What happened to my country?
An Afghan American's heartache
Three years ago, our Republic crumbled as the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, plunging our nation into darkness. Just two weeks before Kabul fell, I left home for what was supposed to be a brief visit to my friend and brother, Seyar Atmar, in Florida. While I found myself in safety, my entire family remained in Afghanistan—my fiancée, younger brother, mother, and sisters. The thought of them trapped under a brutal regime was unbearable. My friend and I spent countless hours glued to our computers and phones, frantically trying to understand the chaos and find a way to bring them to safety.
Thanks to my brother, Jake, my younger brother managed to get to safety, but my wife, mother, and sisters remained stranded in a country that had turned hostile overnight. Sleepless nights became my new normal. I would pace around my friend's apartment, my heart heavy with fear and guilt, clinging to phone calls that offered little comfort. A haunting song played on repeat during those dark hours, the singer’s lament of becoming homeless and a refugee resonating deeply with my sorrow and longing for my homeland.
A week later, I moved to Washington, D.C., throwing myself into efforts to evacuate our allies. But no matter how hard I tried; the guilt was overwhelming. I couldn’t get my wife, mother, or sisters to safety. I even tried to return to Afghanistan through Pakistan, but I couldn’t secure a visa. The helplessness was gut-wrenching. After the U.S. concluded lost its war, the situation only worsened. Revenge killings began, and thousands of former Republic personnel disappeared. I reached out to a State Department official at Kabul airport, desperately pleading for help to evacuate my family. But I was told they weren’t a priority because they didn’t have American passports. Despite being a U.S. citizen and a former military linguist, my pleas fell on deaf ears. The sense of abandonment was crushing. I won’t identify him, but this same official testified before Congress recently, shifting blame onto others. I believe he was able to help but either chose not to or lacked the courage to act.
These experiences plunged me into severe depression. I couldn’t work, sleep, or eat. In Dubai, I forced myself to go to into the office each day, afraid of the thoughts that haunted me when I was alone. I had always believed that as an Afghan, I was resilient, but the events of August 2021 broke me. One day, during a work-related conversation with my manager, Jad, I finally broke down in tears.
That moment led me to seek psychiatric help, and gradually, I began to recover. Eventually, I was able to evacuate my mother and wife to Qatar, where they spent months in a refugee camp under deplorable conditions before finally reaching the U.S. But my sisters remain in Afghanistan, living in fear, moving from house to house to avoid capture. Their daughters, Sara and Hadia, who should be in the 9th grade, were forced to abandon their education when the Taliban banned girls from attending school beyond the 6th grade. Sara once dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but those dreams were shattered when the U.S. and NATO abandoned Afghanistan.
Under Taliban rule, women and girls are denied the most basic human rights. Girls are banned from universities and workplaces, and families are forced to marry off their daughters to Taliban members out of sheer economic desperation. A recent decree even bans women’s voices from being heard in public. The world’s silence in the face of this cruelty is deafening. The Taliban, responsible for countless atrocities, are now being celebrated by some. Their propaganda is metastasizing. Afghanistan has become a breeding ground for terrorists, a dire warning to the world. If we remain indifferent, they will strike again. I beg you—don’t forget Afghanistan. Don’t forget the girls whose dreams have been stolen by this regime of terror.
August is a difficult month for most Afghans and Afghan war veterans. Over the past two years, I’ve listened to the stories of my brothers from the fall of Kabul. I read Elliot Ackerman’s book, The Fifth Act, which captures the chaos and desperation of those two weeks when we were evacuating our allies.
We will defeat the Taliban and reclaim what is ours. They are not invincible. On August 15th, I attended an Afghan event where I met tens of Afghan war veterans. Each one was committed to defeating the Taliban. It’s not a question of if but when.
It’s time to liberate Afghanistan and free my sisters!
Hamid Mohammad arrived to the United States via the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program. After he became an American citizen, he graduated from American University. He’s currently works at Amazon. Rumor has it that he was GCV’s Pashto teacher.