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A former US government employee, Wakil is not his real name; he spoke to CNN on condition that his identity was not revealed.
He is stranded in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif with hundreds of other Afghans. All of them have worked closely with US federal agencies and the US military for the past decade and more. Most, like Wakil, hold special immigrant visas or were in the process of obtaining them when the Taliban invaded Kabul.
“I received a message from my former supervisor to go to Mazar-i-Sharif and that we would be taken to Doha [Qatar] from there, ”he said.
Now Wakil feels forgotten and in danger.
“I ask the US government not to leave us behind,” he told CNN in Mazar-i-Sharif. “We provided services for 15 or 16 years. I was on very bad missions. My friends were killed … They shouldn’t forget about us.”
Two decades of loyalty
Wakil says he started working for the Americans in the fall of 2001, when he worked for a security company that deployed him to the mountains around Tora Bora – the last stronghold of Al Qaeda. He was there four months, he told CNN. Subsequently, he says, he worked for the US Treasury mission in Afghanistan, helping with its logistics, and more recently for the visa department at the embassy.
He told CNN that many of his Afghan colleagues have already been killed and that he fears for his life every day. “They know me, that I am working with the US government, especially with the US embassy,” he told CNN.
“I will definitely be killed by them. I don’t want to stay here because I’m in a very big risk.”
For now, he and dozens like him are camping in difficult conditions in hotels in Mazar-i-Sharif. Many sleep on the floor. “The conditions are terrible,” he said, adding that his wife and youngest daughter had fallen ill.
On Friday, a chartered flight was finally cleared out of Mazar-i-Sharif Airport carrying hundreds of people – Americans, legal residents of the United States and Afghans, according to the United States-based advocacy group. Allied Airlift 21. The advocacy group said about 400 evacuees were on board the Kam Air flight, which arrived in Doha on Friday, and some of the passengers will eventually be relocated to the United States. Wakil was not one of the lucky ones on board.
Earlier, he told CNN he still hoped the United States would come to his rescue. “They haven’t betrayed us yet.”
As the father of three daughters aged 11, 7 and 2, he also wishes to flee Afghanistan for the sake of their future. “The Taliban [is] not allowing them to go to school so for that reason I have to go, I have to leave. I don’t care about my [own] future.”
A heartbreaking price
On September 7, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a press conference in Qatar: “There are groups of people who are grouped together, some of whom have the appropriate travel documents – a US passport, a green card, a visa – and others not. ”
But several US senators sharply criticized the State Department’s handling of the situation. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, tweeted on September 6: “My staff and I worked day and night to secure the safe passage of two planes waiting at Mazar-i-Sharif to take away US citizens, Afghan allies at risk and their families safe. ”
“I have been deeply frustrated, even furious, at our government’s delay and inaction,” Blumenthal said.
Wakil says that although he himself clings to hope, his family feels abandoned.
“I hope and dream but for the family for my wife it is difficult for them. I cannot convince them that we will live in the United States. They ask me, no they left you. They left you. left behind. ”
But even if he escapes Mazar-i-Sharif with his wife and three young daughters, he still has to pay a heartbreaking price to be America’s friend. Her mother cannot come with them because she is sick and still in Kabul.
“She’s alone there. I have no one to support her. Everyone … I’m crying …”
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