KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On the surface, he looks like a typical office worker. His fingers clack away on the keyboard inside the Jewish Vocational Services office.
A moment later, the phone rings and the former Afghan Army officer answers before trying to help a refugee client on the other end.
But he’s not your typical office worker.
The former Afghan military officer endured his own harrowing journey to escape the Taliban after Kabul was overrun a year ago. He previously worked with Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense in the country’s capital, advising the U.S. military and Afghan government during the war.
Now, he has turned his experience forging a new life in a foreign land into service.
“I decided, if you're safe now and your family, your immediate family at least, is safe here, then go ahead and help others,” he said.
The world was captivated last August as images of desperate Afghan people, including seven who died at a Kabul airport, tried to flee ahead of the Taliban’s advance on Kabul.
It was a terrifying time for the Afghan officer who resettled in Kansas City.
“I remember that specific day,” he said. “When I went to my job that day, no one was expecting that to happen, especially to Kabul.”
KSHB 41 News is concealing the man’s identity because he still has family in Afghanistan and worries for their safety under Taliban rule.
The former Afghan officer, who trained during the war at Fort Leavenworth, was among the fortunate few who escaped on a U.S. military transport, leaving behind his home to begin a new chapter as a refugee stateside.
He faces new fears that he may not be able to stay in the U.S. as Congress weighs legislation to create a path to permanent legal residence for those who assisted with the war effort during the last two decades.
After JVS helped him resettle with his wife and four children in Kansas City, he now works as a case manager at JVS, providing advice and assistance to other displaced refugees as a way to give back even as his future sits in limbo.
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The day Kabul fell, the former Afghan officer now living in Kansas City was working at the Ministry of Defense headquarters.
He said there were negotiations aimed at keeping the militants from entering Kabul before evacuation efforts could be organized, but rumors swirled that the Taliban had already entered the city and were searching for people who worked with the U.S. and Afghan militaries.
“Suddenly, we saw roads, streets full of crowds, full of cars,” he said. “The roads were jammed. The roads were blocked.”
With no clear guidance about evacuation procedures and afraid that going home would jeopardize his family’s safety, he went into hiding.
“I was changing the place where I was living,” he said. “There was a group of militants that were searching for the Afghan military or those interpreters or employees who worked with the United States government.”
For about 10 days, he laid low, worried that his social media activity was being monitored or his phone could be tracked.
It was only after a former supervisor reached out via a secure messaging service, offering to help reunite him with his wife and four children and get them to safety, that arrangements were made for him to meet his family at Kabul Airport for evacuation.
“First, I paused for a few seconds, maybe a minute,” he said. “I imagined the situation and thought, 'OK, if you stay here, what is going to happen to you?' I knew the consequences, and then I said yes.”
Confronting a new fear that the airport could be targeted for a terrorist attack, he spent the next two days and two nights at the hot and overcrowded airport with his family, including a 1-year-old daughter.
“There were 10,000 people in the airport,” he said. “Sometimes, they had to extend the line for miles to get people organized and help them get through the process and get them boarded on the aircraft and airplanes. That was a very chaotic situation.”
Some families got separated and some children became ill, but after those two days, the former Afghan officer and his family made it on a plane bound for Qatar.
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The struggle for safety and freedom for the former Afghan military officer and his family was only beginning, but he considers his family fortunate.
“I cannot even express myself how lucky I am, because most of my colleagues — the ones who worked for me and were in my situation — had to go to our neighboring countries,” he said. “Some of my colleagues, my officers — they were assassinated. They were killed, so I knew what was coming toward me if I went back home.”
Conditions at the refugee camp in Qatar remained difficult. They sat inside a stuffy plane under the baking desert sun for five hours after landing and were housed for 12 days at a camp with thousands of other evacuees.
“There was very limited food, very limited showering facilities, very limited water and really hot temperatures,” he said. “It was the end of August in Qatar. I would say it was more than 120 degrees, but we made it.”
While in Qatar, his daughter got sick and his wife began to doubt whether they’d made the right decision.
“When we were in Qatar, my wife said, 'I wish we had not come, because it's not worth it,'” he said. “My child, my girl who was less than 1 year old, was in a very hard situation. [My wife] said, ‘I am about to lose her. I wish I did not come.’”
Mercifully after those two weeks, he and his family were flown to Washington and eventually moved to Camp Atterbury in Indiana for additional vetting, medical checks and refugee processing — a four-month ordeal, which included being separated again from his wife and daughter.
Once all his family’s screenings were complete, some friends he’d met at Fort Leavenworth, many of whom helped his family flee Afghanistan in the first place, offered to bring him to Kansas City for resettlement.
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Three organizations in the Kansas City area have settled nearly 800 refugees from Afghanistan in the last year.
Della Lamb helped resettle 338 Afghan refugees from late October to mid-February, while Jewish Vocational Services helped settle 375 more Afghan refugees during that time. Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas helped roughly 100 more.
“I’m constantly amazed by the perseverance, the endurance and the courage of those that we are receiving,” Della Lamb Executive Director Ryan Hudnall said.
Once a refugee is cleared to come to Kansas City, these organizations go into hyperdrive — arranging for housing, helping with job placement and connecting families with a case manager.
They also help with “cultural orientation,” Hudnall said, including a crash course in U.S. laws, customs and gender norms, among other things.
“The thing about resettlement that I think can be easily lost is that it’s not simply a welcoming process,” Hudnall said. “It’s a journey. The resettlement journey takes time, so that’s why we’re concerned about how do we have the infrastructure to support someone who has arrived over a period of time.”
It starts with basics and goes from there as new needs arise, including access to health care.
“Our services are pretty comprehensive,” JVS Executive Director Hilary Cohen Singer said. “At the beginning, it's really focused on basic needs — housing, food security, documentation to make sure that they have a paper that says they are legally present here in the United States and have the right to be here and the right to work.”
Life for the former Afghan officer’s family is better in Kansas City but not without difficulty.
Even with those basic needs met, the language barrier is a major challenge for most refugees, including his wife.
Finding ethnic or culturally appropriate food, adjusting to the school system, getting a driver’s license, figuring out how to get around town and even establishing a bank account can be difficult.
Americans' reliance on technology also presents a hurdle for people from lesser-developed countries.
Despite those strains, “It’s worth it — the challenges and the problems that you will face, because you do not have any other choice,” the former Afghan military officer said.
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One of the biggest issues confronting Afghan refugees now is the path to permanent lawful residency.
Currently, Afghan refugees like the former military officer have been granted Temporary Protected Status, but that expires on Nov. 19, 2023, unless it’s extended by executive order.
He can and has applied for a Special Immigrant Visa as well as asylum, but backlogs in the immigration system create long waits and prolong the uncertainty.
He’s unlikely to receive a hearing on either claim before the TPS expires, so the prospect of being sent back to Afghanistan — and any punishment he might face from the Taliban — lingers.
“This comes to everyone's mind, so we cannot sleep with it sometimes,” he said. “They (the Taliban) already know that we are in the United States, so in the future, in the near future, if we were sent back home, what is going to happen to us?”
Afghanistan still isn’t safe for the former military officer.
Taliban forces showed up at his house in Kabul, where his brother now lives. He said militants assaulted his brother while searching the home.
“There's a huge amount of insecurity and fear and worry, both over their own status here in the United States and the fate of people who are home in Afghanistan,” Singer said. “We hear fairly regularly from our client population that they will come in and say the Taliban came and searched my parents’ house last night or they were looking for my father. People are still in jeopardy there.”
The easiest solution would be passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which Sen. Roy Blunt from Missouri co-sponsored earlier this month, to create a pathway to citizenship.
“There is historic precedent for this,” Hudnall said. “It happened with those who were resettled from Vietnam. Several years after [the war], they passed an adjustment act that allowed those who had been resettled to go after lawful, permanent residence. We need that here ... to end the uncertainty of those who are newly arrived.”
A companion bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The Afghan Adjustment Act is the best, most simple and straightforward way for people to gain permanency,” Singer said. “Once you have that legal permanent residency, you can adjust your status to citizen and both have the protection of being able to stay in this country and also have the opportunity and responsibility to participate in our democracy, which I think folks are incredibly eager to do.”
The former Afghan military officer who works for Singer certainly would relish that chance.
“There are lots of issues and there are lots of challenges ahead of us, but, as I said, we are really grateful of this nation, of this country, that they welcomed us [and] for their hospitality and providing any kind of support that they could,” he said. “We really appreciate that.”
His struggles today are different than those he faced in Afghanistan, but his children's future is much more secure.
“It's worth it,” he said. “As long as we are safe and my children have a bright future.”
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The former Afghan officer works two jobs to help make ends meet for his family.
His children have adjusted remarkably well, which is a common story, according to Singer.
More than half of the people JVS resettled are children, who tend “to have an advantage over their parents because their acquisition of English typically comes a little bit more quickly.”
School provides a wonderful pathway to integration and making new friends.
“We typically see that the younger folks do pretty well,” Singer said.
The former Afghan military officer was so impressed with the services JVS provided to help his family adjust and settle into the Kansas City community that he took a job as a case manager, helping other refugees as they arrive.
“I saw that capacity in myself that I could help Jewish Vocational Services to support other refugees,” he said. “No matter from which country they come from, from which region of the globe they come from, from which religion, from which culture they come from, I wanted to help.”
He understands the culture shock that accompanies resettlement in a way most people can never fully imagine.
“When I help them, I always tell them that I have been through your situation and I know how it feels, how tough it is, but we are here to help you,” the former Afghan officer said. “At the end of the day, when I help them in and get a job and they are hired, that gives me some joy. I really like what I am doing.”
Singer estimates that Jewish Vocational Services works with 8,000 to 10,000 clients each year through a variety of programs. It’s a similar story for Della Lamb.
Both organizations and Catholic Charities accept donations and always need volunteer assistance to help local refugee populations.
MORE WAYS TO HELP
Della Lamb Wishlist on Amazon
Della Lamb Co-Sponsorship Program
JVS Client Wishlist on Amazon
JVS Refugee Donations
Catholic Charities Refugee Donations
New Roots for Refugees Ag Program
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