Baby Sohail Ahmadi, handed over by his family to a US soldier in August during the chaotic evacuation of citizens trying to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban fundamentalist group regained power, was finally found and returned to his relatives in the capital Kabul on Saturday. (8), according to an exclusive report by the Reuters news agency.
Sohail, who was just two months old at the time, was in Kabul with the family of Afghan taxi driver Hamid Safi, 29, who found him alone and crying at the airport and took him home to raise him. After more than seven weeks of negotiations and appeals, which had to rely on the intervention of the Taliban, Safi finally returned the child to his grandfather and other relatives who still live in the Central Asian country.
The family said they now intend to send him to his parents and siblings, who managed to flee the country and live in the United States. During the tumultuous evacuation, which led to the deaths of citizens, the boy’s father, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, who worked as a security guard at the US Embassy in Kabul, and his wife, Suraya, feared their son would be crushed in the crowd as they approached the gates. from the airport.
Desperately, they handed the baby over the wall to a uniformed soldier they believed to be from the US, hoping they would take it back after crossing the remaining 5 meters to the entrance. Members of the Taliban, however, began pushing the crowd, leaving the parents not able to go after Sohail until more than half an hour later. They no longer find the baby.
Ahmadi said he desperately searched for his son inside the airport and was told by authorities that he had likely been taken out of the country and that the family could be reunited later. The rest of the family managed to be evacuated to a military base in the US state of Texas. For months, they didn’t have any information about their son’s whereabouts.
With no US embassy in Afghanistan, as the diplomatic corps has been withdrawn by the US government, and with humanitarian aid organizations overwhelmed, Afghan refugees struggle to get answers about family reunifications. The US Department of Defense, State and Security did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
On the same day that Ahmadi and his family were separated from the baby, taxi driver Hamid Safi escaped through the gates of Kabul airport after giving a lift to the family of his brother, who also tried to immigrate to the US. Safi said she found Sohail alone and crying on the floor. He later tried unsuccessfully to locate the baby’s parents and decided to take him home with his wife and three daughters.
The Afghan said his family’s biggest dream was to have a child and that at that moment he decided to stay with Sohail and raise him. “If his family is found, I will hand him over to them, but if not, I will raise him myself,” he told Reuters in an interview in late November. He named the baby Mohammad Abed and posted pictures of him on his Facebook profile.
After the story of the missing child was made public, some of Safi’s neighbors noticed the resemblance and posted comments about the boy’s whereabouts in a translated version of the text. Sohail’s father Ahmadi then contacted relatives who are still in Afghanistan, asking them to look for the boy and ask that he be returned to his family.
Mohammad Qasem Razawi, 67, Sohail’s maternal grandfather who lives in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, said he traveled to the capital for two days with gifts, including a sheep and several kilos of nuts and clothes, for Safi and her family. , but the taxi driver refused to deliver the baby. The family then reached out to the Red Cross, which helps reconnect people separated by international conflict, but said they had received little information. A spokesperson for the organization told Reuters it does not comment on individual cases.
Having run out of options, the grandfather contacted the Taliban police to report his grandson’s kidnapping. Safi told Reuters she denies the kidnapping charge and was only looking after the baby. The complaint was investigated and dismissed, but the local commander said it helped reach an agreement between the two sides.
Grandfather Razawi said the baby’s family had agreed to compensate Safi with 100,000 Afghanis (about R$5,400) for the expenses of caring for him for five months. In the presence of the police, and through many tears, Sohail was finally returned to his relatives.
Razawi reported that Safi and her family were devastated at having to leave the baby. “He and his wife were crying, and I cried too, but I assured them that they are young, and Allah will give them a son. Not one, but several.”
The baby’s parents, currently living in an apartment in Michigan, watched the reunion via video call and told Reuters they were overjoyed. They hope Sohail will soon be sent to the US. “We need to return the baby to the mother and father. This is my only responsibility,” said the child’s grandfather.
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