The Americans Who Won't Rest Until They've Kept a Wartime Promise |
For the American service members trying to evacuate Afghans and others at the Kabul International Airport, the low point came on Aug. 26, when a suicide bombing killed 13 American service members and at least 170 Afghans. |
The Times correspondent Roger Cohen wrote about this moment and what happened in the weeks that followed. Specifically, he followed an informal network — including a Marine veteran, retired diplomats and intelligence officers, and a former math teacher — that is still working to save the Afghan colleagues who risked their lives for America in Afghanistan. |
 | | Matiullah Matie in the United States. Mr. Matie and his family were evacuated to Germany, where they were housed for more than a month in a tent with other evacuees before being flown to the United States.Matiullah Matie |
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The day of the bombing, Matiullah Matie, his wife and their six children stood near the Abbey Gate holding a sign that read "Chesty Puller." For Marines, that seemingly odd name was not odd at all; Chesty Puller was a Marine Corps hero for his exploits in World War II and Korea. |
Mr. Matie was an Afghan businessman in Helmand Province who for several years worked as a facilitator and fixer for Lt. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson of the Marines, now retired. At the airport, Mr. Matie held the Chesty Puller sign aloft — an idea from Maj. Mike Kuiper, an active-duty Marine who had served in Helmand. |
Spotting that sign, a Marine stationed at the airport pushed Mr. Matie's family through the gates to safety. Later, Mr. Matie and his family were evacuated to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they were housed for more than month in a tent while awaiting transport to the United States. |
"When a Marine approached me in the crowd, I had the password on my phone, which that day was a photo of a cup of milk tea," Mr. Matie said in a phone interview. "My Marine brothers saved me." |
On Oct. 14, Mr. Matie and his family were flown to Philadelphia from Germany. "Reached Philadelphia airport safely thanks to my American brothers and sisters who helped me," he wrote in a jubilant message. |
In a leafy subdivision in Knoxville, Tenn., General Nicholson has been working closely with an Afghan American, Par, whose mother, brother and pregnant sister arrived after a terrifying journey from Afghanistan coordinated by the Marine network. |
Par had worked for the U.S. Defense Department in Kabul, moved to America in 2014 and then joined the Army, where he is a sergeant in the army reserve. When Kabul fell, General Nicholson helped arrange for his family to reach the Kabul airport after a 20-hour bus ride from Herat in western Afghanistan. |
At the airport gates, Par's brother held up an agreed-upon sign: "MY BROTHER WORKS FOR THE U.S. ARMY." An American quickly waved them inside, where they spent four days before being flown to Qatar, then Bulgaria, then Germany and finally to Dulles International Airport near Washington. Par was waiting. |
"Paroled," reads the American entry stamp on their Afghan passports. |
Par asked to be identified only by his given name because he still has four sisters and a brother, as well as his father, who are stuck in Afghanistan. He laughed when asked about the Taliban 2.0 theory, the idea that time and diplomatic experience had mellowed a movement known for its mass executions and harsh repression of women. |
"They are playing us," he said. "I cannot believe there are some people who actually believe them. My brother, who worked for the United States government, will probably disappear and never be seen again." |
The United States evacuated more than 100,000 Afghans before withdrawing from Kabul, but many had never worked for the United States, while thousands who did remain. Many veterans remain fixated on why generals or presidents have not been held accountable for a lost war. They asked whether their friends gave their lives so that the Taliban could march unopposed into Kabul. |
 | | A crowd of Afghans trying to gain entry to the airport in Kabul in August after the Taliban took control.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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One Marine, who requested anonymity because he was still in the service, put it this way: You lose two rifles at the Camp Lejeune Marines training base and the entire chain of command is relieved. But you lose tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons now in the hands of the Taliban, lose 13 service members (10 of them Marines) in the Aug. 26 terrorist attack at Kabul airport and lose America's longest war, and there seems to be no reckoning. |
"Among Americans, there is no shared scar tissue from the wars," said J. Kael Weston, a former State Department official who served in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside General Nicholson and has been part of the network. "A culture gap opened up." |
In rural Virginia, Bryce Hemp, a retired math teacher and grandmother who lives with her husband on a farm, and others are still working to save Afghans. She has three young grandchildren and does not have to do this, given that many Americans have already forgotten Afghanistan or scarcely paid attention to it before. |
"I was raised with the Golden Rule, an honor code," she said. "You do not lie to people. You honor your promises." |
She looked out at her crab apple tree and the rolling green fields. "People today don't want to take responsibility for their actions. 'Choices have consequences' is now 'Choices have consequences for everyone but me.' People are just so angry." |
| READ ROGER COHEN'S FULL ACCOUNT HERE. | | |
Here are four stories from The Times you might have missed this week. |
 | | Nabila, a judge in Afghanistan's Supreme Court, who is now in hiding.Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times |
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"A dark future is awaiting everyone in Afghanistan, especially female judges." Many female judges and lawyers in Afghanistan have not only lost their jobs, but also live in a state of perpetual fear that they or their loved ones could be tracked down and killed. [Read the article.] |
Those buried at Guantánamo graveyard. Most of the 330 or so people buried in Guantánamo Bay's cemetery shared one common bond: They never found their way home. [Read the article.] |
"We took them to the camps and never taught them anything apart from an AK-47." Some veterans of South Africa's liberation struggle are demanding benefits they say were promised to them years ago as the armed units were disbanded — pensions, housing and scholarships for their children. Fifty-three of them were charged on Tuesday with kidnapping a politician following a confrontational protest last week. [Read the article.] |
"It's the first time that we found a beautiful sword like this." A 900-year-old sword that a scuba diver found off the Carmel coast of Israel weighs four pounds, measures about four feet long and originated from the Third Crusade, experts said. [Read the article.] |
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