'We tried to question why they were just taking Aman and his family. No one replied.'
A crisp line of five black SUVs pulled up in front of the refugee safehouse in Pakistan's capital of Islamabad around 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2021.
"If we are everything we claim to be as a country and we promote these values ... we damn sure need to have a plan both for an orderly withdrawal, but then also making sure we get the right people that we've been working with out," said David Hicks, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, who founded the non-profit Operation Sacred Promise to support and evacuate Afghan allies. He was not familiar nor involved with the Islamabad incident.
"These are people who put their lives on the line and stood shoulder to shoulder with us on the frontlines to help our soldiers, our military in Afghanistan," Rauf told Newsweek. With resources dwindling, the safehouse was shut at the end of May and the 200 remaining Afghans were dispersed among other safehouses. The former head of daily operations at the safehouse said rescuing only Khalili and his family was"very unjust." Speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons because he still lives in Pakistan, he said:"It was a media stunt for the U.S. to save face.
Now, almost a year later, she and the rest of the group are still living in fear and hoping to be evacuated.But now the safety net to evacuate and protect the Afghan allies is starting to fray. All this, just as winter is approaching, and with it, the promise that Afghanistan will face one of the greatest humanitarian crises of modern times, according to the U.N. Development Program.
Most of these groups said they relied on donations from private individuals and small foundations. Last September, some donors were even issuing"seven-figure donations" via wire transfers, said Tom Amenta, a U.S. Special Operations veteran who is also co-writing a Georgetown University research report on the civilian evacuation of Afghan allies.
While Afghans were required to pay $575 per person, the Ukrainians were spared fees. USCIS has collected nearly $20 million from 66,000 Afghan applicants seeking Humanitarian Parole since July 2021, according to Reveal/CIR. or government, but on related programs, according to a source familiar with the administration's Afghanistan evacuation and resettlement efforts.Why This Afghan?He was briefly Biden's interpreter for one mission in 2008 as part of a team that rescued the then-senator from Delaware when his helicopter was caught in a heavy snowstorm in Afghanistan. His story of being left behind broke last August, adding to the negative press for the Biden administration.
The White House and State Department sped the processing of Khalili's Special Immigrant Visa after it was reported that he had been caught up in bureaucracy.The solution: Get help from an NGO that could get Khalili out via its connections on the ground.Rauf says it was during conversations on getting Khalili out of Afghanistan that a promise was made to help the other 260 Afghans - though he has no written evidence.Teske also believes there was a U.S. promise to rescue the Afghans.
Afghans prepare to board an evacuation flight out of the country at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Oct. 3, 2021. While some evacuation flights continued after the US military pullout in August, many Afghans were left behind.A State Department official who worked on Afghan evacuation efforts said the situation was far from unique.
Like Khalili, all would have required some kind of special accommodation, expedited processing, or a waiver and assistance to get out of Pakistan. By Oct. 10, Tervakoski said in a message that Washington was"considering the options still at this point," and that he had relayed Rauf's concerns to Washington, saying things were"above my pay grade at this point."
Rauf said he told Tervakoski removing only the Khalili family was"going to create a huge problem, especially for all the people that are there" in the safehouse. He has his own reasons to be grateful to the Biden administration: It helped negotiate his release after he was captured by the Taliban on a humanitarian mission to Afghanistan last December and was held for 105 days of"incredibly difficult" captivity.Promise or No Promise
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