Sajjan instructed special forces to rescue Afghan Sikhs during fall of Kabul

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Then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan instructed Canadian special forces to rescue about 225 Afghan Sikhs after the Taliban takeover in August, 2021, in an operation that three military sources say took resources away from getting Canadian citizens and Afghans linked to Canada on final evacuation flights out of Kabul.

Mr. Sajjan also relayed location information and other details about the Sikhs to the military as special operation forces worked to meet up with the group. The information was passed to him from a Canadian Sikh group that was in contact with these Afghan Sikhs.

Military sources who were in Ottawa and on the ground in Kabul painted a picture of the final chaotic, dangerous and desperate hours as evacuation flights were ending and Canada and other Western countries scrambled to get their citizens safely out of Afghanistan by the U.S. withdrawal deadline at the end of August.

The sources said Afghan Sikhs were not considered an operational priority for the Canadian military as they had no link to Canada. Mr. Sajjan’s intervention, the sources say, impacted the rescue of Canadians and other Afghans on Canada’s priority list. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the three sources because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

“The way it was presented to us at first was: If we can do this and pay attention to it, great, but not stopping doing everything else,” said one source, a special forces officer. “But a day or so later, it came back to us as a firm order. Our leadership was furious. They were very upset.”

“There was such furious anger that the last 24 hours were solely dedicated to getting the Sikhs out. We were unsuccessful.”

Mr. Sajjan, now the Emergency Preparedness Minister, however rejected the notion that anything he said regarding the Afghan Sikhs amounted to an order and said he did not request that they be given priority over Canadians, Afghan interpreters or others who had aided Canada during its long mission in the Central Asian country.

These competing versions of events during the confusion and disorder of the withdrawal from Kabul raise questions about how the Canadian military interpreted instructions from the government during a frantic few days as an enemy power was taking over.

Numerous groups were asking the Canadian government for help in rescuing Afghans, including The Globe and Mail, which sought to retrieve two people who served as translators for the newspaper.

Other countries were also carrying out humanitarian missions. In one case, Ukrainian forces went out into the city of Kabul on foot to escort two minibuses – carrying Canada-bound translators and their families, 19 people in all – onto the airfield for evacuation. Those rescued included an Afghan translator who worked for The Globe and another who served the Canadian military.

Conversely, the Canadian special forces operation failed when the frightened Afghan Sikhs left the rendezvous point shortly before Canadian soldiers arrived to take them safely to Kabul international airport. Months later, the Sikhs managed to flee to India on flights chartered by others including the Indian government.

Canadian special forces, including elite members of Joint Task Force 2 (JTF-2), were dispatched soon after the Aug. 15 fall of Kabul to evacuate Canadians citizens, permanent residents and Afghan interpreters and fixers who had worked for the military or had other links to Canada. Vulnerable groups, such as feminists, human-rights activists, minorities and LGBTQ people, were third on the priority list.

As the withdrawal deadline loomed, Mr. Sajjan, an influential figure in the Sikh community whose father served on the board of the World Sikh Organization, requested Canadian troops rescue about 225 Afghan Sikhs. They had been hiding out at the Karte Parwan Gurdwara in Kabul.

The Taliban’s swift takeover also came in the early weeks of a federal election campaign. Sikh Canadians were viewed as a key voting bloc for the governing Liberals in several ridings in the Greater Toronto Area and Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

“We were trying to rescue as many people as possible,” Mr. Sajjan told The Globe in a recent interview. “They [Afghan Sikhs] were just one group that we were asked to do. We were getting waves of requests of all different vulnerable groups.”

Time was of the essence because Canada’s military was going to end its flights out of Kabul on Aug. 27. The Americans left on Aug. 30.

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During the Aug. 26 rescue attempt, Mr. Sajjan liaised with Canadian Sikhs who were in contact with three busloads of Afghan Sikhs awaiting JTF-2 soldiers at a rendezvous location near the airport. The Sikhs, including women and children, became increasingly scared and left shortly before JTF-2′s arrival, despite repeated urgings to stay. Canadian soldiers took longer than expected to get to the rendezvous because of the chaos and danger in the area, the sources say.

Mr. Sajjan confirmed in a statement Wednesday that he texted the Canadian military about what was happening on the ground based on his conversations with Calgary-based Manmeet Singh Bhullar Foundation, which had arranged to privately sponsor the Afghan Sikhs.

“I relayed whatever information that the NGO provided about the location and status of these Sikhs to the chain of command for it to use as it saw fit, in line with its operational plan on the ground in Afghanistan,” he said.

In the recent interview, Mr. Sajjan defended his instructions to the Canadian Armed Forces and denied that his request hampered the ability of elite soldiers to evacuate Canadians and priority Afghans out of the country. Mr. Sajjan served as an officer in the Canadian Army in Afghanistan for several tours of duty starting in 2006.

Mr. Sajjan said there was a strict protocol to first evacuate Canadian and Afghan military interpreters, but Canada had to respond to waves of other requests including the Afghan women’s soccer team. There were also pleas from the “Sikh communities who were actually under direct threat,” he said. “All these requests were taken very seriously.”

The military sources say they feel Mr. Sajjan was out of line in pressing Canadian special forces to rescue the Afghan Sikhs. The operation involved intense planning and it meant fewer soldiers were available to screen people awaiting the last flights out of Kabul.

One of the sources said the change of mission to rescue these Sikhs became a logistical nightmare at the same time that “we are still trying to hurry and process people through who have Canadian passports.”

“Finding them; and getting them through the Taliban checkpoints; linking up – it turned into a telephone game,” the source said.

Mr. Sajjan insisted, however, that he never ordered the military to conduct the operation but merely gave an overall sense of direction.

“You have to give a prioritization and then you leave it to the troops to figure out the rest,” he said. “You cannot direct troops on the ground.”

In a follow-up statement Wednesday, Mr. Sajjan said Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had cleared these Sikhs to come to Canada. “I provided direction to the Canadian Armed Forces, through the appropriate chain of command, to assist the group of Afghan Sikhs who had been determined eligible for evacuation from Kabul through the process under way at IRCC,” he said.

“The operational details of how and where to do this work was left to military operational commanders and tactical decision-makers on the ground.”

He went on to say that he “did not direct the Canadian Armed Forces to prioritize Sikhs above others” saying Canada had a duty to “protect the vulnerable, as we tried to do, in the case of journalists, members of parliament, persecuted religious and other minorities, and others at specific risk.”

In a statement Tuesday, the Department of National Defence (DND) said evacuation operations in Kabul were conducted “in accordance with direction by the Government of Canada and the Minister of National Defence.”

But ultimately the order to troops on the ground came from General Wayne Eyre, Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and his officials, it said.

“Orders were issued by the CDS and his operational level commanders, and they considered risks to carrying out these operations,” the department said.

However, one of the sources, a senior commander in Ottawa, told The Globe that a directive or even suggestion from the defence minister is effectively considered an order. “What is the difference?” the officer said.

The Afghan Sikhs would have required Canadian travel documents that allowed them to pass through Taliban checkpoints and board flights for Canada. Their names would have been compiled by IRCC and checked off on the manifest of evacuation flights by Canadian military personnel.

Mr. Sajjan said neither he nor his office provided documents or letters of facilitation to the Afghan Sikhs.

“Any such letters were provided by the appropriate officials at IRCC, as part of the efforts of the Government of Canada to facilitate the travel and evacuation of this group,” he said in the statement.

DND said that working closely with IRCC and Global Affairs, Canadian Armed Forces teams “were given a master list of vetted and vulnerable individuals, which it worked to load onto flights.”

IRCC spokesperson Rémi Larivière would only say that travel letters were issued to Afghan nationals, who were eligible to come to Canada, to help them clear Taliban checkpoints. He declined to discuss what if any special measures were granted Afghan Sikhs, citing privacy grounds.

Retired lieutenant-general Mike Day, who once headed JTF-2 and Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, said he found it difficult to “understand or see a rational explanation why this group of Sikhs would have been of sufficient priority at the cost of other groups who likely had a greater claim on Canadian support.”

“There is no analytical process that says ‘Yeah, there are 225 Sikhs there, let’s go get them.’ The only way this gets onto the task list is if we are operating on behalf of another state or somebody inside government inserted this on to the task list and asked for it to be considered,” Mr. Day added.

Canadian Sikh leaders who had urged Mr. Sajjan to help the Afghan Sikhs said the defence minister had not shown any favouritism. He was acting to help one of many vulnerable groups, they say.

“The Canadian government was always saying, ‘You know, if they get to the gathering points that all other populations are getting to, we will do our best to try to assist them,‘ ” said Tarjinder Bhullar, director of the Manmeet Singh Bhullar Foundation. “There was never any delay that I sensed from him [Sajjan] in terms of wanting to help, but again, you’re the minister of defence, you want to help everyone at that point.”

Ms. Bhullar conceded that it was frustrating that the Afghan Sikhs decided to leave the rendezvous point within a half-hour before Canadian troops arrived to find them gone.

“I wasn’t there so I couldn’t force them to try to go back or make sure that they stay,” she said. “The best efforts were made to make sure that they got to where they were supposed to get to, and stay there.”

Ms. Bhullar said she doesn’t know how Afghan Sikhs managed to get to the airport for flights to India. But she defends her efforts and that of other Canadian Sikhs to mount a Canadian evacuation operation.

“These individuals, the reason to help them was because they are fellow human beings,” she said. “They’re not my family. They’re not my friends. I share my faith with some of them, the colour of my skin with some of them, but at the end of the day, they’re human beings. And that’s what everyone was trying to do during that time.”

The foundation, set up by her late brother and former Alberta provincial cabinet minister Manmeet Bhullar, years later worked to resettle in Canada many of the Afghan Sikhs who fled to India, Ms. Bhullar said. The Bhullar Foundation worked out an agreement with IRCC to privatively sponsor Afghan Sikhs and Hindus. Both religious minorities had experienced violence and persecution under the Taliban.

At the time, the Liberals were facing pressure from the Canadian Sikh community, including the World Sikh Organization, to rescue Afghan Sikhs. Some publications, such as The Sikh Lounge, a weblog, complained in a post after the Canadian air evacuation mission ended that “Sajjan has let down the Sikh community in Canada” and “Sikhs need help getting out of Afghanistan but also getting to Canada.”

Retired major-general David Fraser, who led more than 2,000 NATO coalition troops in southern Afghanistan and played a key role in private efforts to evacuate Afghan military interpreters in 2021, expressed disapproval of Mr. Sajjan’s directive.

“In a humanitarian crisis, we have a responsibility to get Canadians out first and we get Afghans out who helped us out next. Once you get all those people out, you can start to look at the rest.”

Mr. Fraser said JTF-2 are the most elite of Canadian soldiers and the Afghan Sikh mission was extremely dangerous “because as soon as you got outside the airport, you were not in friendly territory and I don’t mean just the Taliban. There were panicked people trying to get out of the country.”

Mr. Sajjan said in his statement that he is saddened to have to answer questions about a matter that reflected government policy to support and assist vulnerable Afghans. “I can only surmise that if I did not wear a turban no one would question whether my actions were appropriate.”