NEW WESTMINSTER (CityNews) — Watching and feeling helpless at home, a New Westminster man says he is terrified for his family in Afghanistan.
Mohammad Amin Ahmadi says “we are in shock right now. We cannot sleep, we cannot eat, we cannot work, we cannot do anything. Just thinking, ‘what can we do for them?'”
He has lived in B.C. for 15 years but most of his family remains in Afghanistan.
He also runs a non-profit in the country and is concerned that its ties to Canada will result in his being employees targeted by the Taliban.
The militants have promised amnesty but there are concrete doubts that will not be the case.
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Many Afghans who lived under the Taliban’s brutal rule in recent years have watched with growing fear as the insurgents have overrun most of the country while international forces withdraw.
SFU political scientist Andy Hira says there is reason to be fearful for anyone with connections to Canada.
“There’s no question that those concerns are valid. The Taliban would have seen anyone collaborating with the former government as traitors in a sense to the country,” Hira said, adding, “they have a very medieval sense of justice.”
Ahmadi says one of the biggest problems is that the internet is poor in Afghanistan, and he has not heard from his loved ones and doesn’t know if everyone is safe.
Government offices, shops, and schools are still shuttered in areas recently captured by the Taliban, with many residents either lying low or fleeing to the capital, Kabul.
He worries the situation will only worsen in the next few weeks.
Watch Related:
The United States has set Aug. 31 for the deadline to withdraw. But on Wednesday, the U.S. president said that troops would remain until every last American was out. The U.S. says 2,000 evacuees were rescued in the past 24 hours and is promising to have enough aircraft to get 5,000 – 9,000 people out a day. The U.S. has more than 5,000 soldiers at the airport, a number that has increased in recent days.
It came in response to the speed of the Taliban takeover of much of the country, including the capture of Kandahar, the second-largest city and the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
That’s where Canada’s former military mission was based. Canada deployed 40,000 troops to Afghanistan over 13 years before pulling out of the NATO mission in 2014.
Over the past few weeks, translators and other allies to the Canadian government were flown out of Afghanistan by the Canadian government which promised them refugee status.
Ahmadi is hoping his family can be on a plane bound for Canada soon, and is appealing to the government to step in.
With files from The Associated Press