WARMINGTON Ahmad and family just steps from freedom when Canada ignored pleas

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My interpreter Ahmad, his wife and three young children, were not just 10 feet from Kabul airport’s Hell Gate that would take them to a Canadian Armed Forces flight to save their lives but actually spoke to Canadian soldiers about their plight.

Still, they were turned away.

It was a devastating blow to this man who had four other failed instances where he was hoping to be rescued with his family. But this one was crushing because those assisting him actually got him in front of Canadians who should have been in a position to pull them out of the sewer and into freedom.

Instead, his hopes were dashed as his children suffered in the 35C blistering sun.

If you read my colleague Bryan Passifiume’s gripping accounts of people in sewage being ignored by Canadian military personnel, this may not surprise you. It did surprise Ahmad, who holds Canadian troops in the highest esteem and has for years risked his life to help them. This time it was their turn to help him and they turned away from him and his family.

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So many past and present soldiers have reached out to me to say it would not have been their decision. It won’t console Ahmad, who almost lost his youngest due to lack of water.

“I don’t know why but I can’t get anybody to listen to me at these gates,” said Ahmad, who I met in Afghanistan in 2011 after he had worked with iconic Christie Blatchford and Matthew Fisher.

None of it has helped him.

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“We don’t understand. We have been vetted and given clearance to go,” he said.

All of this happened just hours before federal minister Maryam Monsef used the term “brothers” to address the Taliban. Many people have been cancelled for far less damning spoken words but whatever happens, it was a dagger to the heart of people like Ahmad who face execution by the Taliban.

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