daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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Bad exit, in twists....
Sgt. Ben Johnson was standing outside the main terminal of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul when the two young Afghan women approached. He immediately noticed how beautiful they were, and in near-perfect English, they asked him to let them through.
It was days into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, and Johnson — a soldier who deployed with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is being identified by a pseudonym by Task & Purpose at his request — was tasked with moving concertina wire for military vehicles driving into the airport. The women, who he estimated to be somewhere between 17 and 21 years old, were just two of thousands with the same dire request: Please, save us. He explained to the women that he couldn’t let them in. If he did, he’d have to let everyone else through, too. He told them to go to the South Gate. If they had a chance of getting in anywhere, it was there.
“They were like, ‘They won’t let us go back that way. They’ll kill us,” Johnson recalled them saying of the Taliban, who were standing just feet away.
“I didn’t want the Taliban to do anything to them, but then they also couldn’t get through my gate,” he said. “So I finally get them out and I’m yelling at the Taliban, like take these girls out of here. And they go behind the wall and kill them.”
It wasn’t the last time he would witness the Taliban execute someone for getting in their way, causing trouble, or for no apparent reason at all. But there wasn’t much he could do. The Taliban had taken over Kabul and by extension, control of Afghanistan. And as the U.S. and its allies worked around the clock to evacuate civilians from the country, they’d entered into a tense agreement of sorts with the Taliban to ensure safe passage to HKIA for those attempting to leave. The U.S. and its allies would control the airport while the Taliban was controlling checkpoints on the roads leading to its gates.
When the two women were killed, Johnson recalled that his platoon sergeant — who he called the best leader he’s served under in the military — told him it would be okay to go sit down for a moment.
“I didn’t want to,” Johnson said. “Because then I knew I would have time to process and register what just happened. I was like no, I’m going to stay busy. I can deal with emotions and thoughts when this is all over with.”
taskandpurpose.com
Sgt. Ben Johnson was standing outside the main terminal of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul when the two young Afghan women approached. He immediately noticed how beautiful they were, and in near-perfect English, they asked him to let them through.
It was days into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, and Johnson — a soldier who deployed with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is being identified by a pseudonym by Task & Purpose at his request — was tasked with moving concertina wire for military vehicles driving into the airport. The women, who he estimated to be somewhere between 17 and 21 years old, were just two of thousands with the same dire request: Please, save us. He explained to the women that he couldn’t let them in. If he did, he’d have to let everyone else through, too. He told them to go to the South Gate. If they had a chance of getting in anywhere, it was there.
“They were like, ‘They won’t let us go back that way. They’ll kill us,” Johnson recalled them saying of the Taliban, who were standing just feet away.
“I didn’t want the Taliban to do anything to them, but then they also couldn’t get through my gate,” he said. “So I finally get them out and I’m yelling at the Taliban, like take these girls out of here. And they go behind the wall and kill them.”
It wasn’t the last time he would witness the Taliban execute someone for getting in their way, causing trouble, or for no apparent reason at all. But there wasn’t much he could do. The Taliban had taken over Kabul and by extension, control of Afghanistan. And as the U.S. and its allies worked around the clock to evacuate civilians from the country, they’d entered into a tense agreement of sorts with the Taliban to ensure safe passage to HKIA for those attempting to leave. The U.S. and its allies would control the airport while the Taliban was controlling checkpoints on the roads leading to its gates.
When the two women were killed, Johnson recalled that his platoon sergeant — who he called the best leader he’s served under in the military — told him it would be okay to go sit down for a moment.
“I didn’t want to,” Johnson said. “Because then I knew I would have time to process and register what just happened. I was like no, I’m going to stay busy. I can deal with emotions and thoughts when this is all over with.”
As the world moves on, veterans of the Afghanistan withdrawal struggle to join them
“I do think that the leadership from probably the battalion level, all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House, fucked us.”
taskandpurpose.com
