SIV applicant in Afghanistan details harrowing Kabul airport experience
A Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicant who worked as a translator for the U.S. Embassy for nearly four years has tried twice to evacuate Afghanistan with his wife and three young children. He told Yahoo News about his intense experience with trying to get to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
Video Transcript
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- My name is Same. I am an SIV applicant and I applied for SIV on June 9 and waited for seven weeks but didn't got any email back from US embassy. So I resent it back on July 27 and I'm still waiting for my case number. On August 19, I received an email from US embassy, which was an instruction how to get to the airport.
So on 19 August, I and my family leave the house to the airport. We reached to the airport. There were lots of crowds, very rushed. So we wait next to the airport over the night. And by tomorrow, August 20, the gate was opened at 6 o'clock in the morning. We entered the airport.
And so we pass three gates of the Taliban. There was lots of rush and crowds where the Taliban was firing to separate the people. And I was with my daughter. She is 6, and my other daughter, she is 9. And my boy, he is 8 months.
I was carrying my six-year-old daughter on my shoulder, and my boy was carried by her mom. When we reached to the third gate of the Taliban, we were very close. And they shot the gunfire, which was very close to the hair of my children. And they were very scared, crying. We were in a very bad situation. And then we got out of the airport and came home.
On 22 August, US embassy made another announcement. And they instructed all the American citizens, lawful residents and immigrants, and those people who work withe the United States government who has received the instruction email to go to the airport.
On the 22nd, we start to walk to the airport at 10 o'clock. When we reached there, it was 11. And we make some place to reach through the gate. American soldiers were there. So they were there. Just we reached there and they said to sit on the ground.
We sit on the ground. And because of lots of crowd, we don't have very much space. So we sit there over the night. And by 7 o'clock morning, today, they opened. They came and said that we are going to verify the documents.
Then we enter today, through the gate. So I was in the first line. First, I give them my documents. And next to me was my friend. He also gave them the documents. And they saw the documents and said that, yeah, it's OK. You can wait here. We will verify some others. And then we will let you enter the gate.
They were going to verify the 10 to 20 people. Then the people was-- the people start pushing, pushing, pushing. So the US Army officer left behind the gate. And then the pushing was started. We passed a lot of difficult time.
And there was, like, more than near to 3,000 people behind a gate. They all are pushing. And the weather was very hot. So it was very hard for my family, especially my kids and their mother. They can't breathe. There was no water.
And just-- there was one thing that I don't know why the United States Army didn't did any action. They were just there watching people die. So it was still one hour of this pushing, then they fired some tear gas on the crowd. And then suddenly I saw that now I can leave. So I took my family and children and left the airport.
