‘Prisoners in their home:’ Overland Park student still hopes family can escape Kabul
Samad, an Afghan student who has lived here for a decade, watched footage from the Kabul airport after the Taliban took over Afghanistan with even deeper horror than the rest of us. His mother, father, two brothers and two sisters were in that crowd.
They never made it out, but haven’t given up.
Since the U.S. military airlift, which evacuated about 122,000 people, has ended, Samad is pleading for someone, somehow to help rescue his family. He’s certain their lives are in danger because they are Sunni and are Hazaras — an ethnic minority group long persecuted by the Taliban for their ethnicity and religious beliefs. We’re not using his full name here because of his fear of retaliation.
“I’m scared the Taliban will take my sisters,” Samad said.
They don’t have passports, visas or other travel documents. His dad’s papers proving his employment as a security guard for Norwegian Church Aid might help. His 29-year-old sister is a student at American University in Kabul, but her special P1 visa wasn’t enough to get her out. She was among the student group stranded at a safe house after being told by the university, which had tried to arrange safe passage for them out of Kabul, that all flights had been canceled.
Later, his sister and others returned to their homes at the instruction of university officials. An email from a friend warned, “ISIS is searching for students.” She destroyed everything she had linking her to American University.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said his office is working with the U.S. Department of State to identify those like Samad’s family who are trapped in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, Cleaver’s office had requests to help 50 such people. On Friday, they had 300 on the list and it was still growing. “So far we have helped 20 people evacuate,” Cleaver said. “I wish the numbers were better. But we are hoping to get as many out as we can.”
People here with friends or family stuck in Afghanistan should definitely call the congressman’s office, or that of U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids.
“People without the proper paperwork are going to have a difficult time getting out,” Cleaver told us. “But it’s not impossible. I don’t think this person ought to give up. People are being liberated from Afghanistan probably as I speak.”
Some private contractors, including some retired military, he said, are helping people leave.
Samad, 35, came to the Kansas City area 10 years ago on a student visa to attend Johnson County Community College. He lives in Overland Park now, and is studying computer technology at Park University.
On Aug. 16, when he saw what was happening in Kabul, “I could not breathe,” he said during an interview at the Della Lamb Community Services refugee resettlement office in Kansas City. “The first thing, I called my parents. I told them, hurry, go to the airport. My mom, she was panicking and scared. I could hear the fear in her voice, she was shaking.”
During the three days they spent at the airport, he called nearly every hour: “I asked, did you get through? Are you getting on a plane? And every time, no.”
On the third day, they ran for a plane. “They got close but they did not make it,” Samad said. “I told them to go home” after that, out of fear of a terror attack. The next day, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive there, killing nearly 100 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
Now Samad’s parents and siblings are “prisoners in their home,” he said. “They locked the doors. They don’t want to go outside.”
Kansas City expects hundreds of refugees this year. Resources to resettle them are thin after the Trump administration dramatically cut the number of refugees we let into the country.
Refugee resettlement agencies need financial donations and affordable housing — not rooms, but homes — for the families who will come, and they’ll need jobs that pay a living wage, too.
If Kansas City is to be as welcoming as Mayor Quinton Lucas has asked us to be, we must urge our elected representatives in Kansas and Missouri to do whatever they can to help people trapped in Afghanistan.
And we can all help the resettlement agencies Della Lamb, Jewish Vocational Services and Catholic Charities as they help our Afghan friends and allies make a new life here.