American stranded in Afghanistan pleads for help.Photo: Fox News
A U.S. resident who says he was visiting Afghanistan with his family to care for his ailing fatherbefore the country fellnow fears he won’t be able to leave the countryunder Taliban rule.
Those plans are now uncertain as people scramble to get to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul where the U.S.is working to evacuate peopleas they withdraw their military presence after a 20-year war.
“We are really worried here and scared,” Zarify told KDVR. “We can’t trust anyone because of the Taliban, and now people are getting crazy, and everything is out of control with the government.”
Zarify — whom PEOPLE has not been able to reach directly — said earlier this week he had lost communication with his airline and the U.S. Embassy.
“There is a website for emergencies at the embassy. I filled out the form for each member of my family, but I have not heard anything from them,” he told KDVR. “It’s really tough at the moment, and we are kind of lost and we don’t know what to do.”
On Wednesday, Zarifysaid onFox & Friendsthat he received an email from the U.S. Embassy that it had reopened, but when he went the Taliban was surrounding the building.
“I saw the Taliban sitting there. I couldn’t give myself the courage to go and ask them, ‘Hey, I’m an American. I want to go in the embassy,’ " he said. “I’m trying to get my family out of here. They don’t deserve this — to stay in Afghanistan, to deal with the Taliban. Everyone should get out of here as soon as possible. We don’t have safety anymore.”
Zarify also described the chaos he found as he had attempted to get to the Kabul airport.
“There’s thousands of people on the street,” he said. “It was crowded. It’s Afghan citizens and Afghan permanent residents and Afghans who did work with America.”
He added, “We all know what’s going to happen in the next few days or next couple weeks after Americans leave Afghanistan. So everyone is scared.”
Embassy officials this week warned that they would not be able to ensure safe passage to Kabul’s airport and that space on planes was first-come, first-serve.
“We need immediate help. Mr. Biden, please help all these Afghans who did support you, who helped you. These people deserve this, and I needed to do this for them,” Zarify pleaded.
His desperate story is one of many amid the ongoing evacuation efforts, which have drawn widespread criticism as too slow and ill-planned.
While Biden has acknowledged there were some mistakes with how the military exit unfolded,he has vowedto focus on the evacuation of citizens, allies and vulnerable people and temporarily increased the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
An Afghan man living in Kabul (who asked to be kept anonymous for fear of reprisal) echoed Zarify’s concerns, telling PEOPLE this week that he and his family havelost both their livelihoods and a general feeling of securityas America leaves the country.
“We are afraid to go outside now. Everyone is scared and hiding. Unless you are with the Taliban, it is not safe inside Afghanistan,” the man said.
The man — who told PEOPLE he has a wife, three children, one brother and his parents — says his family “didn’t expect this to happen so quickly.”
“It came as a complete shock. We thought we had a year to make plans. Now we don’t know if it’s too late. We don’t know where we would go. That was one thing we were looking into: trying to find out where we would go and what our lives would be when we got there,” he said, adding, “This dream of going to America may never happen. The dream has changed.”
Chaos and confusion spread through Afghanistan’s capital over the weekend and into the week as the national government collapsed to the Taliban faster than the U.S. predicted.
Kabul airport.MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
One man who works at the airport and who also could not give his name told PEOPLE there was widespread disarray and desperation before the airport was secured.
“So many people are trying to get out,” he said earlier this week, adding, “They climbed the fences into the airport. Big concrete walls and there is barbed wire. People climbed up the concrete walls in between where the concrete is. I saw people on the airport side of the wall after they landed. Some were hurt.”
Accordingto the Associated Press, officials said that at least seven people had died in the maelstrom at the airport. Among those were some people who fell from the outside of a U.S. military plane after clinging to it as it took off.
The scene at Kabul International Airport in August, 2021.WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty
Videos shared via social media seemed to show several bodies fall from the plane as it rose into the sky.
“There was so much running and fear. Everyone wanted to get to a plane,” the Afghan airport worker told PEOPLE. “They didn’t have tickets I don’t think. They did not come in through the boarding gates like normal. They just ran. They ran to the planes, hoping to get on any way they could.”
Those attempting to flee “dropped the things they had with them” in order to get a spot on the aircraft, he said. “So much of their lives, dropped on the ground at the airport. Pieces of lives are scattered on the ground like so much trash.”
The Taliban controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s with harsh ruling. Public executions were held routinely; women and girls were banned from school; television and music were forbidden.
Some 20 years after being toppled in a U.S.-led invasion, the group has returned to power and insists it is more moderate, though those claims are being viewed skeptically.
Already there are reports of fighters cracking down on protests and on women’s rights, though some girls have been able to return to school.
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Under the Trump-era agreement that led to the U.S. withdrawal this summer, the Taliban also said it would break ties with al-Qaida.
During apress briefingon Monday, Biden said he will uphold that deal.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy,” he said.
“After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”
source: people.com
