The video shows Afghans running on the tarmac of Kabul airport, desperate to escape, as a US Air Force jet took off. Some fell to their deaths trying to hold on. “We watched this terrible situation unfold … we saw that terrible disaster that happened in Kabul,” Brian Macdonald said. A Canadian veteran who served in Afghanistan, Macdonald leads the nonprofit Aman Lara, which is Pashto for “Sheltered Path.” The collective of Canadian veterans and former interpreters has been working for the past year to bring refugees to safety in Canada. “When we couldn’t get them out a year ago, it was devastating. But since then we’ve regrouped, doubled down and were able to get 3,000 people out,” he said. But it has been a slow and dangerous process when these refugees have to go through the Taliban to get a passport. “These people who have helped Canada now have to get up and go to an office controlled by the Taliban and give their name and their address and their children’s dates of birth,” MacDonald said. “It’s a very dangerous thing to do.” Brian Macdonald, the executive director of Aman Lara, says the nonprofit has successfully helped more than 3,000 Afghan refugees find safety in Canada since Kabul fell to the Taliban a year ago. (Derek Hooper/CBC) There was hope this June when Pakistan agreed to temporarily allow approved Afghan refugees to come to Canada across its border without a passport or visa. But Macdonald says they’ve hit a roadblock in bringing these refugees to Canada. “We were hoping it would be thousands and it ended up being dozens,” he said. “We’re dealing with the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and it’s a very wild place. And so the messages aren’t always clearly communicated, but we think the window may still be open.”
Ottawa promises to speed up the application process
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said Canada has added more staff to process applications as quickly as possible, including from Pakistan. The ministry did not say how many undocumented Afghans have successfully arrived in Canada through the deal with Pakistan. In this photo provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, Italian coalition forces assist and escort evacuees for further processing during an evacuation at Kabul Airport, Afghanistan on Aug. 24. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/US Marine Corps/The Associated Press) Canada initially said it would bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada — focusing on Afghans employed by the Canadian government and military. The federal government says it has welcomed 17,300 to date, with more still to arrive “in the coming weeks and months.” “We remain steadfast in our collective resolve to bring vulnerable Afghans to safety in Canada as quickly as possible,” said a joint statement released Monday by Fraser, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie and International Development Minister Harjit Sajan. The statement did not say when Ottawa expects to meet its goal of resettling 40,000 Afghans. In the statement, the ministers deplored the “steady deterioration” of human and democratic rights in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power last year, citing the reintroduction of severe restrictions on women and girls’ ability to attend school and move around . freely within the country.
“We can hold our heads high,” the deputy prime minister says of the evacuation
But the federal government has been criticized for not doing more to help Afghans who helped Canada in the NATO-led effort and are now at risk of being killed by the Taliban for their ties to Western nations. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said “we don’t need to think in retrospect” when asked if Canada could have done more a year ago. “We can hold our heads high when we think about our response compared to that of our allies. There’s a lot more work to do,” Freeland said in Toronto on Thursday. “We need to keep working to bring more people from Afghanistan to Canada, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
The Deputy Prime Minister answers questions about Afghanistan
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says Canada’s priority is to focus on the women and children of Afghanistan “who have suffered real setbacks.” Last month, Canada stopped accepting new applications for its special immigration program, a move that advocates say is tantamount to abandoning Afghans desperate to come to this country. Macdonald hopes the federal government will reconsider its approach and vows to welcome any Afghan who helped the government to Canada. “A year ago, we were in a panic to get as many people out as possible,” McDonald said. “We all believed — as veterans and other interpreters — that that window had closed, that the people we didn’t get out were stuck in Afghanistan. “But what we’ve learned over the last year is that we can still move them out. It’s at a snail’s pace. It’s not as many people as we’d like. But we’re still grinding every day, moving people out of Afghanistan. And we’re going to continue to do that. this until we get as many people out as we can.”
