[Originally Published at www.heykanb.com]
Sensitive content has been removed, but some readers may still find the following to be graphic, uncomfortable and triggering.
14 August 2021
In the weeks leading up to our arrival, they were knee deep in “Go to Zero” where the 816EAS was playing a role in removing US troops from Afghanistan as a part of the pull-out plan announced by President Biden. Even as he announced the end date of our combat mission here, the Taliban increased attacks and patrols. In the last week they have taken 16 provincial capitals (CAO 14 Aug). Kandahar fell yesterday. Kabul is feeling pressure from all sides as civilians try to flee into the capital, hoping there will be someone there to save them.
We have heard reports of the Taliban going door to door, forcing 12-year-old girls to marry militants. Two men were skinned alive for refusing to close their girls’ training facility. Anyone who was associated with the Afghan government or who has worked or trained with the US is being targeted for assassinations. Afghan pilots are being shot in the streets of Kabul. If we leave, and stick to our abandonment plan, the people of Kabul and the rest of the country face a ruthless return to honor killings, forced marriages, governing by fear and the relentless letter of Islamic law. There will be no bright future for women in this country under the Taliban.
The country failed to come together as an organized force to stop this rampage. Their alliances are tribal, not national, and the Taliban exploited this shortcoming. No amount of money out of Uncle Sam’s pocket can change the heart of a people who have no desire for money or international recognition. Their hunger for power begins and ends in their communities, tribes, towns, and villages. The urban communities tasted freedom and democracy and they are fleeing to the only place where there might be a chance for it to survive: Kabul. Yet our government continues to stand by their plan to leave the country. Will we leave them to the brutality of the Taliban? To flounder through a new civil war? To be sucked into the painful power vacuum being filled with violent men?
If the Afghan government has neither the ability nor gumption to protect their people from abuse, who will? Surely the whole world will not turn away saying “not our problem” after having spent 20 years seeing the good that could come out of an educated, supported Afghanistan? Perhaps we are simply too tired to continue throwing money and effort at a project so far away from our own home when it feels as though we are not wanted. Indeed, the Taliban does not want us. The pastoral communities of the mountains may be indifferent. The people of Kandahar, Herat, Kabul, and the other urban centers - do they not want us? Or has the Taliban so broken down our patience that despite the good we did and could still do; we are walking away?
I’m frustrated, angry and devastated by what I see happening this week. I’m terrified of the implications if we stay but am horrified by the implications if we leave. I don’t understand the mentality that believes women are inferior. I don’t understand the desire for violence. I can’t wrap my head around how people can get off on violence. There is no room for forgiveness in the Taliban’s Islamic ruling. These men are damaged, mentally, and emotionally. There is no other explanation for the terror and damage they inflict on those around them. They raise their children into monsters via rape, abuse, and trained violence. When do we draw the line from feeling sorry for the children and fearing that they have become the same monsters who raised them?
There is, without a doubt, too much evil in this world for humankind to fathom fighting alone. The demons that walk in these places will not be silenced by a well-trained sniper; it is not the number of bombs we drop that will see the change of this region. It is the hearts of the people. The communal decision to rise against and reject the evil presented to them. It will have to be a God thing. In the meantime, my own heart teeters on inconsolable.
16 Aug 21
Imagine being so afraid of the incoming government that you would rather take your chances clinging to the side of an airplane rolling down the runway.
There are videos of people falling out of the gear well of the C17 as it departs Kabul. One aircraft landed back at Al Udeid with remains found in the gear well, it was found by the crew on the after-landing walk around – the one we do to check for damage.
Chris was in Kabul last night, and civilians managed to open the crew entry door from the outside while they were on the taxiway waiting for take-off. The people there are desperate and scared. They so want us to help them, but because the Taliban have been known to hide within the civilians, we can’t take them all. We must screen everyone and because there are so many of them and that process takes so long that we literally can’t take them all. Plus, we don’t know where we would take them. Where do you bring 100,000 refugees?
Kabul is overrun by civilians desperately seeking asylum from the Taliban. It’s a human rights nightmare as the Taliban fighters are running convoys through the streets, claiming they want “peace” and an “inclusive government”. These claims come on the heels of assassinations, destroyed schools and hospitals, brutal retribution killings, forced marriages, quartering, promises of Sharia Law, and gun a terror spread throughout the country.
19 August 2021
The situation is Kabul is more secure on the airfield, but the city is grotesque. The Taliban has set up check points throughout the city and is killing families found with fake passports. Not just the adults, but the entire families. There is a video going around of children being passed towards the gates at the airport in an effort to hand them to members of the 82nd, hoping their children will get a chance to make it to a foreign country with strangers and no one to care for them, because that opportunity is a better life than staying under the control of the Taliban.
Executions are happening immediately outside of the airport.
Most of these people will not be evacuated, because there are simply too many of them. We don’t have the time and the Taliban won’t allow it.
I can’t help but think about the women there, the ones that had dreams for this fall. Women who had plans, were falling in love and dreamt of their future. The future must feel so bleak for them now.
25 August 21
To be clear, we made mistakes in the last twenty years in the way we conducted operations in Afghanistan and in the way we allowed “it’s a cultural difference” to allow the Afghan soldiers to get away with their own atrocities (child sex slaves for example). The Afghan culture is far from perfect, but it at least allowed women to taste freedom, to find an education without subjection to whippings. It allowed Christians to gather with less fear of execution. There was room to improve, just as the US has room to improve (unfortunately also in regards to child molestation).
Yesterday a flight brought back 34 unaccompanied minors – some of which had been given up by their very alive parents, just recently, because they wanted them to have a shot at life in the USA. To them, sending their children to be an orphan in the US was better than having parents in Afghanistan. These children were still in contact with their parents (via their cell phones) and were balling as the plane took off out of Kabul.
I am so tired of being angry. I know at the end I have to give it all to God, but my heart doesn’t want to.
This is all happening, and I am seeing videos of mask protests at home. Protests with people calling each other Nazis, terrorists, and comparing school board members to the Taliban. Have we, as a country, been spoiled with freedom for so long that a decision we disagree with is comparable to literal executions? Or are these people simply uninformed, uneducated, and self-concerned to the point of harming others? For crying out loud we live in the United States – do what you think is best for your family and respect the decisions of others to do what is best for them. It is the beauty of our country, we are free, we voice discourse without retribution, and very few of us know true hardship.
So many arguments against staying in Afghanistan lead with “but we will be there for another twenty years”. It may be true, but isn’t it better to be in a place and be making an appreciable difference for the better than to give up entirely? Aren’t we – the United States – a beacon of what freedom and liberty is? Don’t we have a responsibility to share that with those who want it? That is not to say other countries can’t provide that same hope, but if we were already here, why are we abandoning them? On the flip side, in the words of Chris: Why is it our responsibility?
I have no decision-making power when it comes to large strategy right now, so the best and only thing I can do is to do my current job well. My goal is to focus on that and to leave the rest with God, knowing that He wins in the end and my limited view of the world cannot possibly understand His master plan. So, here’s to letting go while still fighting for what is good.
30 August 21
On our first leg we picked up 399 Afghan civilians out of HKIA. I walked downstairs and I met one of the men. He saw me, touched my collar and then touched his, saying something in Pashtu, and pointed at everyone around him. He placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head towards me. He then pointed at everyone, crossed his throat with his hand, mimed a gun and pointed behind him. His eyes stayed on mine, desperately trying to tell me something. We couldn’t communicate easily, due to my inability to speak Pashtu, but we tried to talk. I cannot be 100% certain, but I believe what he told me was: “Thank you. They would have killed us if we stayed. Thank you.” He then introduced me to a little girl, whom I believe was his daughter. I shook her hand and tried to tell her that she could be a pilot someday. I don’t know if she understood. The man mimed writing something on his hand, pointed at me then at the girl. I wrote her a note and gave her may email address. Perhaps someday I will hear from her, and she can tell me where life has taken her. Maybe not, but I can hope.
Being in the minority, as a female in the military, I had always looked for and sought to find other women in my movements and career. I was looking for camaraderie. Now, I look to find them because I know our existence in the service is a privilege not experienced everywhere. In some places, girls grow up with a future of sex trafficking and abuse. This little girl, God willing, no longer has to fear her future.
If nothing else, I hope the women and girls on my flights saw me, speaking as an equal to the other men, standing proudly in uniform, and it gives them a vision of where they could be or where their children could be now that they are on their way to the US (flawed as it may be).
**Please note, exact dates have been removed or edited for security reasons.