As a young Afghan interpreter, he helped a US officer. Then he needed help getting out

One day in April, Ahmadullah Karimi nervously packed his family’s meager belongings into a handful of suitcases, knowing the next few hours would decide his fate.

Karimi, 31, was in Pakistan. He’d been holed up there with his wife and two kids for more than 2½ years, waiting.

When the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan ended on Aug. 30, 2021, he had stood outside Kabul’s airport, watching fellow Afghans so desperate to flee some of them clung to the outside of military planes as they lumbered into the air.

But Karimi, a former U.S. military interpreter – like thousands of other Afghan allies vulnerable to Taliban reprisal – had been left behind.

Instead, he and his family had made it as far as neighboring Pakistan. Interpreters like Karimi were supposed to be eligible for a pathway to the U.S. called a special immigrant visa. Now, after years of struggle, red tape and critical help from his former boss and friend, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Will Selber, Karimi finally had his.

Still, Selber, who worked in intelligence and spent countless hours since the withdrawal helping other former Afghan colleagues, knew even the visa wasn’t a guarantee. He had seen some people disappear or be killed. Both men feared that despite valid paperwork, Karimi could still be blocked, detained or even deported to Afghanistan by Pakistani authorities.

“If they see me and my family trying to go to the airport, they probably will make some excuses” to intervene, said Karimi, who was with his wife, 6-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

Being sent back to live under Taliban rule would mean he could face death for his work with U.S. forces, while his wife would be prohibited from studying beyond the sixth grade or showing her face in public .

Selber, 46, who monitored his progress from the United States, knew that despite organizing help, nothing was certain. “A thousand things could go wrong,” he said.

Today, three years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan ended the nation’s longest war, the U.S. has resettled more than 160,000 such vulnerable Afghans and their families as part of what veterans and advocates view as a national moral obligation.

The Biden Administration has worked to accelerate processing for Afghans who seek admission as refugees or through other immigration programs. Special immigrant visas, for example, for those who worked directly with the U.S., are on pace this year to surpass the 18,000 granted last year, according to the State Department.

Yet despite the progress, at least 250,000 vulnerable Afghans, including former interpreters, Afghan military personnel, civil society staff and family members remain stranded in Afghanistan and third countries amid barriers and backlogs, according to advocates.

Many are still waiting for eligibility decisions including about 130,000 applicants for special immigrant visas, according to Andrew Sullivan of the group No One Left Behind.

Long waits have led several thousand to risk a dangerous trek to the U.S. southern border. Still more face challenges in bringing extended family members to safety.

And Congress has yet to approve the Afghan Adjustment Act, proposed two years ago to speed resettlement and provide Afghans admitted under temporary, two-year parole a path to permanent residency.

“So much more needs to be done to keep our promise to protect our allies,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Global Refuge, a resettlement agency.

Though the effort will take years, progress is being made and thousands are being relocated to the U.S. each month, said Shawn VanDiver, President of the group AfghanEvac.

He said those gains have come in partnership with veteran and nonprofit groups that have scrambled to help relocate former friends and colleagues. Individually, many veterans have helped people they knew with money for housing or help with bureaucratic jams.

That includes Selber, who served multiple times in Afghanistan and has aided many former Afghan allies. Most made it, he said. Some didn’t.

Karimi was the last interpreter he knew well still in harm’s way. He vowed to do everything he could to see him to safety.

But it would be no easy feat.

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Trusted Afghan allies form bond in war

The men’s paths first crossed a decade earlier in a dusty Afghan outpost northwest of Kandahar.

The village in the Ghorak district had no schools or medical facilites. Residents lived in deep poverty. With the Taliban not far away, supplies had to be air-dropped to his small camp.

It marked Selber’s second deployment to Afghanistan. During his first, he had worked on projects such as digging wells and repairing mosques, stories he would later recount in a book review . The job let him spend long hours drinking chai with Pashtun elders. He found Afghans generous and fascinating.

He would learn the language, but still needed a translator for his new mission – serving as the local governor’s adviser to build support for the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The few dozen special forces soldiers he was with were tasked with training and supporting local police.

Karimi hadn’t yet turned 20 – a young interpreter from Kandahar who loved reading and cricket. He’d taken the job mainly because it would qualify him for a U.S. visa, Karimi said.

“He was a baby,” Selber recalled, laughing. “Eager and green and excited.”

Over that year, they bonded during meetings with area elders and civilians. Back at base, not far from where the governor had been installed in a rented house, Selber and Karimi hung out in the interpreters’ tent. They posed for a photo, arm-in-arm, in desert-colored fatigues near armored vehicles.

While they didn’t see combat together, Karimi learned the risks of his job were ever-present. Military interpreters were despised by some in rural areas more favorable to the Taliban, he said.

“They were hating us” for working with U.S. forces, he said. “And they announced money if anybody killed us.”

When Selber’s deployment ended, he wrote Karimi a letter of recommendation for his SIV visa.

He lost track of Karimi as a steady stream of Afghan interpreters came and went during his deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 and again in 2020 ahead of the U.S. withdrawal.

“I said goodbye to Ahmadullah,” Selber said in a blog post, “and hoped to run into him sometime down the road.”

They would indeed reconnect - but not where either man expected.

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Fall of Kabul brings a blocked path

In August 2021, Ahmadullah barrelled toward Kabul with his family in hopes of getting on a plane to safety.

Ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, the Tablian began retaking territory. By mid-August, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as Taliban forces advanced on the capital.

President Joe Biden later said U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan National Security collapsed faster than some expected.

Karimi had stopped interpreting for the military in 2014 to earn a college degree. He went on to work for a United Nations-funded aid organization. But he knew his past work for the military meant he would be a target for reprisal killings.

“Especially my mom, she was really concerned about me,” he said. “We worked for the U.S. forces. So they won't let us live. They will kill us.”

With his visa eligibility, and a sister in Canada advocating on his behalf, he was hopeful he’d get a seat on a plane.

Meantime, Selber, whose deployment at the U.S. Embassy ended earlier that summer, was back in the U.S. working the phones and contacts to help the U.S. get vulnerable allies inside an airport thronged by chaotic crowds and surrounded by Taliban checkpoints.

Selber didn’t know Karimi and his family were among them, waiting for hours in the sun, moving back and forward with the crowd, hoping for an opening to reach U.S. forces and tell them he had worked as a military interpreter.

On Aug. 30, he finally got close to U.S. forces to do that. But he was told there were no more flights for civilians or Afghans. He waited at the door for four or five hours, hoping that might change. But the answer was the same.

“It’s all over,” he was told.

But he still had to get out. Like others, he looked to the nearest border.

The following month, they packed a car and drove south to a Pakistani crossing, hoping to pass unnoticed. He waited for hours in a line of refugees, his kids thirsty and crying, hoping he wasn’t stopped by the Taliban or refused entry.

At the border station, he showed his Afghan identification. The guards asked his reason for seeking to enter Pakistan.

“My wife is sick,” he recalled telling them. “I want to take her to the hospital.” He handed over 20,000 Pakistani rupees, about $71 today. He was waved across.

But he wasn’t out of danger yet.

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Facing danger and red tape, veterans aid former allies

In 2022, an email with an unexpected question landed in Selber’s inbox: Are you Maj. Will Selber?

“I'm Lt. Col. Will Selber,” he corrected the emailer. “What's up?”

It was a lawyer hired by one of Karimi’s longtime supporters, a U.S. online English teacher who formerly taught his sister. They sought to find Selber – not only Karimi's last U.S. military supervisor, but a friend he knew would come to his aid.

He’d tried to reach Selber. He still had the recommendation letter Selber had written nearly a decade earlier, but the listed email address no longer worked after Selber had taken on new assignments.

Selber learned that Karimi had applied for the SIV, by then a notoriously slow program. But there were hitches, including a clerical error from his former interpreter contractor showing he’d been fired, which wasn’t the case. Could he help?

Selber, who had been consumed by efforts to help evacuate Afghan allies since 2021, remembered his old friend and colleague and quickly agreed.

“By the time Ahmadullah reached out to me, I’d become an expert at it,” he said.

Karimi’s family had reached Islamabad, a city filled with refugees seeking safe passage out, living on financial help from family and friends. He’d registered with the United Nations refugee system, a process that can take years. His son fought an illness while he battled red tape.

He told his family they’d be here for a few months, tops. His son kept asking. “Dad, when will your three months get completed?”

He still sought to win an SIV visa, and with it, eventual U.S. permanent residency.

Selber penned an affidavit vouching for him and pushed to get his mistaken record corrected. Once it was, Karimi submitted his SIV application again.

“It sailed through,” Selber recalled. “He got his approval within a year, which is pretty fast.”

In 2023, however, staying in Pakistan got more dangerous when the country announced plans to deport large numbers of Afghan refugees, Sullivan said.

And the dangers in Afghanistan were evident in reports from the U.N. and other groups that had documented reprisal killings of people who had worked with U.S. forces. Further, the economy had cratered and women’s rights were being strictly curtailed, with prohibitions on girls going to school and as time went on, women speaking in public.

Selber, with the help of fellow veterans, found the family safe house to stay hidden. He tapped his veteran community, setting up a GoFundMe campaign to help his former interpreter seeking about $7,000. It drew five times that much within days.

Finally, in April he was approved to go.

Selber and other supporters bought him a ticket instead of waiting what can be months for one provided by the government. He even had a U.S. letter stating that he should not be detained.

But Selber knew it could go sideways. He even told Karimi he might have to make a run for it.

On the way to the airport, his son was happy. Karimi tried to hide his nerves while his driver, whose identity he’d confirmed with a code phrase, took routes to avoid police checkpoints.

But all the support paid off. Karimi said that with help he got inside and through customs without being challenged or turned away.

Settling into his airplane seat on a flight to Qatar, he buckled his seatbelt and exhaled.

Amid ramped-up processing and new lives, others remain stuck

In mid-April, Selber stood inside Boston Logan International Airport, wearing a shirt that read, Operation Enduring Freedom.

Soon Karimi walked from the gate with his wife, daughter and their son, who was dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, meeting Selber in what he described as an “unbelievable” moment.

“He did a lot for me and my family,” he said. “He saved my life.”

Selber, too, could finally relax after many nerve-wracking months. “I was just like, oh my God, I can finally rest,” he said.

Selber drove the family about 180 miles north to Montpelier, Vermont, a town of about 8,000 residents set along the Winooski River, where they would be resettled with the help of refugee agencies and friends.

They soon moved into their first apartment. Karimi was delivering food for Door Dash and Uber Eats. By late August, he started a new job as a cashier at a grocery. His son Abdullah was starting school and his wife was learning English and taking her daughter to the park.

“I'm really happy for my wife and my kids. They can go to school. They have freedom here. They have all the rights that a human should have,” he said.

At the same time, he said, “I have a lot of stress and tension and concern about my parents. They are still in trouble.”

His father worked as a government driver, he said, so his parents have been moving, changing where they stay every couple of months to keep ahead of the Tablian. Two of his sisters, who worked in healthcare, now can’t leave their homes.

Like others, he wants to help get his family out. But getting extended relatives visas is more difficult than for immediate family members. From Vermont, it’s anguishing to see what’s become of his country, he said.

“We lost all the progress that happened in the last 20 years,” he said. ”Everything is destroyed.”

Selber retired from the Air Force in July. He said a crowd of Afghans came to the event. He still keeps in touch with Karimi and other former interpreters and Afghan colleagues now in the U.S.

Many are thriving, he said. Some are still learning English. Some former Afghan elites are driving Uber or working as security guards. Most are financially supporting families back home. Still more have survivor’s guilt.

“All of them are 100% grateful to be here,” he said. “But I've never met one that didn't wish they could come back.”

There are hopeful signs more will follow in Karimi’s path. SIV and refugee admissions have risen and earlier this year Congress expanded the available SIV visas. Recently, the Philippines agreed to temporarily host a visa processing center for a small number of Afghans seeking to resettle in the U.S.

But advocates say the progress needs to be sustained over a number of years to get everyone eligible to safety. And they hope Congress will pass the Afghan Adjustment Act in part so that those here on a temporary status can avoid the U.S. asylum system that has a backlog of more than 2 million applicants.

“It's still frustratingly slow for people who are facing danger in Afghanistan,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

Selber said that the way things ended in Afghanistan broke his heart. But he hopes his efforts to help Karimi and others help him heal.

Earlier this week, Karimi called Selber with welcome news. He’d received his coveted “green card,” making him a permanent resident – a fitting coda to a friendship that Karimi credits with saving his life.

“I don’t have words to tell him thank you,” Karimi said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As a young Afghan interpreter, he helped a US officer. Then he needed help getting out