The Fifth Estate

Abandoned in Afghanistan (47x3)

Uitzenddatum: Okt 28, 2021

“They just came in front of our house, and they open[ed] fire and they [shot] our house but fortunately nobody got hurt. The bullets hit the bars, the steel bars.” That was the reality for former Canadian military interpreter Abdul Jamy Kohistany along with his wife and two kids, back home in Afghanistan. Like tens of thousands of other interpreters, mission staff and their families, living in fear of reprisal for helping Canada during the war, they are now seen as traitors and the enemy by the Taliban. That’s why he and his family, like so many others, flooded the Kabul airport this summer desperate to get out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took control. To hear the Canadian government’s account of it, those horrific scenes of people trampling over each other, the desperation and the death that unfolded there over the summer was simply a tragedy — an unforeseeable event that culminated after a faster than expected takeover of the country by the Taliban. But what we heard from political insiders and veterans was that the Canadian government knew well in advance that these former military workers’ lives were in danger. The Fifth Estate obtained emails sent by a Liberal MP to his cabinet colleagues, including former Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, as far back as February 2020. Before that, Liberal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen was warned in at least September 2019. Yet we’re told the government did nothing until it was too late. While the Canadian government has now gotten about 2,000 Afghans and their families out of the country, veterans groups estimate there are still about 20,000 stuck behind. Sitting, waiting to be hunted by the Taliban. Given the government’s comments during this crisis about how committed they are to the Afghan people, I was surprised to learn how the bulk of the work to protect Afghans has fallen on a group of Canadian veterans and volunteers working around the clock to prov