”James är borta” – jakten på en försvunnen son i resterna av Afghanistan

Precis som tusentals andra familjer kom de ifrån varandra i förvirringen på Kabuls flygplats förra sommaren, när USA lämnade Afghanistan. Wall Street Journal tecknar ett porträtt av de där kaotiska augustidagarna genom att följa Mohammad, hans familj och deras kamp för att få återse åttaårige James. På vägen ställs Mohammad inför flera svåra val. Ska han lämna familjen, sin fru och deras nyfödda bebis för att riskera att bli fast i kaosets Kabul? I dag vet Mohammad var James befinner sig, men han vet inte om han någonsin kommer att kunna hålla om sin son igen. James was separated from his family in the mob pushing to enter the Kabul airport before the Taliban takeover last summer By Jessica Donati 16 Aprile, 2022 ABU DHABI—On their last night together, James, 8 years old, slept in a car outside the Kabul airport with his father, mother and baby brother. In the morning, the family joined an anxious, clamoring crowd massed at the airport gate. It was late August, and the last flights were ferrying escapees from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Two days earlier, a suicide bomber had killed some 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at the airport entrance. Mohammad, a 56-year-old American, carried James’s baby brother, who was just days old. His wife, Bibi, still weak and in pain from her delivery, held James’s hand. As the gate opened, the crowd drove forward in a mad dash. Gunfire sounded. Mohammad made it through. Bibi struggled to keep up, lost hold of her little boy’s hand, and James was swept away in the swarm of bodies. Inside the airport gate, Mohammad turned back to look for his wife. “I lost James,” she said. They screamed his name but couldn’t see their son in the crowd. Mohammad asked the American soldiers stationed there if he could go back out to look. They said he wouldn’t be allowed back through the gate. “I worked with you people,” pleaded Mohammad, who trained as a psychologist. For years he had been an adviser to Marines in Afghanistan and wanted to return to California. This is when Mohammad faced an impossible decision. His wife was recovering from a cesarean section and spoke no English. If he stayed behind, he feared what would happen to her and the baby on what would be a difficult, uncertain journey. Yet if he joined them on the flight, he would abandon James to a city overrun by insurgents. He gave a description of James to the soldiers who promised to look for the boy. “On one side I was thinking about James, and, on the other side, the very small baby,” said Mohammad. The Wall Street Journal agreed to use only first names for him and his family. Once he reached the runway tarmac, Mohammad tried phoning James. U.S. soldiers, on edge after the recent bombing, ordered him to put away his cellphone. “If you take your phone out again, I will break it,” he recalled a soldier saying. Mohammad tried to stall for time, but soldiers said the idling military plane was a last chance to flee. He boarded. There were no seats inside the crowded C-17 transport plane. Most of the passengers had to stand. Some cleared a space for Bibi to sit on the floor with the infant tucked in a travel crib. She sobbed in pain, and for James. The plane took off but no one on board knew where they would land. Outside the airport, James sat on a curb, holding a plastic bag with his Afghanistan passport and a cellphone. He was among thousands of children and parents separated in the chaotic evacuation of Kabul. Some families got lucky and were reunited at military bases abroad. Many more are trapped in separate countries, awaiting help from the State Department, which is overwhelmed by the flood of refugees seeking entry into the U.S. The Biden administration plans to accept as many as 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing another war, and many of them will run into the immigration bottleneck created by the collapse of Afghanistan and the journey of people like Mohammad and his family. When James realized he had truly lost his parents, he cried. His family’s life had been comfortable. They lived in a house with a big living room and kitchen. His mother, Bibi, cooked rice dishes and kebabs. She was studying medicine and hoped to become a dentist and treat women, who in Afghanistan are often denied medical services performed by men. The family had no plans to leave Kabul. James’s father, Mohammad, ran a nonprofit that he had set up in the 1990s to help Afghans overcome opiate addiction. He continued to direct it after moving to the Bay Area in 1999 for an arranged marriage with an American woman of Afghan descent. After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, he also worked as an adviser to the Marines in California and Afghanistan. He gained U.S. citizenship 16 years ago. After his first marriage failed, Mohammad started a second family with Bibi in Kabul. James was born with the same blue eyes and aquiline features as his mother. He was named Sayed but got his nickname from the James Bond movies he loved. His brother, Sultan, was born on his eighth birthday. Kabul fell three days later. Taliban fighters showed up at the family’s house looking for an American named James. Mohammad brought his son to the door. “He is just 8 years old,” he told them. “There has been a mistake.” That was when he decided the family had to leave. Days later, the U.S. Embassy sent a message telling American citizens to head to the airport. Mohammad and his wife packed food and diapers, locked the door to their house, headed to the airport and left. Outside the Kabul airport, where James sat lost and alone, an Afghan man passed with his nephew, who was trying, without success, to get a seat on an evacuation flight headed to Kyrgyzstan. The man and his nephew stopped. “I found a little boy crying in a corner because he couldn’t find his family,” the man said, “I couldn’t just leave him there.” The man decided to bring James home. On the way there, he and his nephew tried the numbers programmed into James’s phone. No one answered. Mohammad’s phone was dead. On the family’s flight from Kabul, a female U.S. soldier brought over water for the baby, who was dehydrated. An announcement informed passengers their destination was a U.S. military base in Bahrain. After landing, Mohammad charged his phone but couldn’t get Wi-Fi service. Bibi was anguished and couldn’t breast-feed. Mohammad got powdered milk and set out to find an official who could help him find James. American soldiers wrote down James’s name and promised to see what they could do. The base was already crowded with thousands of newly arrived refugees trying to make contact with loved ones. Mohammad and others found their Afghan SIM cards didn’t work outside Afghanistan. Three days later, Mohammad, Bibi and the baby boarded a flight to Washington and then to Fort McCoy Army base in Wisconsin. It was better organized than the temporary quarters in Bahrain but overcrowded. The only area with Wi-Fi filled with hundreds of people trying to reach friends and family. On the second day of trying, Mohammad got an internet connection. Dozens of days-old messages popped up from James. Almost a week after leaving his boy in Kabul, Mohammad learned James had been rescued. He called right away. “Mommy…Daddy,” was all his son could say through his tears. Mohammad cried, too. “Talk to your mom, tell her you’re OK,” he told James. Bibi sobbed when she heard her son’s voice. Later, she ate her first meal since leaving Kabul. Mohammad was afraid to let friends in Kabul know that James was still there. He had heard stories of armed groups kidnapping and torturing children to extort their parents. He tried to reach relatives in Kabul, but his calls went unanswered. Family members had fled to Badakhshan, a province on the northernmost tip of Afghanistan, a finger of mountainous land that extended into China with little internet service. They finally reached Bibi’s sister, but no one had heard from Bibi’s brother Sayed, the one person they hoped could retrieve James. At Fort McCoy, Mohammad pressed U.S. immigration officials and other entities at the base, including the International Rescue Committee, about how he could return to Afghanistan to get James. He learned that he faced the same dilemma he experienced the first time around in Kabul. If he left, he wouldn’t be allowed to return. Mohammad wrote to lawmakers in California, where he had once lived, and tried to contact the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which by then had closed. His frustration was shared among thousands of families separated during the evacuation of more than 100,000 Afghans from Kabul last summer. More than 1,500 Afghan children arrived in the U.S. without a parent, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Federal data show that about 60 children have been reunited with a mother or father, and one in five remain in government care. The majority have been placed with relatives and family friends. An unknown number of children, like James, were stranded in Afghanistan. After a pause in flights this winter, the State Department is again trying to evacuate parents in Afghanistan whose children traveled to the U.S. without them, a spokesman said. The resumption of flights has allowed a number of parents to join their children, he said. Mohammad learned from another evacuee at Fort Pickett about Task Force Argo, a volunteer group made up of American veterans and current and former government employees. It was still chartering evacuation flights out of Afghanistan but wasn’t taking new requests. Mohammad left several messages, saying an American’s child was trapped in Afghanistan, and the U.S. government couldn’t help. The group, which was arranging flights out of Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in Afghanistan’s north, agreed to take the case. “America needs to step back up to the plate and demonstrate that we don’t abandon allies or children of American citizens,” said Jesse Jensen, a co-founder of Task Force Argo. “If the U.S. government won’t do that, we will.” Mohammad kept trying to reach Bibi’s brother, Sayed, who had been studying international relations in Kabul and worked at Mohammad’s nonprofit. After Kabul fell, Sayed left for a remote part of Badakhshan. He worried about family members, who had scattered, but struggled to make contact. A local friend offered to guide him to a spot atop a nearby mountain where he could get reception. They began their trek the next day. Once they reached the peak, Sayed’s phone pinged with about 30 notifications of messages from Bibi. “WHERE ARE YOU!” By chance, the phone rang soon after Sayed connected to the internet. “When I answered, my sister was crying,” he said. He learned that James was still in Kabul, and he promised to return for the boy. As Sayed headed out the next morning, he saw a Taliban fighter throw stones at women for shopping without a male chaperone. “Seeing that scene,” he said, “the 1% of hope that I had for the country was destroyed.” Sayed took an overnight bus to Kabul, fearing that travel by car was too risky because of robbers and Taliban checkpoints. He let his beard grow and wore traditional Afghan garb to keep from being noticed. In Kabul, he went to an aunt’s house and messaged Mohammad for instructions. The next day, Sayed reached the man caring for James, and they arranged to meet at the man’s house in an affluent part of the city. The man stayed on the phone, giving street-by-street directions until Sayed arrived. “I am wearing a black shalwar kameez and white blanket,” Sayed said. “And a long beard.” Sayed arrived and stood outside the building under a tree. He looked up and saw someone watching from a balcony. “Are you the man under the tree?” the man asked over the phone. “Yes,” Sayed said. The man brought James outside. Sayed cried and hugged the boy, but his nephew was stiff and silent. Sayed took his nephew to their aunt’s house. That night they boarded a bus for Mazar-e-Sharif, where Task Force Argo’s charter flight would leave. During the trip, the bus was stopped at several Taliban checkpoints but was allowed to pass after brief searches. The Taliban later showed up at the man’s house in Kabul, asking about the son of an American. They searched but found nothing. After they returned a second time, the man moved his wife and two young children into hiding. His wife suffered a stroke, the man said, which he attributed to stress. The man had worked for various U.S. organizations until 2011, he said, and stopped when his wife was threatened by militants over his work. He recently applied for a refugee program through a U.S.-based nonprofit but hasn’t heard back. Sayed and his nephew stayed four nights at a hotel while waiting for their flight. James had nightmares. “Where is my mom, where are they taking me?” he shouted out in his sleep, Sayed recalled. During the second week of October, they boarded one of the last evacuation flights out of Afghanistan and landed in the United Arab Emirates. U.A.E. was among the allies that responded to a U.S. call for help with evacuations. The Gulf state became a landing spot for military and charter flights, helping more than 40,000 people from Afghanistan. About 9,000 Afghans are still held in a secure compound known as “Emirates Humanitarian City” waiting for their cases to be processed. That includes James and his uncle. They have tried to make the best of their stay. There is a playground, a hospital, a mosque and a beauty salon. Meals are delivered in cardboard boxes. They are safe, but life isn’t easy. Movement around the compound is restricted, and residents often are confined to their rooms to contain the spread of Covid-19. The U.S. Embassy has an office for interviews, but it is slow going. Thousands of people have yet to start their immigration process. The State Department says many won’t be eligible to reach the U.S. after all. They will have to find another country. Refugees have organized protests. In January, James and Sayed got wristbands, which they believe means they have been cleared for travel. James has fewer nightmares and has made friends. During lockdowns, he and other children play soccer in the halls. He talks with his parents every day. Mohammad and Bibi recently left Fort McCoy and moved into a room with a kitchenette at a roadside motel outside Sacramento, Calif. Their neighbors there include other Afghan refugees. They send James videos of life in America—the local Walmart, the motel pool, snippets of mixed-martial arts matches on TV. On a recent day, Mohammad answered a call from James and pantomimed a bear hug. “How are you, my boy,” he said in Dari. They talked about what James had studied that day. For dinner, the boy had a traditional Afghan pudding called shir birinj, which means “milk rice.” Your mom has prepared it for our guests, Mohammad told his son, gesturing to two visitors. Mohammad said he was losing hope that James would soon reach the U.S. Maybe they could all live in India, he said. The family sold one of their two apartments in Kabul, but the money has been frozen in Afghan bank accounts. He and Bibi argue over what to do next. He said doctors at Fort McCoy prescribed his wife antidepressants, but he had her quit them, fearing addiction. “My wife is asking, ‘Why did you bring me here?’ ” he said. After the phone call, Mohammad and Bibi watched an old video of James wrestling his father. Bibi bounced baby Sultan on her lap. As she watched, her tears fell and so did her husband’s.