An updated personal story about the American botched exit from Afghanistan

Maine Writer prequel- I was a witness to the American evacuation of refugees in 1975, out of Saigon when the war effort in that nation collapsed. As a Navy wife living in Subic Bay in the Philippines, I participated in the humanitarian efforts to provide many thousands of refugees a passage to safety. Although the historic parallels between Saigon and Kabul, in Afghanistan, are like historic dejavu, the fact is, Vietnam is prospering today. Compare that to the regressive issues thrown at the Afghan people as a result of America's abandonment.  An excellent opinion essay, about America's botched exit from Afghanistan, published in the Idaho Statesman newspaper, by Bob Kustra:  The fall of Kabul was a strategic failure, but individuals showed heroism | Opinion

That old line from the writer Mark Twain — “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme” IOW, similar events will essentially recycle. This cliché comes to mind when comparing the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021 to the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese in 1975. Few expected Saigon to fall as quickly as it did, and those iconic photos of South Vietnamese holding on to transport helicopters as they left Vietnam are reminiscent of Afghans hanging on to transport airplanes and falling to their deaths as the plane left the runway. Historians can parse the differences between the two moments in history, but there is little doubt in the case of the Afghanistan withdrawal that America’s image suffered across the globe as the Taliban declared victory over the overwhelming power and authority of the U.S.

The tricolor flag of the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which remains in use internationally and by resistance movements against the Taliban inside Afghanistan.

There’s plenty of blame to go around regarding how things turned out. The Afghan government folded. Worse, its president fled the country and left behind the chaos and violence that ensued, but that is hardly a sufficient explanation of what went wrong with American foreign policy. 

The incredible true story of a breathtaking rescue in the frenzied final hours of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan—and how a brave Afghan mother and a compassionate American officer engineered a daring escape.

President Trump’s (wrongminded❗) decision to forsake our allies across the globe played out in favor of the Taliban in Afghanistan. General Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command at the time, testified before Congress that Trump’s 2020, promise of a complete withdrawal of American troops by May 2021, had a pernicious effect on the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces.

According to McKenzie, the troop reduction ordered later by President Biden prevented the US military from assessing the conditions inside the Afghan army “because our advisers were no longer down attached to those units.” Biden’s own Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, agreed with that assessment.

They say that journalists write the first draft of history, and that is not good news either for the Trump or Biden Administration and the U.S. military’s handling of the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan. The pronouncements of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that the U.S. embassy evacuation was a routine step in a long-planned withdrawal done in an orderly manner just didn’t square with what the media reported as patently obvious to anyone on the ground. Thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban overwhelmed security forces at the Kabul airport as they attempted to board planes to safety and new lives. But there is good news from one journalist who has a history of capturing riveting moments in history. Mitchell Zuckoff, now a professor of journalism at Boston University, but once a member of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team, the award-winning special reporting unit for investigative and accountability journalism, discovered a tale of heroism and courage in the U.S. withdrawal of Afghanistan that shifts the focus from the officials at the top to a cast of characters whose lives and careers were impacted by decisions over which they had no control or input. It’s a tale about those last few days in Kabul when Americans attempted to rescue Afghans from the deadly grip of the Taliban.

Contrasting the image of a confused and disorganized American effort, “The Secret Gate” follows the life and career of Sam Aronson, a junior diplomatic officer, who volunteers for Afghanistan to help process the Afghans escaping to the West. Alternating chapters covering Aronson’s and an Afghan’s last few days during the withdrawal, building to a thrilling conclusion as Aronson courageously invents a dangerous plan of action at one of the least known gates at the Kabul airport where he can more quickly move people to safety. It also skirts the rules his diplomatic credentials require, endangers his own life and violates promises to his wife to stay out of harm’s way. One of those Aronson brings to safety is Afghan author, Homeira Qaderi, who braved the Taliban and wrote a book called “Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son.” She emerged as an advocate for women’s rights in a country slowly overtaken by a religious autocracy. A report by the UN Human Rights Council called its treatment of women “gender persecution,” systematically restricting the human rights of women and girls and suffocating all aspects of their lives. There was little doubt Homeira would be executed by the Taliban if she stayed in Kabul.

Homeira must wrestle with the conflicting loyalties of family and motherhood, knowing full well that fleeing Afghanistan to save herself and her son from the Taliban may in fact mean she will never see her family again. News reports about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan can never capture the life-and-death decisions people on the ground make regarding their own lives and the lives of their families. Zuckoff succeeds in helping readers who enjoy the comfort and security of their own lives comprehend what it must be like for a father and mother to encourage their daughter to leave home and family to avoid death by the Taliban and give her son, Siawash, the opportunity to live beyond the reach of the Taliban. Aronson’s story reminds us there are young Americans today, not just those who serve in the military, but in this case the diplomatic corps, who put their lives on the line, volunteering for posts across the globe where violence and mayhem are the order of the day. (His wife, Liana Cramer, served on the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Mali during this same period.) It’s an American story of which we can all be proud, young people willing to represent America in foreign lands not always the safest places, but places where Americans can serve as models for democracy and freedoms too often denied in hotspots around the globe.

For Aronson, the calculus was simple. We must rescue those who have helped us over those years in Afghanistan as interpreters and security personnel. But there were rules on who could qualify for the flights out of the country and those who were considered terrorist risks. The wrenching decisions he had to make regarding who could cross the line to safety and who could not, would stay with him well beyond his days in Afghanistan. America committed itself to Afghanistan under several presidents and the decision to leave is no easy judgment call. The suicide bomb that killed 13 American servicemen and women and 170 Afghans during the withdrawal reminds us of what continuing American involvement might have meant for young Americans fighting and dying in an increasingly dangerous war far from home.

Zuckoff’s excellent treatment of the withdrawal does not take a stand on the U.S. decision to leave Afghanistan, but it does cause the reader to consider where we draw the line as to America’s role in global affairs. Afghans did not understand America’s decision to leave given the years invested in their country and the threat the Taliban posed for women’s rights and religious freedom when America left. But it was Americans like Aronson and his colleagues who cared and came to the rescue of Homeira and other Afghans in peril, risking their own lives to guarantee the freedom of others. Critics have complained that thousands of Afghans were left behind in the withdrawal, but the U.S. and its allies managed to rescue over 120,000 Afghans including 6,000 American citizens. One cannot ask for a better portrayal of Americans representing their country than you will find at “The Secret Gate” by Mitchell Zuckoff. 

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio and he writes a biweekly column for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.