With just a few more days before the August 31 deadline of evacuating from Afghanistan, Afghan Christians and others who are qualified to leave the country are already being turned away at the airport in Kabul. This comes after the Taliban announced this week that they are not allowing Afghan nationals to access the airport to ensure deadly stampedes don't happen again.
About 77,000 Afghans have managed to flee the country in the last 12 days, but thousands more of allies who worked alongside the U.S. and its coalition partners face a grim future if they don't get out by August 31.
"The Taliban will let American citizens in but if they see Afghan interpreters that have their SIV applications, sometimes they're turned away," Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas lamented, as reported by CBN News. "Sometimes, more grimly, they are returned to their homes, where they behead their family and then behead them."
Moreover, U.S. officials are turning away Afghan Christians at the airport despite having supporting documents that should allow them to flee the country.
Faith McDonnell of the Virginia-based Anglican nonprofit ministry group Katartismos Global said that "the State Department at least at a certain point was not implementing the lists that they require the organizations to compile - even though they have sent them multiple times," the Catholic News Agency reported, via the National Catholic Register.
"It seems at present as if no one is getting any priority unless they have some sort of special connection inside the airport," McDonald lamented. The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom urgently called upon the Biden administration to broaden the list of people allowed to leave Afghanistan to include Afghan religious minorities who face severe risks.
Shai Fund president Charmaine Hedding said, "Many of them are Christians now, but they come from a Muslim background and they are in fear of their life." The Israel-based organization is also helping evacuate Christian Afghans out of Kabul. Hedding reported that there are 21 Afghan believers at the Kabul airport who were denied exit. She warned that the believers already received a letter from the Taliban saying that they will be hunted down.
But despite the dangers that Afghan Christians face in Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan, which has fallen into the hands of the Taliban militant group, those who are opting to stay pledged to continue "God's work" in the country, International Christian Concern reported. The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) said that some Afghan Christians in the country posted a video through Global Catalyst Ministries in which they pleaded for Christians all over the world not to forget about the underground church in Afghanistan.
Despite not knowing what the future will hold for them, an unnamed Afghan Christian who hid his identity for safety reasons, said, "We are not able to control our emotions because we've worked so hard for 20 years. All of our work over the past 20 years have been lost overnight."
"But we are not leaving the field. We will fight harder and will continue God's work," the Afghan Christian promised. Another Christian leader in Afghanistan advised people to stay inside their homes because going out in this political climate is "too dangerous" despite general amnesty being announced by the Taliban. The Christian leader reported that some Christian Afghans had already received "threatening phone calls" saying "we are coming for you."
Afghanistan is home to an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 Christians, making them one of the largest religious minorities in the country. They are also being heavily persecuted by non-Muslims and are being subjected to Sharia law's deadliest consequences.
