Afghan family spent 2 years hiding from Taliban. How they finally found a home in SLO County

For years, engineer Kawa Barakazai worked side by side with American contractors, building power plants in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The projects brought electricity to people living in remote areas of the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country.

They also made Barakazai and his family targets of the Taliban.

“The Taliban knew where our home was,” Barazaki said. “If they found us there, we would have been killed. ... (That was) the price we’d pay for helping the Americans.”

After more than two years on the run and exhaustive diplomatic efforts led by a San Luis Obispo County resident, Barakazai, his wife Negina and their two children, Ben Yamin and Maryam, have finally escaped to start a new life in the United States.

They arrived Sept. 6 at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were greeted by Cambria resident Mike Reeves and his wife, Linda Giordano.

Now they’re settling into their new home, an 1,000-square-foot apartment on Reeves’ property in Cambria.

“My wife and I are truly blessed to have such a wonderful family coming to live on our farm,” Reeves posted on Nextdoor on Aug. 3.

Engineer worked with U.S. contractors in Afghanistan

For three years, starting in 2009, Kawa Barakazai worked alongside Reeves, Virginia resident Tom Bauhan and other American contractors under the employ of an engineering firm co-owned by his father, Abdul Shakur.

The company contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which put Barakazai and his co-workers in the cross-hairs of Islamic extremists.

“(There’s) so much kidnapping, killing” in Afghanistan due to the Taliban, Barakazai said Sept. 7. “They say we are fine. They are not fine, not good.”

In 2012, the Taliban shot and dismembered Shakur and his business partner, Alfred Geiser of Ohio.

Shakur and Geiser were targeted because they were making turbines for U.S. hydroelectric power projects, Barakazai said.

According to Geiser’s obituary, the men “were credited with bringing electricity to more than 100 rural villages.”

Barakazai and Reeves had just gone down the mountain when those murders happened, they said, or they would have been slaughtered, too.

Soon after the killings, Barakazai and Reeves returned to the area about 300 miles northwest of Kabul to retrieve, wrap and bury what was left of the men.

Neither Barakazai or Reeves ever went back to that job site.

The U.S. shut down the project, Reeves said, and Barakazai was threatened with death by the Taliban if he returned.

So he began working on projects for the Afghanistan government.

Meanwhile, Reeves began working to get Barakazai and his family out of the country before they were killed.

“I faced lots of danger,” Barakazai told The Tribune in February.

Family goes into hiding at home and in Pakistan

When U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Barakazai family went into hiding.

At first, they took refuge in their own home in Kabul. When that became too risky, they moved to a relative’s house.

Negina Barakazai, now 32, described the terror of “hiding, always hiding, not going outside, being so afraid every time (your) husband leaves, every time your child leaves (and) thinking, ‘Don’t go out. It’s not safe.’ ”

The couple’s children couldn’t attend school or play outside their home, Barakazai recalled, and she couldn’t go out to buy food for them.

“They say they want to go outside, and we say ‘No, something might happen,’ ” she said.

Kawa Barakazai couldn’t go back to work, so his family relied on financial support from Reeves and Bauhan as well as family members to survive.

Negina Barakazai’s father even found a way to provide insulin for grandson Ben Yamin.

“The darkest part of my life in all the problems and dangers I was facing for me and my family was my son is diabetic,” Kawa Barakazai, now 40, said.

Five months later, the Barakazais got temporary visitors’ visas to go to Pakistan, their first step toward freedom. First, however, they had to get past the Afghanistan border.

They had to travel by truck, taxi and plane, mostly at night, to evade capture. They arrived in Islamabad after a grueling three-day journey.

After initially hiding out in a hotel, Kawa Barakazai said he and his family found a house to live in.

They stayed in hiding for another year and a half, terrified that they’d be found by the Taliban or that Pakistani authorities would discover their visas had expired and deport them to Afghanistan.

“We had to keep a low profile,” Kawa Barakazai recalled.

Negina Barakazai, who is pregnant with a baby boy, was too frightened to leave the house for prenatal care, she said.

She had just two ultrasounds at a nearby clinic owned by a relative and got advice from an aunt, who is a doctor.

Barakazai said she was “most scared of death,” but that wasn’t the only potential risk.

“If the Taliban (had) found the Barakazai family, they’d all have been killed,” Reeves told The Tribune in 2022. “Or Kawa would have been killed, his wife sold into prostitution, their son brainwashed into the terrorist way of life, and when their young daughter (was) 13, she would be married off to a freedom fighter.”

SLO County man works to get visas for family

After U.S. troops left Afghanistan, Reeves and Bauhan ramped up their efforts to get Kawa Barakazai and his family to safety.

The men spent about five years and thousands of dollars working to secure special immigrant visas for the Barakazais so they’d be freed from the constant threat of assassination or imprisonment.

Afghan Special Immigrant Visas are only available to residents of Afghanistan who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. Government.

The two men hired immigration lawyers, financially supported the Barakazais, took trips to Pakistan to visit them and even spent more than $7,000 on plane tickets for the family.

The Barakazais’ original visa application was denied because nobody was left alive in Afghanistan or Pakistan to testify that Kawa Barakazai had done the work he said he had done.

In 2022, officials finally accepted the sworn statement of Negina Barakazai’s father as proof.

“After years of filling out all documents and waiting, our case came up for review,” Kawa Barakazai said, and on Feb. 24, the Barakazais learned their visa applications had been approved.

After undergoing medical testing and final interviews, the Barakazais learned Aug. 23 that their SIV visas had been issued.

Four days later, they were holding the documents that they’d sought for so long.

That wasn’t the only hurdle they faced.

Because Negina Barakazai is eight months pregnant, her doctor had to clear her for air travel. However, customs officials in Karachi, Pakistan, tried to ignore the doctor’s authorization document.

“They were not good ... not kind,” Kawa Barakazai said “They weren’t going to let us leave. And if we’d stayed, we’d have been killed.”

Around 5 p.m. Sept. 6, after about 32 hours traveling by air from Pakistan to Dubai to the West Coast, the Barakazai family arrived in Los Angeles. They started getting settled in their new Cambria home that night.

Family eager to start new life in Cambria

The Barakazais and their hosts expressed their gratitude for all the people who helped them find freedom in the United States.

“So many people reached out to help,” Reeves said, including representatives for President Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal.

Negina Barakazai had special praise for Reeves, Giordano and Bauhan.

“They are our life angels,” she said. “I don’t have words to thank them enough.”

“Mike Reeves (has helped) me a lot,” Kawa Barakazai told The Tribune in July. “He is a great man, kind and brave. I love him a lot.”

Negina Barakazai said she’s looking forward to enrolling her children in local schools and getting regular medical care, provided by Community Healthcare Clinic of the Central Coast in Cambria.

The Barakazais are also looking forward to playing sports — the children and their father love soccer — as well as exploring the ocean.

Negina Barakazai said she’s especially looking forward to learning how to swim.

Reeves plans to take them fishing off the coast of Morro Bay.

“We are entering a new life, safe from danger,” Negina Barakazai said.

Ben Yamin Barakazai, now 12, wants to become an engineer, he said, while his 8-year-old sister wants to become a doctor.

After she gives birth to her second son, who’s due in October, Negina Barakazai wants to return to school so she can complete a degree in accounting and business management.

Kawa Barakazai hopes to find work soon as an engineer, welder, lathe operator, machinist or in another related field.

As soon as they can legally, the Barakazais said, they’ll apply to become U.S. citizens.

“When we got to Los Angeles, I told my wife, ‘It’s really going to be alright, we’re in America now,’ ” Barakazai said, with emotion in his voice. “When the officer stamped our passports and said, ‘You are now Americans,’ and (shook) my hand, my hand was shaking. I was very happy.”

“Thank you so much for everything,” his beaming wife added. “How can I thank them, our life angels? (There are) not any words for that. Now I know my family is safe.”