Desperate and defeated, Naqibullah Laghmanai was calling everyone he could think of Monday morning in Houston, trying to get his family out of Afghanistan. He was on hold with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for at least the 10th time in recent weeks, he said. He was crafting a plea to the Canadian Embassy, though his family never worked for the Canadians. He was calling members of Congress.
On Monday, after the Taliban took Kabul, Taliban fighters searched his aunt and uncle’s home, looking for the men of the family, his mother told him.
“Their only hope is on me to get them out and I can’t,” Mr. Laghmanai, 31, said of his parents and siblings.
Mr. Laghmanai, who worked as an interpreter for U.S. armed forces starting in 2007 in Kandahar, joins other Afghans currently living in America who have spent the past 48 hours feverishly trying to save their family members who are left behind.
On Sunday, the Taliban nearly completed its takeover of the country when it conquered Kabul, the country’s capital. The U.S. military took control of the Hamid Karzai International airport Sunday and suspended all flights until security could be restored, officials said. Desperate Afghans have converged on the airport trying to find a way to escape.
