For thirteen years, the Canadian Armed Forces fought the Taliban in Afghanistan alongside the USA and other countries, but a critical piece of Canada’s involvement were thousands of Afghan interpreters who helped coalition forces.
But now the lives of those interpreters and their entire families are at risk because the Taliban is in power and looking for retribution.
“Almost like nine months ago the Taliban killed my father. He had left the market and they rode up on motorcycles and they shot him,” said one former interpreter speaking to CHEK News on the condition of anonymity.
The man helped Canadian and U.S. forces for a decade. He and his immediate family were accepted as refugees into the U.S., but that country won’t take the rest of his family.
Now, he desperately hopes Canada will fulfill a commitment to take 40,000 Afghan refugees, otherwise he says they are at constant risk of being hunted down by the Taliban.
“They will kill my brother and my family and they will make different problems for us,” the man added.
That’s where Campbell River’s Michelle Downey comes in. She met the man through a friend in Calgary who has worked to get other refugees out of the country.
Downey has secured sponsorship for nine of 17 family members the man needs to get out of Afghanistan, but they remain there in constant danger.
“They’re backlogged, they’re actually processing last year’s applicants so if you think of all these families that are in danger or in refugee camps or in Afghanistan they are sitting there at the mercy of IRCC right now,” Downey said.
The IRCC, or Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, is taking almost daily heat in the House of Commons.
“Will this immigration minister put aside their partisan rhetoric and get vulnerable Afghans to Canada now?” asked Frank Caputo, MP for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo in a recent Question Period.
“We are committed to 40,000 and we will bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada, Mr. Speaker,” replied Marie-France Lalonde, Parliamentary Secretary for the minister of immigration.
Only 31 per cent have arrived in Canada so far.
“I was shot in my hand by the Taliban and I was shot in my leg,” added the former Afghan interpreter who now works seven days a week to support his family with him in California and those still in Afghanistan. “I miss my family.”
In the meantime Michelle Downey also needs to raise another $45,000 to get those nine family members to Campbell River when the IRCC does give the green light.
She can be reached at [email protected]
Dean Stoltz
