Afghans hanging on to the outside of a plane as it takes off; those who made it onto a flight packed in like sardines; a baby handed over to U.S. soldiers from behind a seemingly impenetrable wall, people in tears.
Many of the images out of Afghanistan have been as confusing as they have been horrifying since the beleaguered country fell to the political and religious militant Taliban forces as the U.S. military moved out.
The Americans retain control of the Kabul airport, and countries, including Canada, have been working on getting folks out before the Aug. 31 deadline for a complete U.S. withdrawal.
The Afghan government fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 20 years after the U.S. invaded the country in a declared effort to stamp out terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks on American soil.
The U.S. made an agreement under former president Donald Trump to leave the country, and under President Joe Biden, troops began their withdrawal in May.
Here in Squamish, the situation is not just a faraway crisis for those working or living in the country.
Working against the clock
Squamish's Kirby Brown told The Chief on Aug. 25 that there were mere days, perhaps even hours, to get out some of the folks he has worked with in Afghanistan.
[Canada stopped evacuations on Aug. 26 due to the increasing security threat at the Kabul airport.]
He has been a part of the charity Playground Builders, based in Whistler, for many years.
The organization has been building playgrounds in Afghanistan for about a decade.
Brown went to the country in 2009 and 2010 and said he can't understate how life-changing his trips there were.
"Afghanistan is beautiful and devastating and devastated and filled with some of the most wonderfully resilient people you could ever hope to meet," he said.
When he was there, he saw it as a time that was building toward an "ever-brightening future."
He fears there are now "very dangerous and deadly days ahead."
The Taliban has access to government records, Brown pointed out.
"Which means banking transactions, documentation, letters naming people who are working with overseas organizations like ours. They have the information," he said. "It is not a matter of if they will find out who worked with whom, it is just a matter of when."
One person who worked with Playground Builders has already been contacted by the Taliban asking about the relationship with the outside agency.
When he spoke to The Chief, Brown and others were working against the Aug. 31 deadline.
"Back that up and we have hours, maybe days left to try to find safe passage for people who believe they are at risk," he said.
Brown added that getting people out is not simple, noting that folks they are trying to get out have to get to Kabul from wherever they are, get to the airport, and get on a plane.
He praises the massive mobilization within the Canadian government to help Afghans he has seen, he said.
"I want to be optimistic about the next phase of what happens there, and we are willing to keep working and we want to be able to support the people of Afghanistan, [39]-million people, who are teetering on the edge of famine and a real humanitarian catastrophe," he said, noting there are between 10 and 14 million people at risk of starvation. The median age of the population is 15.6 years old, according to The Wilson Center.
More than half the population of the country have never known Taliban rule, Brown noted.
"We have to get more people out of there, people for whom their very lives are actually at risk. I want to compliment and reinforce the work our government is doing and encourage them to use every minute to accelerate that process with every ounce of our capability as a country. There are lots of tough things going on in the world, but this is right in front of us and the clock is ticking. We can do more and work faster together."
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended payments to Afghanistan and The World Bank has halted funding for projects in the country.
Brown said the focus now needs to be a negotiated settlement with the Taliban so that aid can get in.
"We need to figure out a way to get back in and work together to support the healthiest possible outcome for whoever doesn't get on those very, very few planes," he said.
He added that if Afghan refugees end up settling in Squamish, he would ask that locals "welcome them with open arms."
And when it is possible, be prepared to donate to NGOs and others that are capable of navigating the situation and getting back to doing good work.
"That day will come, and it will come quite soon, I believe," he said. "Don't miss that it is a country that is not the same. It is as diverse as any country you have ever been to. It is a country of youth and children who are going to need to know that there is a world out here that cares about [them] and to not let hope be extinguished. It sounds desperate and dire—and it is—but there needs to be a world out here that reflects back that there are people that care."
Looking back
Squamish's Jasmine Aimaq spent time as a child in the 1970s in Afghanistan. The author and professor later wrote The Opium Prince, which is set in Afghanistan on the eve of violent revolution.
Aimaq was a professor at Quest University and taught courses in international relations and history departments at the University of Southern California.
She is also a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen.
She said watching the footage of people trying to flee, for example, of people trying to hold on to the planes from the outside as they flew out of Kabul, she thought about the level of despair that would motivate that.
"I can't imagine having the state of such despair that I would rather risk being killed by a plane than being governed by the Taliban. That is what is happening... It tells you that someone has run out of options."
She also thought of the juxtaposition of folks jumping from the World Trade Centre on 9/11.
"I remember watching a man fall, and 20 years later, we have Afghans falling as Americans leave them behind."
When she was there as a child, the country was modernizing and stabilizing, she said.
"Half of the student body at the University of Kabul were women," she said.
Aimaq said though she voted for President Joe Biden and would again, she has been troubled by his rhetoric around this issue.
"It is a catastrophic judgment error on his part and I think he did it to secure his place as the president who ended the Afghan war and I think he is doing it now to set himself up well — to set the democratic party up well for the midterm elections," she said. "But you can't do things at any moral cost.”
She said the repeated assertion that the U.S. could not stay in the country forever is disingenuous.
"America has 28,000 troops in Korea, 70 years after the mission ended," she said. "Why exactly are we saying we can't keep 4,000 people in Afghanistan, which is at least as morally important — at least as geopolitically, strategically important. Why is Biden saying this?"
She said she would like to see the U.S. reverse course and return, putting thousands of troops back on the ground.
"Which is what they did in Iraq," she said. "They began to withdraw from Iraq; it didn't work. A few years later, they went back in and I think this is what they need to do."
She noted that the professional class — those who could afford to get out — are out of the country. So many who remain are the most vulnerable.
"People with money, education, they are the ones who leave, so then the country remains in the hands of those who have no resources and no outside connections, who are more likely to be the ones without education, without white-collar job experience and then you turn around and say, 'Oh, the country is a mess.'"
She said she thinks one of the things that has been downplayed about the situation of the Taliban takeover is the horror it could mean for Afghan women.
It is more than just that they may not be able to go to school or leave the house without a man.
"It is much, much worse than that. The violence [previously] was incredible. They were stoning women to death for doing things like flirting with someone," she said. "It is much worse than 'You can't go to school. You can't get an education.’ I don't understand why it is being played that way unless the media is buying into the narrative from the Taliban that they are not going to be as bad this time, but I find absolutely no reason to believe them."
Resilience in action
Parin Dossa, SFU professor of anthropology and associate member in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, spent time in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 doing ethnographic research.
Women suffer the most in times of violence and war, she noted.
What stuck with Dossa, who wrote the book Afghanistan Remembers, from her time in the country, was how, though the women were struggling, they remained resilient and held their families and communities together.
She says the 20 years the U.S. has occupied the country is not where credit should be placed for women's advancement.
"What the women had was a network of relationships, and through this network and through connecting with other women, they sustained families on a day-to-day basis," she said. "This is what impressed me the most."
The women worked in the hidden recesses of life, she said.
The women would pool their ingredients and share them with each other, she noted.
One woman would grow potatoes, and another would grow a vegetable. When they had plenty of one item, they would exchange it.
“The intriguing part was that they would try and vary these meals so that the family would think that they were eating something different every day because they would use herbs," she said.
Their spirituality also sustained the women, she said.
With the current situation, she said she looks to the work of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
"When the Taliban was in power in the 1990s, they set up schools underground," she said.
"I am taking solace in the situation whereby women are doing what they can with minimal resources they have. My message to the world is, 'Take this into account and build from there. Build from the grassroots level, rather than a top-down approach, which the NGOs have taken.’"
What can Canada do?
Dossa said it frustrates her to see the "political amnesia" in discussions around what is happening in the country.
"The world, the media, the other organizations, state institutions, have forgotten... that in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan," she said.
The Soviets stayed until 1989.
"This was the time the Cold War was at its height. The United States fought a proxy war," she said. "So imagine, these two powers waging a war in Afghanistan for 10 years?"
"They didn't leave behind the country they had found, but an armed camp because different factions were armed. This is what led to the rise of the Taliban. We have to acknowledge that,” Dossa urged. “And this is what gave rise to 9/11 and led the United States to invade the country and stay there for 20 years. I think it is really important that this political narrative is brought to light. Unless we do that, the U.S and its allies will not acknowledge its complicity in the rise of the Taliban."
Asked what she thinks Canada can and should do, she said the government needs to acknowledge its complicity in militarizing the country as an ally of the U.S. and its complicity in the devastation that has now taken hold.
Next, the Canadian government should accept the displaced people from Afghanistan to the greatest extent possible.
Finally, Dossa said if Canada is going to engage on human rights issues, then it needs to restructure its immigration policies.
"In the refugee hearing process, what I have learned from the literature is that unless women present a story that they are oppressed, they are not admitted,” she said
Countries want to be seen as being out to save women.
"Not recognizing their resilience and their resourcefulness," Dossa added.
In response to her assertion that Canada wants to be a saviour and thus prioritizes those who say they are oppressed, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said, "generally speaking, individuals presenting vulnerabilities and compelling protection needs in the country of asylum are prioritized in accordance with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR ) Resettlement Handbook. The UNHCR prioritizes cases based on vulnerability, not on nationality, or religion.”
For more information on the resettlement program, go to the IRCC website.
Political perspective
"My heart breaks for the people of Afghanistan, especially women, girls, human rights activists and targeted minorities," said Liberal incumbent MP Patrick Weiler in an emailed statement to The Chief. "We've been working with our allies to evacuate Afghans who supported the Canadian mission, and we will continue to do so. Canada was among the first in the world to announce a humanitarian program, which committed to supporting 20,000 Afghan refugees; the government is processing applications under these special immigration programs now. The constituency office in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country has helped with a number of these applications, and they'll continue with that work as long as it is needed."
The constituency office in this riding was working on 28 cases, a Weiler staffer later confirmed to The Chief on Aug. 26.
Global Affairs
"Canada remains committed to Afghanistan and the Afghan people," said Christelle Chartrand, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada.
"Afghans have achieved significant gains in democracy, human rights, education and health over the past 20 years with Canadian support. The situation on the ground remains extremely volatile and unstable. We continue to work with allies to evacuate as many Canadians and vulnerable Afghans from Afghanistan as possible and bring them to safety in Canada."
IRCC
An IRCC spokesperson told The Chief that resettlement of up to 20,000 Afghans to Canada will be done through a special immigration program for Afghan nationals, and their families, who assisted the Government of Canada.
There will also be a special humanitarian program focused on resettling Afghans who are outside of Afghanistan and don't have another stable option for protection, such as staying where they are.
The special humanitarian program will be a mix of government-assisted and privately sponsored refugees, along with individuals who come to Canada through family reunification programs.
"As part of this initiative, we're also putting in place special facilitative measures for Afghans currently in Canada," the statement read.
Find out more about Canada's policies regarding Afghanistan here.
**Please note, this story has been corrected since it was first published to clarify that the U.S. fought a proxy war in Afghanistan during the Cold War.
