SAN DIEGO: Interpreter Aman Khalili made a personal plea to Joe Biden to “save me and my family” as the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan. “Don’t forget me here,” he appealed via the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Gripped with the smothering reality of Taliban reprisal, he spent weeks in hiding navigating setbacks with hopes dashed daily to escape the Taliban. Who surely would have killed him if found.
A team of U.S. veterans carried out a secret operation to drive Khalili and his family 600 miles across the now terrorist-run nation to safety. They worked alongside former Afghan soldiers and Pakistani allies to act on Khalili’s pleas. The Biden administration let go of the escape reins and dedicated military veterans from Arizona grabbed them. They assumed all risks to rescue Khalili they worked with in 2008, when the task was to extract a group of stranded senators.
Interpreter Khalili volunteered to assist the motorcade sent to save Senator Joe Biden when his Black Hawk helicopter was forced to land in snowy Afghan mountains. All U.S. officials aboard found themselves vulnerable to attack by Taliban insurgents, always watching and ready to pounce. The stranded congressional group, a big prize for merciless insurgents to use at their will.
Some of the veterans say Biden failed to do enough for this Afghan soldier considered a high priority due to his service to Biden and America. Khalili was first hired as translator at Bagram Air Base in 2001, after the Taliban were ousted from a Draconian reign. Only to begin a war that sucked the world in.
“Aman helped keep me and other Americans safe while we were fighting in Afghanistan, and we wanted to return the favor,” Brian Genthe, a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient told the Journal.
Genthe stepped up to lead evacuation efforts from the start. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Human First Coalition were also involved in the noble efforts to save Khalili and his family. Although, Beck could not get them on a plane. Yet, others got the daring, the brave into a vehicle.
“After 144 hours of driving day and night and getting through so many checkpoints my family was so scared, but right now this is a kind of heaven,” he [Khalili] told the Journal. “Hell was in Afghanistan.”
Many like Khalili remain trapped in that same hell.
Scores of American citizens and at-risk Afghans face a grim reality the may not make the right list to get out of Afghanistan. These lists are amassing in Washington and civilian groups working in their behalf say the numbers total over 75,000, says WSJ. No centralized U.S. list exists and the government is hogtied on who is in need. Few planes have been allowed to depart with people holding visas. Other groups look to land crossings. Khalili’s family did not all have passports; therefore made the dangerous, difficult ground trek.
It’s a network of people that makes these exits happen and it all has to tick off like clockwork. Hoping no one turns and leaks clandestine plans to the enemy.
“It will just break your heart,” said an aid-group worker compiling lists. “You see the names and understand the tremendous human suffering and tremendous vulnerability of people who are so deserving to get out.”
Many people are just trying to make it to the next day. Hoping, praying they will not be killed.
One Afghan worker used to make 14,000 Afghani (AFN) a month – equal to approx. $164 in U.S. dollars. This spread around to a family of five. After the Taliban overran the country, his wage spiraled down to half. Now, he is not even getting paid and winter is coming. Who is going to help these people trapped under a barbaric regime who shut down news outlets and many public institutions?
Biden did not not consider the full brunt of repercussions for those he left behind.
Did the Afghan peace deal guarantee a sustained economy?
Most likely not. Biden, Milley’s shoddy, yet heavily defended withdrawal turned the country into a political nightmare.
With an unstable economy and lack of food stores, the temptation to “become one of them” plagues the Afghan worker struggling to feed his family. They have to rely on outside donations that may never come.
“The United Nations’ stockpiles of food in Afghanistan could run out this month, a senior official warned Wednesday, threatening to add a hunger crisis to the challenges facing the country’s new Taliban rulers,” reported ABC News last month.
“About one third of the country’s population of 38 million doesn’t know if they will have a meal every day, according to Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief in Afghanistan.”
“By the end of September, the stocks which the World Food Program has in the country will be out,” Alakbarov said at a virtual news conference. “We will not be able to provide those essential food items because we’ll be out of stocks.”
It is now October and forthcoming winters are rough.
“Earlier, U.N. officials said that of the $1.3 billion needed for overall aid efforts, only 39% has been received,” says ABC News, adding, “Most of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves are held abroad and currently frozen.”
Once money exchanges become un-shuttered, the AFN currency could plunge as much as 100%, according to Khalid Payenda, Afghanistan’s former acting finance minister.
“And, for the United States of America, which is used to playing an outsize role in Afghanistan, we are having to try and help people while grappling with a severe reduction in our ability to influence events on the ground,” said a senior State Dept. official.
Drought fuels the hunger crisis.
The country’s worst drought in 35 years compounds the food shortage. The UN estimates the scarcity of water affects up to 9 million people. Farmers can’t grow crops without water making food bills go up in urban centers. They have no backup or safety net since the Taliban hard-core Islamic rule.
“One of the worst droughts in decades in Afghanistan parched the fields of the 38-year-old, who goes by a single name [Niamatullah], leaving his crops withered and worthless. He felt he had no choice but to pack his 15-member extended family into a rented truck and head out to search for day labor somewhere less desperate,” reports WSJ.
“Our children are crying because there is nothing to eat,” Niamatullah said.
America built the Kajaki Dam in the 1950s to irrigate fertile land along the Helmand and Arghandab rivers. The U.S. later turned the dam into a hydroelectric power station feeding farmers in some of the most dangerous terrain in the Helmand Valley. It became a stronghold for Taliban and poppies.
In 2012, U.S. 3/5 Darkhorse Marines cleared that stronghold, full of IEDs, murder holes, and ambushes around every corner. Ronin 3, a 3/5 platoon, encouraged the farmers to grow food to eat.
Kajaki at capacity produces 51 megawatts. Yet, now due to low water – only 6 megawatts is the output. Iran also competes for water from the dam. Conflicts over usage strain thin relationships.
Dominoes of hardship continue to fall for an abandoned people.
Getting on the ‘Right’ lists remain a critical concern for Americans and Afghans still trapped in Afghanistan. Unstable political environments allow for economic downturns (except for those making profits from weapons trade and illegal heroin).
The odds don’t look that good. Are we now radicalizing the very people we saved for 20 years? Desperation seeds rebellion and rebellion seeds war. Has Biden planted the ground our troops once won with those seeds by leaving people to die or starve in terrorists’ hands?
The UN, the U.S. and many other countries spent two decades improving life for the Afghan people. And now suddenly the country appears to have fallen off everyone’s list. The Afghans don’t trust the Taliban to keep promises. We should have learned that by now.
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