Three years after the U.S. withdrawal, former Afghan forces are hunted by the Taliban

The Taliban are still hunting down former Afghan soldiers and police officers, three years after the chaotic American withdrawal. Many of the men, who were trained by U.S. and NATO forces, simply disappear from homes and villages. Others are on the run, or in hiding. Mohammed, a former police officer, is one of them.

In the summer of 2021 he was on his police shift, and heard the Taliban were closing in on the capital. He knew that anyone working in law enforcement was a target. Mohammad told NPR he had worked as a police officer for seven years, after graduating from the police academy. People knew him well.

He didn’t feel safe at home in Kabul, and he fled to Iran alongside hundreds of exiled Afghan law enforcement officers. Mohammad says the Taliban considered them “a force for America,” “traitors, trained by NATO,” and “nonbelievers.”

Life in Iran was equally challenging. Moving from place to place, unable to secure work and stay legally, he was faced with an uncertain future. He says he was told that to stay in Iran legally, he would need to join the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Iran-backed militia group made up, in part, of Afghan refugees. He was a police officer, not a soldier – he didn’t want to fight. The alternative, however, was deportation back to the Taliban, if he was caught illegally in Iran. He weighed his options and slipped back over the border to hide in Afghanistan. He’s been hiding for a year.

Mohammad is one of many former members of law enforcement who’ve been targeted by the Taliban, he and other former law enforcement tell NPR. There were more than 270,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers — trained by American and NATO forces – when the Taliban took over in 2021, according to the Brookings Institution. Many are still being hunted for their affiliation with the West.

Hayatullah served as an Afghan National Army soldier for over a decade. When the Taliban approached his military base in 2021, he pleaded with his commanders to take action. “What the hell is going on here? Let’s do something. Let’s go out and fight against them,” he told them. But the commanders told him not to cause trouble. “You are still a young officer, you don’t know anything. Just calm down,” they told him.

When the Taliban fighters finally entered the base, Hayatullah says, all the soldiers just stood and faced them. There was no fighting. The Taliban told them if they just gave up their weapons, they wouldn’t be hurt. “We won’t kill you for a few days, so, go to your home,” Hayatullah says the Taliban told them.

Hayatullah says he left the base on foot. He walked for days, avoiding the main roads. Eventually he made it home to his village, where he kept a low profile, doing mostly farm work.

But Hayatullah says it wasn’t just weapons and expensive military equipment the Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers left behind. They also left thousands of pages of documents, filled with information. No one destroyed them. “Right now the Taliban use [that] intelligence, those secrets, to target the ANA soldiers and officers,” he says.

The Taliban are also using intimidation as a tactic, sources tell NPR – bribing or threatening local village elders to give up the location of men like Hayatullah. When two police officers disappeared from a neighboring village this summer, Hayatullah says, he knew he was next. The village elders also warned him. “You are not safe here anymore,” he says they told him. He is also hiding in Kabul, where he feels safer, because of the sheer number of residents.

Men like Hayatullah and Mohammad are still at risk. They cannot work legally to support their families. Identifying themselves to any employer would put them in grave danger. They live off loans from their extended family, hoping they’ll be able to repay them one day, if they can find a way to leave Afghanistan.

Resettlement in the United States

Both men tell NPR, they see resettlement as their only way out.

It is possible to get a refugee visa to the United States, but the process is complicated and time consuming. Each application requires a referral from an American military member or an NGO, which for some is impossible to obtain. Still, a small number of Afghans continue to arrive in the United States.

 “The truth is that we’ve welcomed 165,000 Afghans into our communities since August 2021,” says Shawn VanDiver, president and founder of Afghan Evac, which helps Afghan wartime allies in the relocation process. “That’s because this broad cross-section of America came together and has been pushing and pulling the government to do the right thing,” he adds.

A backlog of cases, however, has made processing new cases challenging. Legislation introduced last year aims to tackle many of the roadblocks to resettlement. The bipartisan bill, the Afghan Adjustment Act, was introduced in the Senate in July of 2023. A similar bipartisan bill was introduced in the House.

If passed, the legislation would create a pathway to citizenship for thousands of Afghans already in the United States and open up resources to help in the ongoing efforts to protect Afghans left behind.

The bill has been stalled in Congress for over a year.

VanDiver, a Navy veteran, says taking care of the people who stand with the U.S. military during war is crucial. “We [the U.S. military] follow through on our word,” he said. “And that means we need both the current and the next administration, as well as Congress, to take the actions that are necessary, so that our country can keep its word.”

Bryan Stern, an Army and Navy combat veteran,and Purple Heart recipient, agrees. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan. In 2021, he saw the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and went over, along with several other veterans, to help with the evacuation of Americans and Afghans.

Since then, he has founded Grey Bull Rescue, an organization that has expanded to help with evacuations around the world. He says his motivation stems from his deep gratitude for the Afghan soldiers he worked alongside with. “I am alive today, because of the Afghans, he said. “I gave my word that we’re not going to leave you behind.”

To Stern, leaving Afghan war allies behind isn’t just a moral issue. It also sets a dangerous precedent for future operations. “If that’s how we treat people who we worked with day in and day out for 20 years, what does that say when I want to do that again somewhere else?” he said. “Who would believe me?”