U.S. Embassy Staff Destroyed Passports as Taliban Took Over, Trapping American Allies in Afghanistan

For months, Rabah has been in hiding, moving from place to place in Afghanistan, trying to stay one step ahead of the Taliban warriors he believes are out to kill him.

The 30-year-old former interpreter for U.S. special forces hasn’t seen his wife and four kids in weeks. He has little food. He has repeatedly tried to escape to Pakistan and Iran, to no avail.

The problem, according to Rabah, is his lack of a passport, which was destroyed by U.S. Embassy staff as they evacuated Kabul last summer.

“There is no option for me,” said Rabah, who spoke to National Review on the condition that his real name not be published. “They destroyed my passport means they destroyed my whole life. If I had a passport, everything was possible. Without a passport . . . I can do nothing.”

Last summer, as the Taliban was overtaking Kabul, U.S. Embassy staffers destroyed the Afghan passports and sensitive documents in their possession to help protect the identities of American allies who remained in the country. Eight months later, it’s not clear exactly how many passports were destroyed. In an email to National Review, the U.S. Department of State declined to provide a number. Shawn Van Diver, founder of the #AfghanEvac coalition, said fewer than 200 people filled out a form on his organization’s website to report that their passports were destroyed. But several other leaders of civilian rescue organizations said the number of people whose documents were destroyed is surely more than that.

“There are absolutely thousands. There’s no doubt about that,” said Ben Owen, chief executive of Flanders Fields, a civilian group that has been part of the rescue efforts in Afghanistan.

Owen cited correspondence among various rescue organizations, as well as conversations with people who he said were on the ground at the time of the embassy evacuation for his estimate. And if the embassy really had only a few hundred passports, staffers could have easily boxed them up and flown out with them, rather than destroy them, he said, “so clearly it was a huge volume of documents they had to dispose of very quickly.”

People like Rabah, who were at the last step of getting the go-ahead to come to the U.S., now are among the likely tens of thousands of American allies and their family members who remain trapped in Afghanistan after the Biden administration’s bungled withdrawal. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than 60,000 Afghan interpreters and others who have applied for visas to seek shelter in the U.S. remain in the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban have been engaged in a ruthless campaign of revenge killings, and house-to-house searches for U.S. allies.

Jesse Jensen, a former Army Ranger and co-founder of the civilian rescue group Task Force Argo, said his organization is aiding several Afghan families and American allies whose passports were destroyed at the embassy. Without passports they have no options to leave the country, he said.

“You can’t go to Pakistan. You can’t go to Iran. You can’t go to Tajikistan,” said Jensen, who is running for Congress in Washington state. “You are a prisoner in Afghanistan until you can get an international travel document, which now is through the government that is the Taliban.”

And getting passports in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan “is like pulling teeth out of a saber-tooth tiger,” one person involved with the civilian rescue efforts said.

Inundated with large crowds of people looking to flee the country and struggling with massive internal corruption, the Kabul passport office has suspended operations multiple times over the last several months. At one point last year, equipment used for issuing biometric documents broke down, according to Reuters. There also has been a shortage of blank passport stock. In December, a suicide bomber was shot and killed trying to enter the passport office, and several people were injured in the blast.

For Afghans like Rabah, who assisted the U.S. and are now on the Taliban kill list, getting replacement passports can be treacherous. Rabah said he paid at least $5,000 for his family’s original application and documents, and then had to pay another $3,150 to replace the passports that were destroyed in August. When they were ready, he sent a nephew to pick them up, he said. When he did, his nephew was taken into custody by the Taliban.

“Armed people captured him. They took my passport. They thought that that was me,” Rabah said. His nephew was eventually freed, he said, but the Taliban confiscated the passports. He doesn’t think there is any chance he’ll be able to get new ones.

Rabah said the Taliban has searched his home three times looking for him. Working as an interpreter, he helped the U.S. interrogate many Taliban prisoners. They now are in power.

“Those people know me,” he said. “If they find me, surely they will kill me.”

U.S. Army Major David Maddaford, who worked with Rabah in Afghanistan, referred to him as “a very good man” who took his interpreter job seriously. He helped Rabah prepare his immigration documents and has struggled with his friend’s predicament.

“I’ve had many sleepless nights. My wife could tell you. She’s found me in less than I’d say happy conditions more than once thinking and worrying about him and his family,” he said.

Anna Segur, a Colorado-based project manager who has been assisting SIV allies in Afghanistan for five years, also has been trying to help Rabah and his family flee the country. His family is one of three she’s assisting whose passports were destroyed. A fourth family she worked with whose passports were destroyed was able to obtain new passports and leave. Segur said former U.S. interpreters are priority targets for the Taliban.

“They worked with our troops. They went through all the hoops that we made them go through, spent thousands of dollars on getting medical exams and all the things you have to do to get to that stage where they’re ready to issue you a visa. They had dropped off their passports thinking they were about to leave Afghanistan, and then when the Taliban took over Kabul, they caught us completely flat-footed,” Segur said. “They clearly had no contingency plans for a hostile takeover of the U.S. Embassy, and they just destroyed everything.”

In an email, a State Department spokeswoman said it is standard operating procedure during a drawdown “to minimize our footprint and reduce the amount of sensitive material remaining.” The drawdown of the Kabul embassy was in accordance with those procedures, she said.

The spokeswoman said the U.S. continues to process SIV applications, and is transferring cases to embassies and consulates around the world where applicants are able to appear. “This includes reprinting any visas that were lost or destroyed,” she said.

Last September, early in the Taliban takeover, Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified that the U.S. is “putting in place plans to make sure that people can get documents that they need and documents that the Taliban says it will recognize to allow them to leave” Afghanistan. Eight months later, the State Department insists that is still the case.

“We are working to find ways to facilitate travel for those who do not have all the required documentation,” the department spokeswoman said. “This effort is of upmost importance to the U.S. government.”

Moe, another former U.S. military interpreter Segur is assisting, said he had dropped his family’s passports off to get their visas foiled after they completed their medical checkups in early August. He said that during the American evacuation he was told to pick the passports up at the Kabul airport. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it because of mass chaos,” said Moe, who also spoke on the condition that his real name to be published for his protection.

Moe said he’s also in hiding, though he doesn’t believe the Taliban is aware that he worked for the U.S. for nearly four years. He’s worried, however, that someone could alert them.

Moe said his case has officially been transferred to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and he’s supposed to have an interview there later this month. Without passports, he likely won’t make it. “This is very frustrating for me,” he said. “I can’t make passports.”

Moe is hoping to relocate to the U.S. for the job opportunities for him, the educational opportunities for his three children, and because “we want to have a peaceful life,” he said. He said he’s living off the money he made when he sold his car, which won’t last long.

“Currently we are left behind. We worked honorably. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. government,” Moe said. “They have to pay attention to this matter. People whose passport was destroyed by the embassy, they have to pay attention for these people.”

Last fall, in the wake of the Taliban takeover, some of families whose passports were destroyed were able to escape, including a family profiled by National Review in January. A U.S.-based facilitator using the codename “Granny” who helped rescue that family said that at the time the Taliban was letting people leave without passports as a form of publicity. That’s not happening anymore, she said.

“We can’t move people without passports,” Owen concurred. “Back in August, September, maybe even in October it was happening. People were getting out without passports. But at this point in time, it’s locked down. Nobody is leaving without a passport.”

Owen said he’s telling families without passports there’s not much he or the U.S. government can do. The Taliban is in charge of the country and the passport offices. “We’re dealing with the consequences of the poorest-planned withdrawal in U.S. history,” Owen said.

Other rescue leaders suggested that the U.S. could recreate the destroyed Afghan passports in conjunction with former Afghan leaders in exile, or provide American allies whose passports were destroyed with United Nations laissez-passer travel documents.

“It just seems like they’re washing their hands of responsibility,” Segur said of U.S. leaders. “It’s like, ‘Too bad, so sad. Call me back when you get a passport.’”

Segur credits private nonprofits like Heart of an Ace and Team America Relief for keeping the stranded American allies and their families housed and fed over the winter.

Owen said it has been hard to get the American public to care about plight of Afghans. It’s been even harder since the Russian invasion of Ukraine took the spotlight from Afghanistan. That’s frustrating for people like Owen, because many of the people trapped in Afghanistan fought alongside U.S. soldiers over the course of the 20-year war.

“We have people that have already bled for America. We have people that have honestly done more for America than many Americans are willing to do,” Owen said. “What message are we sending to the world right now?”