‘I think he will have our backs’: the problems that Western Afghan friends have left behind


Changes in Afghanistan

As an elder in Afghanistan, where there were many spies, Feroz worked for many years with the US and Nato forces, following in the footsteps of the Taliban and preparing for war. The night of The Taliban took Kabul, soldiers came to his house looking for him; he did not touch her because he was having intercourse with a friend.

However, even though he was heavily involved in the war against the Taliban in the United States and in danger of retaliation, the former National Directorate of Security and his family were left behind in Afghanistan after leaving the US. Although a former U.S. military officer called on his behalf, Feroz’s repeated attempts to get into Kabul airport with his family boarded a military base. escape failed.

Today he, Hamid’s Afghan art master, and his wife and children are in hiding in Pakistan, arriving three days after landing. Since then, Jayson Harpster, a former U.S. soldier who has been trying to help the men and their war veterans, hopes to extradite them to the US.

“I knew that living in Kabul was a capital offense,” Feroz told the Financial Times by telephone. It was better to “die trying to get out”, he added.

In the two weeks since the Taliban seized Kabul on August 15, US, allies and secret societies have flown about 123,000 people from Afghanistan. Among them were foreign nationals and Afghan people who appeared to be at high risk of persecution as interpreters of the war, journalists and the common people, including well-known women who speak.

But it was confusing and meaningless like a group of frightened Afghans fought to get into the airport which was very secure and boarded the plane before the plane closed. After the last American plane left Kabul on August 30, thousands of US-led aid workers since the Afghanistan invasion of 2001 left in 2001.

They are afraid of being persecuted for their work and political ideologies and are eagerly awaiting to see if they will be given protection abroad – and if the Taliban might abandon them.

“The United States has promised not to leave its comrades and will do so,” said Jen Brick Murtazashvili, an Afghan specialist at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Afghans are trying to get rid of a number of problems on their own. Commercial flights have not resumed and while other local airlines are operating notes, The cost is very high, with an one-hour round-trip ticket to Islamabad for $ 1,200. Neighbors in Afghanistan have set boundaries to protect the large number of refugees and visas from far and wide.

The traveler is carrying his passport in preparation for boarding a flight from Kabul on September 13. Some have been able to leave Afghanistan at regional markets but face higher prices © Karim Sahib / AFP via Getty Photos

Just two weeks before the fall of Kabul, the US unveiled the first refugee program for Afghan citizens employed by the US government and military, rebuilt US or U.S. media outlets and contractors. But eligible Afghans had not yet begun to file the necessary documents for survival at the time – including the actions of a US official when the Taliban took over.

US volunteer organizations are now trying to help them plan programs. “The system [the US] the establishment is a daunting task, “says Murtazashvili, whose students help more than 4,000 students to write.

Some who have worked with US missions but were not direct directors of the US or American organization are not eligible for the program.

Among them are Afghans who worked for the UN, which according to international standards does not exclude those who have been registered there, except for one person. Some are lying on the floor, still waiting to be evacuated; others are trying to make their own way out of them.

“We live like a traveler – a few days in a relative’s house, then sometimes we come to my house for a night or two, and then I go to another relative’s house,” said a UN official.

A UN official said the Taliban had issued a written security clearance to UN staff for the agency to provide assistance. But many workers who started out in the political arena are still worried.

“There was freedom of speech here and we were expressing our views easily, and some of those ideas were not in line with Islamic culture,” he said.

Upon entering Kabul, the Taliban vowed that no one would be harmed in the past. But those who are at the forefront of the war against the military are not really believing such promises.

“The enemy is the enemy, no matter what they say,” Hamid said. “You can’t expect someone you’re fighting to go through the past.”

Harpster, who won the Bronze Star medal for his career in Afghanistan, hopes to bring the two men to the US on parole, which allows for temporary visits in the event of an emergency. “The work is not over,” he said. “We’ll go on until we bring them home.”

However Feroz, who remembers the strong ties with the US and other foreign troops, was surprised by how he hid in Pakistan.

“I do not expect that if the Taliban take control of the US it will leave us,” he said. “I thought he would come back. There was a lot of pride and encouragement in our work. I felt important. And when you consider yourself important, you don’t feel like giving up. ”



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