain said by phone from a safe house in Kabul.
Several other pilots who spoke by phone from Afghanistan said they had heard nothing from the U.S. government. But they said they were being assisted by their former military advisers, many of them volunteers in a group called Operation Sacred Promise, formed to help get Afghan air force personnel to safety.
Brig. Gen. David Hicks, a retired Air Force officer who is CEO of Operation Sacred Promise, said the group, formed in August, had received desperate messages from stranded pilots asking whether the U.S. had a plan to get them to safety.
“We found out that there was no plan by the U.S. to do anything to get these folks out,” said Hicks, who once commanded the U.S.-led air force training mission in Afghanistan.
He said: “The U.S. has spent millions and millions on these highly educated and highly motivated individuals. Based on what they did fighting the Taliban, we think they deserve priority.”
A State Department spokesperson offered no timeline on relocating Afghan pilots but said last week, “We are in regular communication with the government of Tajikistan, and part of those communications includes coordination in response to Afghan air force pilots.”
The United States spent $89 billion training and equipping Afghan defense and security forces, including the Afghan air force and its elite Special Mission Wing. Many of the pilots were trained in the United States.
Some pilots and crew members and their families were evacuated with the help of the U.S. government and military just after the Taliban takeover. But many more were unable to get out, despite attempts by their former advisers to help them.
Since mid-August, Hicks said, Operation Sacred Promise has helped evacuate about 350 Afghans. The group has vetted about 2,000 Afghan air force personnel and their relatives trying to leave the country, with about 8,000 more still to be vetted, he said.
In September, a group of Afghan pilots and crew members was evacuated from Uzbekistan with the help of the U.S. government and Operation Sacred Promise after being detained by Uzbek authorities.
But another group of 143 Afghan air force personnel remains in detention at a sanitarium near the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.