We tried to get these people out of Afghanistan. They’re still there.
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Mark Sappenfield Editor
Technically, Malik Jan Zadran worked as a driver, helping Christian Science Monitor correspondents get to the far-flung corners of Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. But really, he was a first line of security.
“If we planned to go to a province where the security was not good, my job was to do due diligence – talk to villagers, do my research,” he says.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onAfghan colleagues who helped the Monitor report in Afghanistan for 20 years put their trust in us and in the United States. Now, some still can’t get out. They’re hoping something can change.
Now, with the Taliban back, he is sitting in hiding, with no job, no way to feed his family, and his son killed because of the father’s connection to an American, Christian newspaper. “If we catch another son, we will kill him,” those threatening Mr. Zadran by phone still say. “We will behead you.”
Amid the United States’ chaotic exit from Afghanistan in 2021, the Monitor was able to help some of its colleagues escape the country. But some, like Mr. Zadran, remain. His claims for refugee status in the U.S. are moving, slowly. So Mr. Zadran waits – and hopes.
“It’s reassuring that people think of you,” he says, “that they care about what happens to you.”
When Malik Jan Zadran decided to work with The Christian Science Monitor, it felt like a promise. He would protect his American colleagues. Yes, the Taliban had just fallen, but they lingered in the shadows and along the margins – in the places reporters most needed to go.
So Mr. Zadran went to work to keep his new friends safe.
“If we planned to go to a province where the security was not good, my job was to do due diligence – talk to villagers, do my research,” he says. “I would brief the reporters and take precautions. And I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onAfghan colleagues who helped the Monitor report in Afghanistan for 20 years put their trust in us and in the United States. Now, some still can’t get out. They’re hoping something can change.
But 20 years later, the situation has reversed. Now it is the Taliban who have taken over, and it is Mr. Zadran’s American colleagues who need to protect and help him. Today, he remains in Afghanistan, the Monitor unable to bring him or several other Afghans who worked with us to safety.
Now, 2 1/2 years after the fall of Afghanistan, the Monitor has had some success in helping to extract the colleagues who risked their lives to help us. But four remain. They were drivers, but also tour guides and purveyors of jokes to break the tension. They knew the best roadside stands for pomegranates on the interminably bumpy treks through dusty landscapes browned by a relentless sun. They shared succulent kebabs with Monitor reporters, including myself, as the hushed purples of the Hindu Kush evenings set in.
Mr. Zadran says he has already paid the price of a son – killed because Mr. Zadran took what the Taliban saw as the traitorous step of working for an American, Christian newspaper. Now in hiding, Mr. Zadran still gets calls: “You are a puppet of the Americans; you are a sick person. We witnessed that you served the Americans. Thank God we are letting you survive. You should be dead.”
All those years ago, he put his trust in the Monitor and in the United States. Now, his only recourse is to wait to see if American bureaucracy will move his paperwork along, and grant him and his family passage to safety. The process is grinding forward, slowly. But despite receiving some money from charitable outsiders who know his situation, Mr. Zadran is running out of funds. His family fears leaving the house. He has no job. Creditors are gathering.
“‘If you don’t pay,’” he says they tell him, “‘I will complain to the government.’”
“If they find out,” he asks, “what will they do with me?”
Mr. Zadran’s situation is not unique to former Monitor colleagues. America’s departure from Afghanistan after 20 years was abrupt and chaotic. The iconic image of someone clinging to the wheel of a departing aircraft spoke to the desperation and lack of order. The number of people whom the Taliban could reasonably consider traitors was immense, and few knew if they were getting out or not.
“To me, the country of Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan did not deserve to be treated like this by the American government,” says Farouq Samim, who runs Operation Abraham, an organization based in Ottawa, Ontario, that helps Afghan refugees and those seeking to flee. So far, he has helped rescue 1,500 Afghans, from female judges to teachers to journalists.
Trailed by AK-47-toting Talibs
A State Department spokesperson declined to provide specifics on the Monitor’s cases, citing security and privacy concerns. But the Biden administration remains focused on expanding the resettlement of key populations, including Afghan allies, the spokesperson said.
Before moving to Canada on a scholarship in 2009, Mr. Samim also helped the Monitor and the Chicago Tribune as a translator, logistics manager, collaborator, and security team leader. Even then, things were becoming more dangerous by the year. Prior to his departure, two local journalists and close friends working for Western media were kidnapped and killed by the Taliban. One was beheaded along with his driver.
Mr. Samim left partly because he no longer felt safe. Yet “we never resented working for our American colleagues,” he says. “We put our lives on the line. We didn’t know such a shocking collapse would happen.”
Among those Monitor colleagues remaining in Afghanistan are Zubair Sayeed, Ajmal Naseri, and Mohammed Naashna. They primarily worked as drivers, though that term hardly captures the breadth of their work. Mr. Zadran remembers the time that one Monitor correspondent wanted to find Arab men who were coming to remote corners of Afghanistan to fight for the Al Qaeda cause.
Mr. Zadran volunteered for the job. It would be too dangerous for an American to come along, so he drove off in search of Arab fighters, following tips and hunches. When he found several, they refused to return to the hotel with him, so Mr. Zadran brokered a compromise – finding a middle ground where they all could meet. The Monitor got its story.
On another assignment for the Monitor, Mr. Zadran recalls being followed by a motorcycle-riding Talib toting an AK-47. Mr. Zadran, a translator, and a Monitor correspondent made for the safety of the local governor’s house as quickly as they could.
“The nature of the work was at times risky,” he says. “We had to be risk-taking to get close to the facts.”
Scott Baldauf, a Monitor writer who worked with him on many occasions, tells of a visit to a warlord of Mr. Zadran’s own tribe. They drove through what seemed an empty checkpoint, but suddenly, after 50 yards, the checkpoint bristled with men shouting and pointing rifles at the car.
Mr. Zadran calmly stopped, stepped out, “and talked the men down,” says Mr. Baldauf, who left the Monitor in 2012. “All I could think was that my life was in the hands of men like Malik Jan. He knew the culture, the people, how to make things happen, and, in this case, how to stop bad things from happening.”
In a separate email, Mr. Baldauf adds: “We felt that those stories helped to get a better understanding of why it was so difficult to bring lasting peace to Afghanistan. Now those stories have marked Malik Jan.”
Who got out and how?
Those Afghans who got out generally had better connections or a better idea of how to work through a system as it collapsed. Monitor contributor Zubair Babarkhail also worked for Stars and Stripes, the news publication of the U.S. military. In 2008, he was a fellow on a State Department trip to the U.S. for Afghan journalists.
He now lives in Pittsburgh, working for an organization that helps resettle Afghan refugees. But even for someone with connections directly to the U.S. government, the escape from Kabul was harrowing.
Thousands of people thronged the airport hoping to catch a flight out. For 10 days, Mr. Babarkhail had his three children sleep with their shoes on so they could leave at a moment’s notice. He would get calls in the middle of the night from friends in the military, telling him to be at a certain place at a certain time. Once, his family missed a shuttle bus into the airport by five minutes. Another time, he went without his family so he could go into the crowd, hoping to get closer to the gate and be seen by his colleagues.
Inside the crowd, “it was like a wave of water,” he says. “Everyone was stuck to another person.” He escaped a bombing during one trip to the airport. The crowd was tear-gassed during another of his trips.
How he and his family eventually got out, he says he cannot share. He hasn’t been authorized to speak about it publicly. Yet when he was at last on a plane bound for Qatar, then on to Germany and the U.S., there was no feeling of joy – only disbelief.
“It was not a happy moment,” says Mr. Babarkhail. “No one wants to leave a country like that. We were leaving behind everything we struggled for in our life.”
There have been moments of joy since – walks with journalist friends at a temporary refugee facility in Wisconsin, watching Afghan boys playing cricket there, and the “first time we saw blue skies in our lives.” (Yes, Kabul is dusty.)
But the transition has not been easy for his fellow Afghans. Some have never used electricity, he says. Others have never received mail in a mailbox. He says they wonder, “‘What is this about? Do I owe someone?’”
But their families are safe, which is all Mr. Zadran wants for his family.
Mr. Zadran’s household includes 21 people, and he insists on bringing them all, complicating his hopes. But he has already lost a son – killed even before the Taliban takeover when the son tried to visit another province. “If we catch another son, we will kill him,” those threatening Mr. Zadran still say. “We will behead you.”
So he has moved from place to place. Even going back to the village where he was born offered no refuge. Too many in his own tribe are too intertwined with the Taliban.
“I am an Afghan, and I am in a conflict zone and have always been in a conflict zone,” he says. “You can’t make any decision without risk. I worked for The Christian Science Monitor because it put food on my table for my family. I made that choice, and that was the risk.”
Still, he says, “I am grateful for the work done for The Christian Science Monitor.”
And he is grateful that he has not been forgotten. “It’s reassuring that people think of you, that they care about what happens to you.”
Mr. Samim of Operation Abraham talks to Mr. Zadran once a week, offering comfort and hoping for progress on his refugee case. “Every night I go to bed, I’m thinking of them,” says Mr. Samim of those left behind. “My children are safe.”
“These people protected American lives; they provided a safe environment,” he says. “They are friends in need.”
