America ‘Blatantly Ignoring’ Plight of Afghans Who Are Being Hunted by Taliban for Having Helped Our GIs

A year after America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the seizure of power by the Taliban, a Green Beret, Thomas Kasza, says the United States government is “blatantly ignoring” the plight of Afghans who worked for the Americans and are now in hiding, fearing for their lives. He considers it a national scandal. A year ago, Mr. Kasza founded a nonprofit, the NMRG Rescue Project. It was formerly called Save Team 11, which the Sun profiled in August. Its mission is to help Afghan counter-IED specialists — members of the National Mine Reduction Group — who worked alongside Special Operations Forces get special immigrant visas and safe passage to America. “Afghan lives are being used as a political football,” Mr. Kasza tells the Sun. “The Republicans are waiting for after the midterms because they are expecting to have control of the House, so they can do their own investigation. The Democrats want nothing to do with it because this is the biggest red mark on their portfolio going into the midterms.” Earlier this month, Mr. Kasza attended the Global Friends of Afghanistan conference at Washington, D.C. The parley brought together nonprofits and policymakers now leading the Afghanistan humanitarian and evacuation efforts. He says that while they sent an invitation to the Department of State, no one was sent to attend.“It was three to five miles down the road from the state department,” Mr. Kasza says. “I think it’s pretty telling to see what their priorities are.”It’s not as if America and its allies haven’t acknowledged a moral obligation. In their final weeks in Afghanistan, they evacuated more than 120,000 persons on military and charter flights. Yet many more were left behind.This was underscored by the harrowing news footage. Crowds swelled outside Hamid Karzai International Airport. Desperate Afghans clung to C-17s as they took off. The evacuation efforts have been widely condemned.Since then, nonprofits, aid organizations, and private individuals have formed ad-hoc groups to continue with humanitarian assistance and evacuations efforts. Mr. Kasza’s nonprofit focuses on the NMRG, but every group in this space has a niche.The problem, Mr. Kasza says, is that the work is “siloed” and “there’s no Afghan evac tsar” to coordinate the efforts. Another Green Beret describes dealing with the Department of State as worse than “dealing with Amazon for a return.”“Because the State Department has relieved itself of leadership in seeing the Afghan crisis through to an ethical conclusion, active-duty Green Berets have been saddled with rectifying the moral injury of America’s previous conflict, when they should be preparing for its next one,” Mr. Kasza says.Lack of support from American officials isn’t deterring Mr. Kasza or the other Green Berets with whom he works. For the past year, they have provided NMRG with financial support, safe houses, and logistical help getting visas, passports, and navigating through the Special Immigrant Visa process. All of this comes out of their own pockets.Numbering around 300, members of the National Mine Reduction Group hail mostly from Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic minority, who have been traditionally persecuted by the Taliban. Their job was to carry minesweepers and walk ahead of American Special Forces on combat missions, clearing the ground of explosives.“The risks in clearing IEDs for America’s spearhead force cannot be overstated,” Mr. Kasza says. “I can personally say my legs are still intact because of these guys.” Other Green Berets tell the Sun stories about how NMRG members saved their lives and limbs.Mr. Kasza says there was “an ethical agreement” — not a legal one — that the NMRG “would undertake this immensely dangerous job and in exchange we would help them with immigration.” He calls it a “stain” on America that we have not upheld our end of the bargain.“We will not forget you guys,” Mr. Kasza texted to a NMRG group chat in August 2021, in the final days of the American withdrawal. Mr. Kasza and his fellow Green Berets had revived old Signal and WhatsApp chats with NMRG in an effort to guide them into Hamid Karzai International Airport to get out.Then, on August 27, a suicide bomber detonated himself in front of the airport’s Abbey Gate, killing 13 American service members and more than 100 Afghans. “The gates to the airport have been closed,” Mr. Kasza texted the next day. “Unfortunately it will be a while before you get good news…. But you have to make sure you stay alive for us to be able to help you when the time comes.”Mr. Kasza is keeping his promise. For one NMRG team leader the time finally arrived a year hence, on August 31, 2022. The team member, his wife, and three of his six children arrived at Dulles International Airport. Mr. Kasza waited at the airport to greet the NMRG leader and family. He was in the unit that Mr. Kasza commanded. He “filled a village elder role for this community,” Mr. Kasza says, and he helped recruit a next generation of NMRG from the Hazara tribe of Daykundi Province. “If he was detained and tortured, it could have led to a domino effect within the surviving NMRG of southern Afghanistan.” The NMRG leader had started working for the Americans in 2002, first as a security guard at a base and then as a counter-IED specialist for the Navy Seals and then the Green Berets. During his nearly 20 years of service to the Americans, he took a bullet in his right leg and watched several of his friends die.Mr. Kasza and another Green Beret helped him and his family first escape to Pakistan, where they funded a safe house for them for six months while the NMRG leader went through the SIV process. “Tom helped us a lot. He saved us,” the team leader tells the Sun, through an interpreter, from his new home in America.This courageous veteran knows he is one of the lucky ones. “From the 40 NMRG where I was living, I am the only one who got in the U.S. and everybody else they are in hiding. They’re scared. Their life is facing the death penalty,” he says. He says they feel “abandoned” by the American government.Mr. Kasza calls it “a huge relief” to get his battlefield colleague out of Afghanistan, and says it is also a “morale boost” for the NMRG still stuck in hiding there. It is a signal that they have not indeed been forgotten — at least not by him. “I have cited 2,000 people as the remaining number of NMRG and family in Afghanistan: five down. 1,995 to go,” Mr. Kasza says.

America ‘Blatantly Ignoring’ Plight of Afghans Who Are Being Hunted by Taliban for Having Helped Our GIs

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