WASHINGTON: As the last US troops prepared to leave Afghanistan, Hussain, a US passport holder who worked with the US military, scrambled with his six daughters through Taliban checkpoints to the gates of Kabul airport for several days in a row, hoping to catch a flight to safety.
He had called and emailed the US Embassy for days without a response. Then a US soldier phoned him to say his only chance for a flight out was alone, without his daughters who are not US citizens. Hussain’s wife had died in July of Covid-19, and leaving would mean abandoning them.
On Monday night, the family stood in the throngs outside Kabul airport, listening to the roar of the final US C-17 aircraft taking off, ending America’s two decade-long military intervention in Afghanistan.
