Tahir Ludin.Photo: Rahim Faiez/AP/Shutterstock
Rohde and Tahirescapedafter seven months and 10 days, fleeing to a military base while their guards slept (the driver, Asad, got out on his own later).
Rohde writes inThe New Yorkerthat Tahir and Asad both moved to America after the ordeal, with Tahir becoming an Uber driver and eventually an Amazon delivery driver and living with other immigrant men while he sent most of his earnings back to his family in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
Eventually Tahir became a U.S. citizen and, in 2017, he brought his five eldest children to over to live with him.
According to Rohde, this March he returned to Afghanistan in an attempt to bring the rest of his family back with him to America and sent an email to Rohde to tell him the news.
“For years, Tahir had hoped for a peace deal in Afghanistan,” Rohde writes. “Now he was focussed on safely getting his loved ones out of the country. I assumed that Tahir, as an American citizen, would be able to secure visas for his wife and remaining children, the youngest of whom is four.”
In June, Tahir returned to the U.S., “frustrated and out of money” due to the ongoing visa process, Rohde writes: “In the wake of Biden’s announcement about the American withdrawal, thousands of Afghans had applied for visas, and Tahir’s applications for his wife and children were somewhere in the queue. A covid outbreak in the U.S. Embassy further slowed the process.”
By Aug. 12, the situation in Afghanistan was unraveling.
As the Taliban began taking over the country’s key cities, the Afghan president fled and thousands of people rushed to try and catch evacuation flights out of the country, leading to panic at the airport earlier this week. So far only some have been able to leave Kabul.
Now, the Taliban — the militant groupwho emerged in the mid-‘90sand controlled the country prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 — is in charge.
According to Rohde, amid the turmoil, Tahir began calling his family in Kabul, frantic as he learned the Taliban were “patrolling the streets outside their home.”
“He decided that it was best for them to stay inside,” Rohde writes.
Four days later, Tahir called Rohde, confiding that he had heard the Taliban were searching homes in Kabul, looking for Afghans who had previously worked with Americans.
The Taliban, newly empowered, is insisting they are a more moderate force,recently promising peace and women’s rights. But Afghans and national security experts alike are doubtful of the those assurances. The Islamist group had once ruled brutally, carrying out public executions, barring the general population from listening to music and banning girls from attending school.
As many as15,000 Americansremain in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, NBC News andThe Washington Postreported on Wednesday.
U.S. officials said Monday it was also working to re-home tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who are candidates for Special Immigrant Visas, though the specifics of that undertaking — such as when and how they will leave Kabul — remain unclear.
On Wednesday, State Department Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman said in a briefing that the government was working to get all of those who are “vulnerable to Taliban reprisals,” including those who have previously worked for the U.S. government, “out of the country as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Gen. Mark Milley said in the Pentagon’s own Wednesday briefing that they were “still working on the procedures” to get non-U.S. passport holders out of the region.
But Milley said the military was focused on securing the airfield in Kabul rather than the broader area outside of it, where the Taliban reigns and travelers would have to find their own safe passage.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on WednesdayadvisedAmerican citizens that the government could not be ensure their safety to the airport and that space on evacuation flights will only be available “on a first come, first serve basis.”
Tahir, for one, is not convinced that his family is safe in Kabul — or that America will help to get them out, Rohde writes.
“I think the Americans are trying to leave Kabul and just take the diplomats,” Tahir said. “I’m strong, you know I am strong [but] I cried so many times. Everyone says we’re left behind. What shall we do?”
source: people.com
