An Afghan de-miner near Kandahar air field (Image: Reuters/Tim Wimborne

When 80 Afghans — people who helped the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and their families — arrived here on evacuation flights, it was meant to be a rare good news story amid the chaos of Australia’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But watching from Kabul, the news filled “Sameer” (name withheld for security reasons) with a sense of frustration and hopelessness. Like many of the evacuated, he worked with Australian troops during our longest conflict, helping remove landmines around the Bagram air base. Five years ago he applied for a humanitarian visa under the locally engaged employee (LEE) program. He’s still waiting.

Overnight, Australia’s last troops left Afghanistan with a whimper. But even as the government slowly increases its evacuation of Afghan LEEs, there are thousands like Sameer still stuck in the country, separated from their families and in constant fear of attack from the Taliban. US intelligence believes the Taliban could regain control of the country within six months.

“If something happens to Kabul, I’ll definitely be dead,” Sameer said.

The project

Like many of the people who risked their lives to work with Australian troops, Sameer was driven by utterly normal reasons: an opportunity to feel safe in a country broken by decades of conflict, and to provide a stable salary for his family.

Now he’s trapped in Kabul, unable to see them. He’s received death threats from the Taliban so is afraid to leave his home, he’s struggled to find good work, and is burning through his savings while he waits for an email telling him his visa has been accepted.

“I’m suffering from the job I’ve done, for my loyalty to the Australian army,” he said.

By all accounts Sameer has a very strong case to be accepted into Australia. Like some other Afghans who’ve had their visas rejected, he was a contractor on a project but was supervised by Australian and American troops. The work he did was crucial to the coalition campaign.

Bagram air base, where Sameer worked, was “the single most important piece of infrastructure in Afghanistan right through the duration of the war”, former army officer and Afghan veteran Stuart McCarthy tells Crikey. The area behind the base had been littered with landmines since the days of the Soviet invasion.

Removing them had both humanitarian value and strategic value because the Taliban would use the mines to build explosives and IEDs.

Sameer’s story checks out. Crikey has seen a letter sent by an ADF major in 2014 certifying that his manager had been employed “under Australian supervision” and had “provided significant effect in the safety and effective operations of coalition (including Australian) operations”.

The letter concludes that Sameer’s boss, his family and workers face an immediate threat from the Taliban, and strongly recommends they all be granted humanitarian visas.

Sameer’s boss has also provided a letter, submitted as part of his visa application, certifying his employment on the project. And he says other people who worked on the de-mining project have had their Australian visas approved.

Sameer hasn’t worked with Australian troops for years, and his work was largely humanitarian rather than strategic. But he still lives with a target on his back. Last month, 10 de-mining workers at British NGO The Halo Trust were shot in a Taliban attack on their compound.

‘A clusterfuck of Shakespearean proportions’

For McCarthy, Sameer’s case is an example of Australia’s failure to protect people who helped the ADF.

“This man’s case exemplifies what is a clusterfuck of Shakespearean proportions on the part of the Australian government,” he said. “We’ve got the wrong people in the wrong places making the wrong decisions.”

Before last week’s evacuation flights, Australia had resettled 186 people since April, and a total of about 1400 since 2013. But there are problems with the visa and repatriation process. There are countless examples of people like Sameer, who have waited years to hear about their visa applications. There’s the bureaucratic triangulation between various Canberra-based departments that delays things and puts lives in the hands of distant decision-makers.

Then there’s the incredibly precarious security situation in Afghanistan. Getting a visa involves a medical and police check. There are fears the police are being infiltrated with Taliban sympathisers. People like Sameer struggle to travel for fear of being surveiled. Other areas outside of Kabul, like Oruzgan, pose a challenge for running evacuations.

Still McCarthy maintains it’s not too late for Australia to greenlight a full-scale, non-combatant evacuation operation, run between the ADF and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which would allow immediate security and medical checks to be conducted quickly on the ground.

But now Australia’s troops are gone, bringing a sense of resignation and failure among many in the military establishment.

“Was it worth it? Well as we face the prospect of a savage retribution by the now ascendant Taliban, and I think a return in some ways to the dark ages for Afghanistan, it’s really hard to say that it was worth it,” former army chief Peter Leahy told the ABC today.

That withdrawal makes evacuation of Afghan LEEs less likely, despite the moral imperative and the long-term strategic imperative of honouring our commitment to Afghans who helped Australian soldiers.

Meanwhile, as Canberra dithers, it’s people like Sameer who live in constant fear.

“My life is so full of stress, to live without my family, without your children, that’s very hard,” he said. “I’m just praying for that email.”