Getting Akbar out of the Canadian maze

Akbar Shinwari’s messages always begin the same way. ” How are you my sister ? How is your family ? It’s an Afghan polite that should make me smile, but for the past three months I’ve been dreading it.

Because each new message from the Afghan journalist that falls in my Messenger box risks announcing another puzzling twist for him and his family. Or worse, a complete lack of twist that plunges Akbar, his wife and five children into doubt and angst while adding a layer to the yarrow of my frustration.

I have been trying since mid-August to help Akbar and his family come to Canada under the special program for Afghans who worked with Canadian representatives in Afghanistan. And I keep hitting a wall.

And I am unfortunately far from being the only one. All the journalists and non-governmental organizations consulted for this column and who are trying to get their Afghan colleagues to come to the country are in the same boat. There is so much haze in the government process that we are all groping our way.

I got to know Akbar Shinwari in 2005 in Kabul. I was there to cover the first Afghan parliamentary election after the fall of the Taliban and the deployment of the Canadian Armed Forces to Kandahar. Akbar was my “fixer”, that is, a journalist who helped me organize my interviews in addition to playing the role of interpreter. He was also responsible for the logistics of reporting and security. In Afghanistan, a fixer is not just useful, it is vital.

I never went back to Afghanistan, but I kept in touch with my fixer, who became a friend. If I needed a contact to do a remote report, he was always there.

In the past year, our e-mail exchanges have become more frequent. A campaign of targeted and unclaimed assassinations has left dozens of deaths in Afghanistan in journalistic circles and within civil society organizations. Fixers like Akbar knew they were targeted.

When the Taliban regained power in August, our communications became even more urgent. It was my turn to do everything in my power to keep him from paying the ultimate price for his work of the past 20 years. By my side, but also with British and American journalists. And all of it from my home office.

Like most people who do this profession in Afghanistan, Akbar accidentally became a fixer. When planes struck the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, Akbar was studying political science in Peshawar, Pakistan. He was 21 and spoke fluent English. “A few weeks later, back from my classes, I met foreigners who told me they were journalists and needed help. They invited me to join them in entering Afghanistan in order to cover the intervention of the American armed forces against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, ”Akbar recounted on the phone. One of the strangers was Geraldo Rivera, the Fox News reporter.

Akbar put his studies on hold and took on the role of fixer. For 20 years.

Geraldo Rivera is now well aware that he has changed the course of the young Afghan’s life. In 2016, he helped him get back to school. He found her a job that allowed her to support her family and travel, while finishing her baccalaureate. So it was with a university degree in his pocket that Akbar left his country in haste last summer.

It is from Kosovo that my former Afghan colleague is contacting me these days. He’s been there since mid-November. But it was first in Doha, Qatar, that he was evacuated. A few days after the arrival of the Taliban. He was luckier than many other fixers who worked for Canadian media and their families. Of the list of some 500 names that has been provided to Canadian authorities by the Canadian Association of Journalists, Journalists for Human Rights and numerous media outlets, 279 are still trapped in Afghanistan. Between life and death.

To date, only 72 people from this list have arrived in the country and 36 others have received all the necessary authorizations. So there are 150 people who are in third countries and who are doing the crane. Akbar and his family are of this group.

In Qatar, the Shinwari family were staying in the brand new village that will host the 2022 World Cup soccer athletes, but in Kosovo, Afghans sleep in a large hangar. Akbar and his family improvised screens to provide some privacy. “The three other fixers who were with me in Qatar have all arrived at their final destination,” Akbar laments, feeling more and more lonely.

In principle, three months of waiting is not excessively long in a resettlement situation, but in Akbar’s case, it is the overwhelming and staggering lack of information that causes anxiety. His file was sent to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada at the end of August via a dedicated email address, but since then he has never been contacted by anyone at the Department.

When he dialed the phone number set up for Afghans in his situation, he was told that his file was nowhere to be seen. That it might not have been opened by an official yet. That he should seek help from his Canadian contact: me.

For my part, I knocked on many doors to find out if the information sent at the end of August had arrived safely. After three months of deadlock, it was finally the office of my MP, Marc Miller, who agreed to give us a hand this week.

Akbar is far from being out of the woods. At the moment, no one seems able to explain to us how to get the process back on track. The bureaucratic machine is more opaque than ever. The head does not speak to the tail. “There is a political will to settle this file, but we can say that there is a gap between the political wing and the public service at the moment”, told us an official in the office of the Minister of Immigration. , Sean Fraser.

We know that Canada can do much better than that. We saw it during the reception of Syrian refugees at the end of 2015 and at the beginning of 2016. We saw it when the country opened its doors to refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s. In two cases, Canada did not have direct links with these refugees, we had not worked with them neck and neck.

Let us now hope that the government and its civil service will find a way to work in symbiosis on the Afghan file. To help those who have reached out to us during the 20 years of our presence in Afghanistan. So Akbar and his people would finally know what to expect.

Me, I continue to wait for them firmly.