A man walks along a path at the Wazir Akbar Khan hill in Kabul this past January. The previous summer, the Taliban's takeover of the capital signalled the end of the democratic Afghan government.MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images
Matthieu Aikins is a fellow at Type Media Center and the author of The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees. He has reported from Afghanistan since 2008.
It was late July in Kabul, and the end was closer than any of us realized. American troops were leaving Afghanistan and the Taliban was on the march, surrounding the cities in provinces such as Kandahar, where, years earlier, Canadian troops had fought their long, bloody battle. Hoping to learn more about the situation, I’d gone to meet with General Hamdullah Nazek, a wealthy politician who’d escaped from Kandahar City to Kabul.
A diesel generator rattled noisily outside Gen. Nazek’s mansion, filling the narrow alleyway with fumes. As his guards led me inside, I thought of the first time I’d seen Gen. Nazek, 11 years earlier in Kandahar, when I’d flown to his home district of Dand with Jonathan Vance, then the brigadier-general in charge of Canadian forces in Afghanistan. Mr. Vance was promoting Canada’s “Model Village” project in Dand’s district centre, a package of development projects and institutional reforms that he hoped would become a template for the operations across the province, now that American forces were surging in to take over from the beleaguered Canadians.
It was a burning hot Fourth of July. We sweated in the shade as Mr. Vance lectured some American troopers on counterinsurgency theory, the doctrine that generals, including Mr. Vance, were supposed to use to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan. At the time, Gen. Nazek was a grinning, youthful favourite of the Canadians who, like most Kandahari powerbrokers, had set up his relatives in contracting, a lucrative occupation back then. As the American surge arrived, and violence escalated, Gen. Nazek would go on to become the intelligence chief of a neighbouring province, and then make an unsuccessful run for Parliament. Mr. Vance, for his part, would rise to become Canada’s top officer and then, after his retirement, would be accused of inappropriate relations with subordinates and charged with obstruction of justice. (Mr. Vance, who goes on trial next year, has denied any wrongdoing.) On that day in 2010, as Mr. Vance spoke of Canada’s years of fighting, the sacrifices made, the fate of the Afghan republic still hung in the balance. “We didn’t lose, but we didn’t win either,” the general told the troopers.
Jonathan Vance meets with local police in Dand district in 2009.MCpl. Angela Abbey, Canadian Forces Combat Camera
After another decade of stalemated conflict, last April U.S. President Joe Biden decided to pull the plug on America’s longest war. I returned in June to cover the withdrawal and as the summer went on, things fell apart. I wanted to ask Gen. Nazek how long he thought the government could hold out in Kandahar City – if it fell, Kabul wouldn’t be much further behind. But Gen. Nazek could barely contain his excitement at the visit of a Canadian reporter, and was doubly pleased that I spoke Dari – there was something else he wanted to talk about.
He’d founded a project called the National Integration Movement of Afghanistan (NIMA), an assortment of Afghan politicians and civil society activists who were asking the international community to rescue the country from impending catastrophe. “We’re going to present a petition to the world,” he said.
Seeing my confusion, Gen. Nazek handed me a copy of NIMA’s founding declarations, written in English: The first declaration had 10 preliminary articles, and began: “The people of Afghanistan are the victims of international terrorism…” The second declaration requested that the world guarantee Afghans “five immunities”: political, military, social, economic and environmental.
By the world, Gen. Nazek explained that he meant the UN, the embassies, the international courts, perhaps the World Bank. He didn’t speak much English, but his staff had already sent quite a few e-mails. “Look,” he said, handing me some printouts from NIMA’s Gmail account, which included these replies:
From the UN’s mission in Afghanistan, dated April 25: “… UNAMA therefore regrets that it is not in a position to support your request.” From the International Court of Justice, dated June 30: “… That being so, you will, I am sure, understand that, to my regret, no action can be taken on your communication.”
“This is just the beginning,” said Gen. Nazek, grinning.
An aid worker moves supplies on the outskirts of Kabul this past fall.Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
He showed me another colour printout: his staff had put together a long PowerPoint presentation, with graphics showing statistics and photos and summaries of various meetings of NIMA, along with a list of key metrics such as social-media engagements and news coverage.
It was exactly the sort of document that foreigners had been training Afghans to produce in places like Kandahar all these years, which NGOs had churned out for their donors, military officers for generals, governments for taxpayers, to demonstrate that things were getting better, that the money was being usefully spent, that the war was going well, that the Afghan people were better off because of it.
But this was a cry for help. Gen. Nazek led me into a conference room, where NIMA volunteers were sorting through tall stacks of paper on a wooden table, each sheet bearing a passport photo and thumbprints. “Petitions,” he said. He kept repeating the English word. “From all over Afghanistan.”
They had solicited signatures from Afghans around the country, and his team was verifying that each one was real by calling the numbers listed on them. Gen. Nazek then filed them according to various categories, like profession, region, or tribe; the cabinets and shelves of his mansion were stuffed with papers. They would eventually go into the master petition that NIMA would present to “the world.”
Like most powerbrokers in Kabul, he was besieged with requests these days, people needing help to flee their provinces ahead of the Taliban, many desperate to go abroad somehow. Gen. Nazek, a savvy politician, could tell them that he had a plan, this petition, which they could add their voices to.
After 20 years, Afghan lives had become profoundly entangled with the West, so that even now many still believed that we would save them. As I looked at the pale passport photos of people staring into the disaster now barrelling toward them, I felt a sense of mounting dread: that the West, responsible for what was about to happen, would be powerless to prevent it.
Kabul, before and after the fall: At top, a U.S. Marine helps at a checkpoint at Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 26; at bottom, Taliban fighters stop Afghans protesting for women's rights on Oct. 21.U.S. Marines/Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/REUTERS; BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images
Six months ago on Aug. 15, a few weeks after I visited Gen. Nazek, the Taliban arrived at the gates of Kabul.
In a sudden and shocking collapse by its defenders, the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and much of the elite ran for their lives, including Gen. Nazek, who escaped to India. Western embassies and NGOs evacuated in a mad dash to the airport.
Along with my housemate Jim Huylebroek, who like me, was a freelancer, I stayed behind to report, and that day we watched as Taliban fighters entered the capital unopposed.
The next morning, we heard reports of violence at the airport, and went there to find thousands of locals arriving from all directions, desperately hoping to get inside where the military evacuation was underway.
There was scattered gunfire; as we got closer to the airport roundabout, the crowd grew denser and denser.
At the main entrance to the civilian side of the airport, a group of Taliban fighters were holding the mob off with batons and whips, periodically firing their rifles in the air, causing brief stampedes back. But the mob kept surging forward, pressed by those in the rear.
Afghans try to climb over the wall at the Kabul airport on Aug. 16.Reuters
A young man with a neck tattoo was telling those around him that if only they could get inside, there were planes waiting to fly people to Canada.
“You don’t need a visa?” a woman asked.
“No,” he said, “not even a passport.”
“How do you know?” I asked him.
“I have a friend who went in last night, now his phone is off. He’s in Canada.”
The others murmured in appreciation. I said nothing, but couldn’t believe what he was saying: that all that stood between these people and an escape to the West was the fence in front of us.
But in fact it was true; in the initial confusion of the first few days, almost anybody who made it across to the military side of the airport was crammed onto planes and flown out, mostly to transit camps the U.S. had set up in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. As these stories filtered to the rest of the city, it increased the fervor of those who crammed up against the fence, braving the whips and bullets of the Taliban and the CIA-backed paramilitary unit that guarded the north side.
Evacuees crowd aboard a U.S. military transport craft headed from Kabul to Qatar in mid-August.U.S. Air Force/Air Mobility Command Public Affairs/Handout via REUTERS
To understand Afghans’ desperation to leave their country, we have to recall that much of the world has spent the past decade trying to keep them out, investing in a system of border walls, detention camps and immigration restrictions.
I’d witnessed this firsthand in 2016, when I traveled with a friend who wanted to escape his country, going undercover as an Afghan refugee myself, as I speak Persian and can pass for a local. Omar, as I call him in my new book about the journey, was a former translator who’d served both American and Canadian forces. He’d long dreamed of emigrating to the West, but when his visa application to the U.S. was rejected for lack of paperwork, he decided to risk his life on the smugglers’ road to Europe. Over the course of our journey together, we saw how people are willing to cross borders in the hope of a better life, no matter how dangerous and violent the experience might be.
Canada’s last-minute announcement, as Kabul teetered on the brink of collapse, that it would accept 20,000 Afghan refugees – without any means for getting them there – was often cited to me by Afghans as a reason for why they were trying to get into the airport.
As the crowds grew outside, it became increasingly difficult for people like rights activists and journalists to get through, a tragedy that culminated in an attack by the Islamic State on Aug. 26 that killed 200. Less than a week later, the last foreign troops were out, and those left behind were stranded, facing a country ruled by the Taliban, whose economy was on the brink of collapse.
I ended up working in Afghanistan for five months, and finally left in November, as the first commercial flights resumed. Standing at the boarding gate, my relief was mixed with guilt about all the Afghan friends I was leaving behind, stuck in a waking nightmare, a feeling I knew would only intensify with time.
Afghanistan's youth in crisis: At top, a child holds bread outside a Kabul bakery in late January; at bottom, children take part in a Feb. 15 protest against a U.S. decision to redirect frozen Afghan assets to humanitarian relief and a trust fund for 9/11 victims.Ali Khara/Reuters; Hussein Malla/AP
This past Christmas, I went to my parents’ home in Nova Scotia, where I grew up. It was the first time that I and my three siblings were all together since the start of the pandemic, and our parents had news for us. They’d purchased a small house nearby, and were renovating it into affordable housing for refugees that their church group is sponsoring – one of them was an Afghan translator who I worked with, a friend who’s currently stranded with his family in Pakistan. Over the holiday, my siblings and I pitched in to gut the place. It felt good to swing a sledgehammer and crowbar. Surveying the empty space, my parents talked about what the home would look like when we were done, how there’d be room for a family with children. There was an elementary school just up the street. My parents are practical people. “You can’t just do nothing,” my mother told me.
Canada has since doubled its commitment and plans to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees, but the process has moved slowly, with around 7,500 brought over thus far. Some will be resettled under the private sponsorship system my parents are participating in, wherein community groups mobilize to support individual cases, a successful program that’s inspired a similar pilot project for Afghan refugees in the U.S.
But there are more than 2.5 million Afghan refugees, and more are fleeing; meanwhile, inside the country, half the population is at risk of starvation. Over two decades, the U.S. and its allies, including Canada, built a state that was totally dependent on foreign aid, and the sudden withdrawal of that support has had predictable consequence. Emergency food relief is not enough; as repugnant to them as the Taliban regime might be, Canada and other donors should find ways to continue their support for vital sectors like health care and education, before they collapse completely.
We bear a collective responsibility for the disaster in Afghanistan, but it’s easy to feel powerless as an individual. Yet the arrival of Afghan refugees in Canada gives us each a chance to do something, however small – to answer someone’s petition.
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