A Kingston, Ont., veteran is calling on the federal government to do more to help evacuate interpreters who worked with Canadian forces in Afghanistan as the country falls into the hands of the Taliban.
Matthew Tofflemire says veterans can be a valuable resource in the effort to bring interpreters over. He says some individual Canadian veterans have taken it upon themselves to reach out to interpreters stuck in Afghanistan to help them cut through the red tape of evacuating to Canada.
“Because we’re the ones that are basically confirming, ‘I worked with this guy over there for this amount of time and we’re helping make that connection,'” Tofflemire said.
His efforts come as images of fear and panic spread across the world this week, showing Afghans desperately trying to escape the country after the Taliban quickly took back the nation following the exit of American and British forces.
Tofflemire says he believes the current dire position of allies stuck in Afghanistan who helped Canadian troops over a two-decade span could have been easily avoided.
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“We had many years to help our interpreter friends fill out the paperwork and get them over here and resettled,” he said.
Tofflemire says he has a special interest in one interpreter he worked with while overseas, someone he calls his friend.
He says the necessary paperwork has been completed to allow this person to come to Canada, and that his friend made it to the Kabul airport this weekend with his family, but that is as far as they got.
“They managed to make it into some type of compound but it was not safe. So he had to leave and he’s gone back into hiding into another area right and now we’re at a standstill,” Tofflemire said.
Tofflemire says veterans still on the ground in Afghanistan are working to get in contact with the Canadian government to help these people, but that they are not getting the responses needed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was pressed by reporters earlier this week about the government’s efforts to help those stranded in Kabul. Trudeau said Canadian officials are working with American allies on the matter, but everything is dependent on the security situation on the ground.
“We will continue to work to get as many Afghan interpreters and their families out of Afghanistan as long as the security situation holds,” he said in an interview Sunday.
On Monday, Trudeau said 807 Afghans who supported Canadians on the ground have been evacuated so far, and 500 of them have arrived in Canada for resettlement.
He added he has not ruled out using military resources to evacuate Afghans.
Still, Tofflermire fears until the government steps in in all cases, he and other Canadian veterans are will continue to get disturbing messages from people like his friend, still trapped in Afghanistan.
“They can hear gunshots, his kids are scared and I don’t even know how to put it into words,” he said.
–With files from Global News’ Amanda Connolly and Alexandra Mazur
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