Afghan judge who fled to Tucson after Taliban takeover is reunited with family

Ahmad Wakili, an Afghan judge who was separated from his wife and daughter after the Taliban reclaimed the country last August, has been reunited with his family a year and a half after he last saw them.

His wife, Nilofar, and 2-year old daughter, Kawsar, arrived in Tucson on Sunday. They flew from Istanbul to San Francisco, then finally to Phoenix. They were two among hundreds, out of tens of thousands who applied, who received humanitarian parole.

The Arizona Republic profiled Wakili in March. He had worked as a peer judge at a detention center connected to the U.S. Bagram Air Base, helping sentence members of the Taliban, ISIS and other terrorist groups.

As a peer judge, he was the most junior member of a team of three judges, per Afghanistan law, and his work put him in close contact with those he sentenced. The base was run by the U.S. military, but the judges were Afghan, he said.

Once, a member of the Taliban asked him to release someone who was imprisoned. When Wakili refused, the man told him he was “playing with his life.”

Later that year, the Taliban would plant a bomb in his car, putting him in a coma for more than 22 days. When he returned home from the hospital, he found that the Taliban had threatened his family. It was then that he decided to send Nilofar, who was pregnant at the time, to Turkey. 

He continued to work as a judge in Afghanistan despite the risks. Last year, he was shot in the abdomen as he got out of the car to buy his mother medicine, and he lost a kidney. Soon after he left the hospital, he bought a ticket to Istanbul to see his wife and daughter.

But days before his flight, the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan from the U.S.-backed government and freed all the prisoners from the Bagram Air Base, some of whom Ahmad had helped to sentence.

Wakili was one of the lucky few who managed to secure a U.S. military plane ride out of the country. He tried to travel to Turkey, but because he didn’t have a visa, the military took him to Qatar and then eventually to the U.S. after vetting. His wife and daughter remained in Istanbul.

Refugees in Tucson: A judge fled the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now he waits to be reunited with his family

Tucson City Councilmember Steve Kozachik learned of Ahmad’s story and relentlessly contacted government officials to reunite the family. He lobbied members of Congress and the U.S. State Department over the past eight months.

“It's hard to really describe how touched (I have been) by the whole process, meeting the family, now seeing them back together today,” he said this week.

Kozachik said it shouldn’t have taken months of advocacy to reunite Ahmad with his family and has criticized the U.S. State Department.

The system is “so broken,” he said. “If I was sitting here right now with (Rep.) Raúl Grijalva or with (Sen.) Kyrsten Sinema and they said, ‘Tell me how the system is broken,’ I wouldn’t know where to start.”

No one from the State Department who was in direct contact with Ahmad's family would talk to him: "They're unapproachable, they're inaccessible and they’re very impersonal,” he said.

Kozachik spoke with an intergovernmental liaison from the department, but none of the members overseas who were in direct contact with Nilofar, he said. “If any of them had been willing to pick up the phone … I firmly believe we would have been able to work this out sooner.”

Ahmad credits his wife and daughter’s arrival to Kozachik’s advocacy. He said he’s happy that his daughter and his wife, who he calls his best friend, have arrived.

Ahmad wears two rings: on his right hand, a silver wedding band; on his left, an emerald ring his wife gifted him.

He met Nilofar several times at different parties, weddings and Eid events. Ahmad asked his mom to see if Nilofar's family would be interested in a marriage, as is traditional custom. Nilofar and her parents agreed, and the couple were married about a year later.

Ahmad and Nilofar's daughter was born in Turkey and they named her Kawsar, a name Ahmad had long admired, after a chapter in the Qur’an. He beams with pride when he describes her playfulness and curly hair.

Kozachik said concerned community members can advocate for asylum reform and increased transparency from the federal government. They can also help refugees within their community.

“Realize that refugees, whether it's Afghan, or you know, pick your country, they're in your community,” he said. “They need employment, they need housing, they need to learn the language, they need to acculturate.”

Zayna Syed is a reporter for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Follow her reporting on Twitter at @zaynasyed_ and send tips or other information about stories to zayna.syed@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Afghan judge who fled the Taliban for Tucson is reunited with family