Afghan Allies Pay for Chance at US Asylum, but It’s Easier for Ukrainians

While the two parole programs look similar on the surface, they were not created equally

A U.S. soldier points his gun at an Afghan passenger at Kabul airport on Aug. 16, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

On a sun-bleached day in mid-August 2021, thousands of Afghan men, women and children swarmed Kabul International Airport in a mass, scaling barbed-wire fences, desperate to board any flight that would take them out of the country — and away from the terror that they were sure would come to their lives under the Taliban. There was even a violent skirmish among Afghan Air Force personnel on the day of the airlift.

The men in that clash, who tried to claw their way onto a bug-like U.S. helicopter, were just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who had worked for the U.S. military or U.S.-backed media in its 20-year war with the Taliban. Most of these now-vulnerable men and women quickly went into hiding, fearing for their lives. That’s what one man, whom we’ll call Ahmad, did. (He asked not to have his real name used for fear of retribution.)