Front Burner - Two Afghans on their frustrated efforts to come to Canada

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

It’s been just over a year since the last Canadian plane airlifting people out of Afghanistan left Kabul in the wake of the Taliban takeover. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, this country has successfully resettled more than 17,600 Afghans since August 2021 – and the government has committed to resettle 40,000. But many who helped Canadians during the war are still stuck there. Today, two Afghans explain the dangers they now find themselves in because of their previous work with Canadians, and their frustrations in trying to come to Canada. Plus, a Canadian veteran on his efforts to help Afghans through the complicated process.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Life is very, very difficult and uncertain. I can deal with other frustrations, but the biggest frustration is I am not able to deal with uncertainty by the Canadian government that they have put us.

I feel so, so hopeless. Like, I feel sometimes like we are used, and then like we work with them and we are used, and now no one even cares about our life. These are two Afghan men, Bashir and Mohammed, with deep ties to Canada. They've both been trying to come here since last August, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan.

But a year later, neither of them have heard anything about their cases from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. I don't have the right to force the Canadian government to take me out of Afghanistan to Canada. But I do have the right to know where my application is. People who are really suffering are stuck in here still. The IRCC is just still telling us to wait, wait and wait, like a waiting game or maybe what. It's been just over a year since the last Canadian plane airlifting people out of Kabul left the tarmac. And so we wanted to take a look at the state of Canada's efforts to bring in 40,000 Afghan refugees and why some refugee applicants and volunteers trying to help them here in Canada

say they'd like more clarity from the government. A little later on in the show, I'll be speaking to a Canadian veteran who's been working on evacuating Afghans from the country. But first, I want you to hear the stories of Bashir and Mohammed, the work they did for the Canadian government and Canadian organizations, and the dangers they now find themselves in because of it. They spoke to our producers Ruxar and Ali. And I'll just note before we dive in here, we're not revealing their last names.

And we've changed Mohammed's voice because both men have serious concerns for their safety under the Taliban regime. So let's start with the basic things. So I worked with the Canadian Special Forces in Greece based in Kandahar province of Afghanistan. And I was an interpreter or translator there from 2005 till 2007. Mohammed's work with the Canadian military in Kandahar came, as you might guess, with a lot of dangers. There was almost times like there was almost continuously every day non-stop suicide bombings on ISAF and

coalition forces and also on American and Canadian forces as Kandahar was like the main responsibility for the Canadian forces. They were given this province. So I was there and the situation was very, yes, like really harsh. He says some of the memories still wake him up at night.

It was one time when I was coming, like after a long time, I was coming home because I'm married. And there were like two guys. It was almost midnight, 12 o'clock. They were like following me or maybe they were hiding from me. They started firing, shooting at me. But luckily, luckily I survived. I survived and I got home. So that was like the most horrific thing which happened to me.

He also says sometimes he got threatening notes in past due, telling him not to work with the coalition forces. So they would just put a note, a paper, like to leave this job or the consequences will be very harsh and not good. But still, like I was working with them because we need work and we wanted to help. Bashir's work was different. He was mainly in and around Kabul, where he worked as a journalist for local Afghan media.

He was also a fixer, an interpreter for foreign reporters, and he worked for many years with CBC journalists and other Canadian media outlets. So when I worked with the Canadian journalist for CBC in Kabul, it was a different team. And those days, Kabul was not safe. Half of Kabul was ruined. And it was dangerous, thefts, robberies, kidnapping.

And I had to take all those risks to work for the Canadian journalists. Bashir also worked for several years for a Canadian NGO that was funded mainly by the Canadian government. That meant working closely with the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs, mainly on gender equality issues. And that eventually led to a high-up job as a policy advisor. Bashir was well aware that the kind of work he was doing, journalism, working with foreign media and NGOs, working for the government on women's empowerment, would raise a lot of eyebrows among the Taliban and their supporters,

who still had a presence in the country, even under the old government. I was well known that this guy worked for the Canadians, or so-called it for infidels. That's what they called it. And even in our neighborhoods where I live in Kabul, I'm well known that I worked for the government in a senior position and also for the foreigners, for Canadians. But at that time, it didn't seem like he had that much to worry about.

Those days, we never thought for a single moment that one day the Taliban will be back. Then, of course, in April 2021, everything changed. Then, of course, in April 2021, everything changed. U.S. President Joe Biden will detail plans today for U.S. troops to pull out of Afghanistan. I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home. The Taliban advance is happening more quickly and more successfully than probably anybody feared it would. They are dragging the dead through the streets as a warning to anyone who gets in their way.

The Taliban are sweeping across Afghanistan, taking control of at this point, was like a time bomb. Just tick-tocking, when will it explode? It got me in so deep depression that sometimes I got so much dark thoughts, dark things. Just wanted to end my life before I get into their hands. Because as you know, they're not only going to kill, they're going to torture, they're going to humiliate, and they're going to... In mid-July, a month before the takeover, Bashir sent an email to his international friends, including the Canadians, asking for help. And the last bit of the email reads, and I am calling on my international friends who can help me with any information or connections to get me out of Afghanistan before it is too late.

Looking forward to hear from you. Some of them contacted their senior contacts. And a Canadian friend of mine, he contacted a member of the parliament to see what he can do. But despite his friend's efforts, no help had come by the time the city was breached. And then the Taliban took over Kabul with a blink of an eye. Taliban fighters have reached the Afghan capital Kabul. Fighters were filmed inside the presidential palace after Ashraf Ghani, now the former president, fled the country. For 20 years, Afghanistan has had stability, democracy and relative safety. It's all ended in a matter of days.

in a matter of days. Mohamed first contacted the Canadian government on August 9, a week before the Taliban reached the city. It was this email I could get to canada-affordnationnetinternational.gc.ca. That was the only one which I could send email. He knew that since he had worked for the Canadian Armed Forces in Kandahar, he should qualify for the Special Immigration Measures Program, a kind of fast-track refugee program that was set up specifically for Afghans who had worked for the Canadian government. waiting for a week and a half or two weeks. If the evacuation was going on, I thought my application was going over there.

It would be processed. I would get a call or an email, but no, then I called there. Eventually, he found a phone number for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, the IRCC. He called and gave them all the details of the application he'd tried to submit by email. We've seen the emails too. He did contact them multiple times. The most recent email was earlier this month. People who are really suffering are stuck in here still. No one even cares about them, not even answering their calls, not even answering their email. Bashir went through an almost identical process. He sent email after email and made call after call.

But each time he'd get the same response. I spoke with the IRCC staff, provided them with my personal information. They checked in the system. provided them with my personal information they checked in the system and i always got one answer which is you're not in the system you're not shown in the system i have been waiting for my application for one year and i have heard nothing so if the canadian government and ircc refuse our application they should let us know so we can decide to do something else to save our life. In that same period last August, other people were also trying to help Bashir. Some of his journalist friends got in touch with the Canadian organization Journalists for Human Rights.

They've been helping to evacuate journalists and fixers from Afghanistan for the past year. So we have been able to develop a pretty strong relationship with IRCC. We were able to successfully evacuate approximately 400 people to various places, including Pakistan and North Macedonia. But it has been challenging to get attention on Bashir's case, and I really do not understand why. He, I think, has a very solid case. He worked for a number of... This is JHR's executive director, Rachel Palfur. So we initially made the case to both the political and the civil service that he was at high risk because he was known to have supported Canadian journalists in Afghanistan. And we made that case repeatedly through the fall and winter.

He was on a number of what I was calling priority lists. The same way that Mohammed and Bashir say they've been wanting more clarity from the Canadian government, Rachel says they've been asking for that too. It's more open, transparent information sharing with government and we're asking for that. We're hopeful that that will come through. We don't know, but we're hopeful. For one thing, she says that initially they were able to help some journalists and fixers who had worked with Canadian media under that same fast track system, the Special Immigration Measures Program. But she says that at some point, and they're not really sure when, that stopped being the case. And so that has been a point of frustration.

Rachel says that at this point, the two possible pathways Bashir has left to get to Canada are both a lot more complicated. I'll spare you the details, but in both cases, he and his family would first have to get to Pakistan and just wait there indefinitely, crossing their fingers that the Canadian government eventually accepts them through one of these two paths, which is obviously pretty risky. It's quite something to uproot your whole family and move to a new country with no guarantee as to whether or not you're going to be accepted by the country you're hoping to go to.

Last month, CBC reported that the Canadian government is no longer taking new referrals for the 18,000 spaces available under the Special Immigration Measures Program. It's unclear whether people who already applied but haven't yet received a response count among those 18,000. In the meantime, though, both Mohammed and Bashir and their families are stuck, hoping for a way out. We are living the most difficult financial time of our life. Both men say they haven't worked in more than a year, not only because of the dire economic situation the country is in right now, but because it's hard for either of them to get a job

without further putting themselves on the Taliban's radar. Mohamed lives in fear every day for what will happen if the Taliban comes for him. Most of the time I'm not even going out. I'm not even going out. I'm sending my 11-year-old son to buy most of the time groceries. sending my 11 year old son to buy most of the time the groceries now i survive on just bread milk or bread and yogurt that's what that's all i can afford right now first i had to sell all of the jewelry which my wife had and then it came to the furniture to the televisions to the even i'm forced to sell my laptop for like a high price because i need to survive i have a family of like three uh me my wife my two daughters and a son

so we have to eat sometimes in my mind like because of the situations and everything which i'm going through sometimes i'm just thinking like it was a mistake for me to work with the coalition forces. So it's just hopeless. Day by day, day by day, it's just getting hopeless and hopeless. We asked the IRCC about both Mohamed and Bashir's cases. But they said they can't comment on individual cases for privacy reasons and that they can't speculate as to whether someone would qualify for the Special Immigration Measures Program. They also noted that so far, Canada has successfully

resettled more than 17,600 Afghans and said that with their goal of resettling 40,000 people by 2024, quote, on a per capita basis, no international partner has committed to welcoming as many Afghan refugees as Canada. Rachel from Journalists for Human Rights, who you heard from earlier, did say this is no small feat considering the safety and logistical complications of getting people out of a country controlled by the Taliban. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples.

All right. So now we want to take a deeper look at what this whole process looks like from the perspective of another person who's trying to get Afghans to Canada. Brian McDonald is a Canadian veteran who served in Afghanistan, and he's the executive director of Aman Lara, a nonprofit founded last year to help Afghan refugees come to Canada. Brian, hi. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a real pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

I wonder if we could start with you telling me what your organization does, Aman Lara. How did you guys get involved in evacuating refugees from Afghanistan? Yeah, well, Aman Lara is the group of veterans, former interpreters, and volunteers. And we came together a year ago. I mean, we could see that Afghanistan was collapsing and the Taliban were taking over. So it became a priority to get interpreters and those who'd helped Canada out of Afghanistan. And since then, we've moved over 3,000 people out of Afghanistan. And we also, when the opportunity presented itself in Ukraine, we said, we've got a skillset that we can use in Ukraine too. And so we've now helped a couple

hundred people out of Ukraine. How exactly do you do that? Specifically, how are you helping get Afghans out of the country? Yeah, so we do work with the government of Canada. The first thing we do is we identify Afghans that are eligible to come to Canada. So they can sign up on our website directly. that are eligible to come to Canada. So they can sign up on our website directly. They go through the Canadian immigration process, the refugee process, and we help them with that. We have people that work with these applicants in their native tongue, if it's pastured dairy.

When they get approved to come to Canada, then we help them come to Canada. So when they have three key pieces, the approval to come to Canada from the government of Canada, a passport from the Taliban, and a visa for a third country, then we move them out of Afghanistan. And generally speaking, we put them into the Canadian immigration system in a third country, usually Pakistan. Then they spend a couple months in Pakistan and then make their way to Canada. And I don't want this to sound like too obvious a question, but why do they have to go to a third country first, specifically, I guess, Pakistan? Why can't they

come to Canada straight from Afghanistan? Yeah, it's not obvious, but Canada now has no diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. So the final checks that are required of any person in the immigration system, that can't be done in Afghanistan because we've got no way to do it there. The government of Canada has no way to do it there. And just to be clear, are you also helping them logistically move from Canada acrossada yeah across the border yeah if they've been accepted for travel then we move them and we move we move them through on you know very low key through kind of locals operating that that have contacts that make it work and then once they're once they're safely across and they're on the pakistan side there's actually a fairly good

government of canada process that we hand them off to. And then another Government of Canada contractor provides interim accommodation and transportation and meals for the time they're in Pakistan. And then ultimately, you know, the Government of Canada provides a flight for them to Canada. The journey across the border, is it fair for me to say that it can be very dangerous and perilous? You know, we keep them on a low profile. I mean, probably the most dangerous part of this for people is to get that Afghan passport. You know, they have to go to a passport office that's ultimately controlled by the Taliban. And they have to say, you know, here I am.

Here's my address. Here's the address of my children, here's our date of birth and our biometrics and we'd like a passport, please, because we want to leave Afghanistan. You know, that puts them in a very dangerous position. That's the first hurdle to get over, which is quite tricky. After that, then we move them from wherever they are in Afghanistan to the border and across the border. And then we do that very low key. You know, we've had great success, but it is a dangerous process. And there's often checkpoints along the way. It's not just the Taliban we have to be worried about.

We have to be worried about ISIS now. So that's a real concern. But we've had great success doing it. And that's because we keep low profile. So you were just mentioning that one of the biggest dangers involved in this is getting an Afghan passport because people will have to get that from the Taliban. And Mohammed, who we heard from earlier in this episode, he'd be an example of this. He says he's afraid to get his wife and kids' passports renewed because that would further put them on the Taliban's radar, like you were saying. And continuing with his case for a moment, he worked as an interpreter for the Canadian Armed Forces in Kandahar. So I would think that he would have qualified under

this special immigration measures program that Canada had set up for Afghans who worked directly with the Canadian government, but he hasn't gotten a response in his case. And how common is that story? Like how commonly are you hearing stories like that? Yeah, I personally receive a couple stories like that a day. You know, there are thousands of those cases out there. We're really happy we've been able to move 3,000. We've got a list of another 3,000 that are in Afghanistan trying to get out. But there's thousands more that haven't made it into the immigration, the Canadian immigration system at all.

And that's the real pressure we have is dealing with those cases. And, you know, my approach through Amin Lara has been, well, let's get the people out that are approved to travel. And then hopefully if we clear that log jam, that will lead to further approvals. I haven't seen any evidence of that, but that's my hope. Just to kind of maybe expand on that, why do you think it is that these Afghans aren't getting responses to their cases from the Canadian government? It's hard for me to diagnose what's going on inside the Department of Immigration

because we have had no visibility into that. We have good meetings with them. We have good discussions, but, but I don't understand why the backlog exists. It could be manpower at the Department of Immigration, I guess. But it's, it's hard for me to explain that. I just know that, you know, we do have a backlog of people that are approved and we want to get them moving. And there's a whole bunch more people behind them that are deserving, you know, and, and so the ask that we've made to the government of Canada is let's keep this program open. You know, the SIM program is how we've been able to help these 3000 people. And the government has indicated that they're going to cap that program. But I

think that program should stay open until everyone who helped Canada has the opportunity to come to Canada. I mean, that's why the program was established, to help people that had helped Canada. And there's no sense in putting a cap on it until we've helped all those people. And just for our listeners, if I'm correct, you're referring to the Special Immigration Measures Program, which we talked about in the first part of the show. And that's a smaller number of the total number of Afghan refugees the government is planning to take in, which I believe is 40,000, right? The number's 40,000. We were told that that was a floor, not a ceiling.

So by that, I mean that would be the minimum that would come to Canada. And, you know, within that 40,000, there's a number of programs, one of which is the special immigration measures, which is designed specifically for the interpreters and others who helped Canada. And that program has been relatively successful. The remaining spots would be for other programs, including the special humanitarian Program, which are kind of normal refugee programs the government of Canada offers to other countries. Those programs require sponsorship, and they're more bureaucratic, again, in my opinion. The SIM, Special Immigration Measure Program, to help those people who have a deep and enduring connection to Canada that worked for Canada in some capacity. In a world of bureaucracy, it's been relatively straightforward and it's been relatively

successful. And we have, you know, we have thousands more people that we think qualify for that program. And we would like to see them come through that program rather than push them into one of these other programs that are even more cumbersome and time consuming and ultimately require sponsorship at levels that we can't afford. And their cap on this, essentially the winding down of the SIM program, the Special Immigration Measures Program, this has been very controversial, right? It has been. And so I urge them to really keep it open.

I don't understand why they want to close it. Like I say, it's been successful relatively speaking, and it's how we've been able to move these people. And I think it's the pathway of least resistance to get these people to Canada. So we want them to keep it open for as long as it takes and for as many people as qualify. Just finally, we've talked about the extreme limitations on who a man, Lara, is even able to help right now, the huge number of people that are reaching out to you for help. I'm wondering what this has been like for you personally to hear these stories day in and day out and to be facing all these hurdles as

you're trying to help people? Well, I'll tell you, I found it personally very challenging and all of our team finds it challenging. I mean, I'm lucky to be the executive director, so I have a degree of separation. I get some, you know, I get a couple of emails a day from people that are just desperate. You know, they are on the cusp of suicide or other desperate situation. I mean, these are these are desperate people. And my team gets even more, you know, we get flooded with it. And, you know, we just have to keep reminding ourselves that we're doing what we can, we're helping who we can, we can't fix all of it. And we have to be proud of, you know, the 3000 that we have helped and hopeful that we can help 1000s more. And we can only do that if we stay focused at the task at hand. But it does

take an incredible emotional toll on the whole team. And so our, our discussions are often very charged, or emotional. I mean, people on my team are still trying to get their family out of out of Afghanistan. I mean, it's it's really an incredible story. And it's true of all veterans. I mean, most veterans in Canada ended up serving in Afghanistan or knew somebody who did. So it's one degree of separation in this community. And we all feel it very deeply. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Take care. for having me on. Take care. This episode was made by producer Ali Janes and Rukzar Ali,

our wonderful intern. Rukzar, we cannot wait to see what you do next. We'd like to thank Canadian Connections and Journalists for Human Rights for helping us get in touch with our two Afghan guests for this episode. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.