This Is What the Afghan Evacuation Looks Like on the Inside →

The day our lives fell apart, Aug. 15, I received a call from a close friend in Kabul. Usually cool and confident — vital skills for a community leader in a complex, conflict-ridden place like Afghanistan — my friend now whispered in desperation. “I need to get out,” he said. “Help me.” In the background, I could hear the city bustling nervously as millions of people absorbed the fact of the Taliban’s conquest.

My friend, a vocal activist who has spoken out against the Taliban’s oppressive rule, is one of the thousands of Afghans currently fighting to find a way to escape the country. For the past week, I’ve been working from Los Angeles, where I live, to support and coordinate their efforts. Together with a coalition of Afghan American organizations, many community members and I have been trying our hardest to evacuate our friends and family.

It’s fiendishly difficult. A network of veterans, private sector workers, human rights activists and other volunteers, we’re coordinating on different platforms and languages, often all at once. We’re figuring out which Taliban checkpoints to avoid and what gate at the airport is the most accessible, if any are. We’re raising money, millions of dollars overnight, to charter planes. We’re endlessly compiling spreadsheets with information about Afghans who are under threat from the Taliban.

We’re doing this because the American government isn’t. U.S. officials claim they’re presiding over an orderly exit, but the chaos on the ground suggests otherwise. Those evacuated in the past 10 days — approximately 58,700 people, according to American officials — appear to be mostly American citizens and the situation, fluid and frenzied, is far from under control. Friends and family we’ve tried to evacuate have been shot and beaten up by the Taliban, despite American promises of security at the airport. In the absence of guidance, it has fallen to us, using our phones and laptops, to figure out how to rescue Afghans scrambling for their lives.

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When Afghans speak to me now, they all whisper like my friend, hoping desperately to avoid detection. Their workplaces and homes are being raided by armed men, as the Taliban search for journalists, activists, prominent figures — anyone who has spoken out against their brutality. It goes far beyond critics: In some areas of Kabul, the Taliban are reportedly compiling a list of the houses belonging to members of the Hazara and Shia minority communities, whom they consider heretics. While in front of international TV cameras, the Taliban speak of amnesty for all who fought against them, the reality for Afghans there is completely different.

The people I’m talking to sometimes go silent. All of a sudden, their Twitter and Instagram accounts stop: no posts, no stories, no tweets. Some have switched to encrypted messaging, their communication ever more frantic. For those who venture outside — bravely pouring onto the streets, for example, to celebrate Afghanistan’s Independence Day last week, waving now banned Afghan flags — bullets await. The attempt to flee is perilous. Many, including American citizens, have reached the airport only to be stopped, beaten and turned away. Their homes are now marked by the Taliban.

The Afghan people have been all but abandoned to their fate. Despite its promises to evacuate thousands of at-risk Afghans who assisted the United States, the Biden administration has effectively left the job to Afghan American community organizers, operating from overseas with minimal resources. That must change immediately. The Biden administration needs to establish security in and around the airport, beyond the Aug. 31 deadline for final withdrawal, and make certain that everyone who needs to can make it onto an evacuation flight.

The administration must drop its onerous immigration regulations — for example, asking Afghans to present threat letters and insisting they first travel to a third country before their cases are processed — and provide family reunification applications, which should be expedited and prioritized.

It should go further still. In the aftermath of American intervention in Cuba and Vietnam, refugees from both countries were granted refuge; the same should happen now. The United States has a clear role in causing the humanitarian disaster slowly unfolding in Afghanistan today. For those millions of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down by two decades of American military action, ending in a poorly organized withdrawal, nothing less than a complete humanitarian parole — offered to any Afghan whose life is in danger — will do.

My friend and his family are now in hiding. They live minute to minute, hour to hour, fearing the knock on the door. “I’m so exhausted,” he said when we last spoke, after yet another failed attempt to enter the airport. “I am losing hope.”

His life and countless others are at stake. Mr. Biden must act, before it’s too late.

This was published in the New York Times on August 24th, 2021.

Fight or Flight

There was so much joy. So much laughter. Smiles. Dancing. The attan, our national dance, obviously. Nothing moved quicker than those chairs and tables when the attan was announced. Afghans can be so predictable at times. But while some tears were from joy, many of them were not.

Our community is in pain. This generation of the successful and amazing Afghan American diaspora is in pain. We might now show it often, like our parents taught us to, but we are. We keep telling ourselves how lucky we have it, growing up in the West, armed with knowledge and iPhones rather than kalashnikovs. It must be said though, that we too, are traumatized. Often it’s our elders who’ve taken it out on us. We often repeat the same mistakes, ignoring what we feel rather than dealing with it.

Many of us have witnessed or been victim of sexual assault and domestic violence. Tons of us are discriminated against, either because we’re religious and ethnic minorities. Often, we cannot be ourselves because of our sexual orientation. However, things flow down the river. If we grow up poor, we often remain poor. If our parents have seen trauma, we will feel it too. We cannot be prideful of how far we made it without acknowledging that the road to here has had its bumps and snags. That the pain is real yet we act as if talking about it for a few minutes a year will be enough. Seeking professional mental health still is treated as embarrassing rather than a step towards treating our trauma. We ought to strive for less shame about our depressions and more accepting of trying to heal our wounds.

At the beginning of the conference, everyone’s intro was similar in some way or another. What brought you here, to this very unique but kind of odd space? There was a lot healthy initial skepticism, shaped by our past and how the diaspora had treated us.

“Listen…. I never really liked Afghans. I don’t have any Afghan friends. But I really like you all.” Laughter and smiles ensue.

We should not dismiss the re-entrance into our diaspora, to be part of something constructive. That’s the hard road to take because for every person at this conference, there’s a sibling or cousin who rejects his or her community. He or she refuses to fully embrace who they are because they were dismissed or rejected. Like Big Sean said, you took an L but we all bounced back.

For the rest of us, the choice was simple. Fight or flight. Fight to make our community better, or run away from it forever. It’s on us to do that. We’re equipped with the know how and the energy. We can sit there and condemn our own. Or we can stand up and fight for what’s right. To include our halfsies, our queer brothers and sisters, our Afghans with disabilities, those who have married Peruvians and Pakistanis and African Americans. To stamp out sectarianism and bigotry amongst our own. To include all folks of all professions, to champion our janitors as much as we celebrate our doctors. If we don’t fight, we’ll keep fleeing for the rest of our lives.

Domestic violence is a scourge in the Afghan American community.

I’ve been used to spotlighting the pain and stories of others. But today, I will tell you about why I’m here — at AAC, in this space, amongst a community I had vowed to shun forever.

I want to take you back to the fall of 2001. It had just become that much more complicated to look Muslim and to be brown in America — the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon changed many of our lives. I, for one was, a nerdy looking 8th grader navigating a complex world of anthrax terrorist jokes and trying to fit in. These were the priorities that consumed my thoughts before two o’clock on most days.

But when it was time to go home….when I got off that school bus, my priorities changed. After that, my focus shifted to protecting my mother from my father.

My father was abusive: emotionally, financially and, physically.

I was still too young to know what was going on but I did know my dad would come home somewhere around 4 or 5. My mother was our rock. She was the steady hand of our family, the person who cared about us the most and had sacrificed her life for us in so many ways already. She left what she knew for us — she left her friends, family, her home, for a life that was unfamiliar with an abusive husband at the time — my father.

On that day, after a long day of making sure my glasses weren’t knocked off of my face, I came home to find my dad… He was feeling feisty, confident and a little more aggressive than usual.

A good day of abuse meant a little verbal abuse, yelling at everyone for minor things or manipulating his kids to side with their dad over their mother. But today, wasn’t a good day. No. Today she said something that he did not like. And — that’s all it took sometimes. And in front of my younger brother and younger sister, my dad became more just a bit more agitated and a bit more aggressive. There was my dad…. with a knife in his hand, confidently on his way to hurt my mother. He had been abusive before… but a knife was a bit scarier than a fist or a hand. In that moment I knew that this had to be the last time he was going to do this.

So I stood in front of my father, yelled at him and told him that he had to go through me first if he wanted to hurt anybody else. I protected my family. I called the cops on him. I defused a violent situation by risking my body and my wellbeing — to save my mother. In that moment, I gained the courage to stand up to my own father, a person who helped bring me into this world and was supposed to love me unconditionally. He wasn’t going to hurt my mother, or my brother or my sister.

I took a side. I took my mom’s side. Against my father, against toxic masculinity, against abuse and domestic violence.

Often, the story of abuse is told by the women in our community and I often find myself, wondering why the rest of us — men — are quiet, looking down, shying away from the conversation. And I would lie to you today if I told you that the toxic masculinity has not crept down the family tree. We have been passed down convoluted ideas about manhood — to be strong, to not cry — that directly play into promotion of violence against women. Very often, those who commit domestic violence don’t stop there. They terrorize women, and then they terrorize nightclubs in Orlando and shoot up our high schools.

How do you emulate manhood when your father is everything you don’t want to be? His abuse has complicated my outlook on what it means to be a man, my romantic relationships, even my notion of what fatherhood might look like one day.

Domestic violence is prevalent in our Afghan American households, even today, yes, even in northern Virginia and Fremont and Queens. There are battered women in our community who are unable to escape their abusers, because their community refuses to support them because of so-called religions reasons. Because being complicit by turning a blind eye is easier than calling out than a guy with stature in our community. I’ve witnessed protection of those guilty, for the sake of reputation and at the expense of justice for victims in our community.

Our mothers, our sisters, our aunts and grandmas deserve better. We all do.

I’m also here to tell you that some other warning signs always precipitate domestic violence.

“I pay the bills around here so how dare you say no to sex with me tonight?”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you but you didn’t iron my clothes the way I wanted them to.”

“How dare you talk to that other guy?” or “Why did you add that guy on Facebook?”

“I am sorry you felt that way.”

I shared my story today — my mother’s story, my family’s story — because we often brush aside this topic. It’s a blemish on our community because it is so prevalent. The toxic masculinity, the abuse, the domestic violence — it’s silently tearing our diaspora apart.

I hope that after hearing what I told you today, you practice a bit more due diligence. Look a little closer and ask a few more questions so in the end, we protect our most vulnerable. If you witness abuse, call them out. If you know a victim of domestic violence, contact the right authorities and those with resources. If a guy is showing problematic behavior, call them out — be they your own father, brother, boyfriend or cousin.

I admit all the privileges I have as a men as I stand before you today, but I ask everyone — including our sisters — to do one thing when women share their story of agony: believe them when they come forward and empower those who suffer abuse.

We cannot move forward if the men in our community refuse to discuss the toxic figures in our lives — even if it’s that crazy uncle or possessive cousin. We men have an obligation. We must learn how to open our hearts and be vulnerable — it is not a weakness, it’s strength. Do not let masculinity be a prison. This much we owe to the women in our community. We can either be a destructive force that causes pain or we can create a safer future for the Afghan American diaspora. What world do you want your kids to grow up in?

** Speech was given at the 2018 Afghan American Conference at New York University in New York City.