After Collapse, Afghan Air Drive Left to Select Battle or Flight

Early on the morning of August 15, 2021, Shershah Ahmadi was struggling to discover a experience dwelling. In Foroshgah, one of many busiest open-air bazaars in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, crowds swarmed round money-changers and lined up at banks as individuals scrambled to put their fingers on the money they would wish to flee the approaching Taliban onslaught. Each taxi and bus appeared packed. Abruptly, Ahmadi’s telephone buzzed because the WhatsApp group he shared with a number of dozen different pilots within the Afghan Air Drive’s Particular Mission Wing lit up.

Ahmadi’s boss, Particular Mission Wing Cmdr. Gen. Hamidullah Ziarmal, was ordering him and the opposite pilots to get to Hamid Karzai Worldwide Airport instantly. On every other day, Ahmadi wouldn’t have thought twice. After eight years within the Afghan Air Drive, responding to a direct order from a superior officer was as pure as respiratory.

However on that day — the day the Taliban streamed into the guts of Kabul and plunged town into chaos — each transfer Ahmadi made appeared like a fateful alternative between his household and his nation.

He understood nicely what was being requested of him. If he adopted the order, there was a great likelihood that he would possibly by no means see his spouse and 3-year-old daughter once more. If he disobeyed, he might be thought-about absent with out go away and insubordinate for failing to heed a direct command. Flouting the order to muster on the airport might additionally imply that thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ price of helicopters and airplanes paid for by U.S. taxpayers would fall into the fingers of the Taliban. Both approach, Ahmadi’s life would possibly quickly be in danger.

Shershah Ahmadi just isn’t his actual identify. In change for talking frankly to The Intercept, the previous Afghan Air Drive pilot requested to be recognized by a pseudonym as a result of he fears retaliation and potential issues to his visa standing, and that of his household, in the US.

Born and raised in Kabul, Ahmadi had enrolled in Afghanistan’s Nationwide Navy Academy in 2008, when he was 17, at a time when the Taliban’s maintain on territory was largely confined to the south and east of the nation. 13 years later, as they returned to energy, he was one among dozens of Afghan pilots whose choices would have penalties for Afghanistan’s safety, in addition to that of different nations within the area and the U.S.

As we speak, greater than 1 / 4 of the previous Afghan Air Drive fleet is in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the standing of the plane has grow to be a vital sticking level in a three-way diplomatic dispute between the Taliban regime and its northern neighbors. The choice many Afghan pilots made to fly army plane throughout the nation’s northern borders final August has successfully blocked any near-term likelihood that the Taliban can absolutely safe the nation’s tough and mountainous terrain. However the standing of the Afghan air fleet is much from resolved, and Taliban leaders have mentioned that they’re decided to reconstitute the nation’s army.

Maj. Gen. Yasin Zia, Afghanistan’s former chief of Army workers, mentioned that he and Afghan Air Drive commanders have been left with few choices after former President Ashraf Ghani surreptitiously fled the nation final August. In an interview with The Intercept final month, Zia defined that solely the Air Drive’s Particular Mission Wing remained comparatively intact. The SMW, established in the summertime of 2012, had a minimum of 18 Mi-17 helicopters and 5 UH-60 Black Hawks; the fleet additionally included 16 PC-12 single-engine fixed-wing cargo planes, offering Afghan forces with assault, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. “The president had fled, and the protection minister was escaping,” Zia mentioned. “The chain of command now not existed among the many forces.”

Zia, who additionally served as Afghanistan’s appearing minister of protection from March to June 2021, now leads an anti-Taliban resistance drive. He informed The Intercept that he, Ziarmal, and Afghan Air Drive Cmdr. Gen. Fahim Ramin ordered Ahmadi and the opposite Afghan pilots to fly the nation’s plane throughout the border to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan final August.

“I made the choice based mostly on two essential causes,” Zia mentioned. “To save lots of the lives of the pilots who had fought the Taliban and who have been left alone — this was the least I might do for my colleagues as a veteran Army officer. And to maintain the Air Drive fleet from falling into the fingers of the Taliban. Think about if the Taliban had gotten these plane — how they might have been used towards the individuals resisting them in the present day in Andarab, Panjshir, and different elements of the nation.”

Zia’s account, which was backed up by interviews with three Afghan Air Drive pilots and two former Afghan safety officers, means that the US, which had invested billions within the Afghan Air Drive over greater than a decade, had no plan in place to forestall the Taliban from gaining management of the plane, extremely skilled pilots, and different help workers if the republic collapsed. A workforce of U.S. army personnel rapidly positioned and destroyed dozens of plane within the Kabul airport two days after the nation fell to the Taliban.

In response to questions for this story, a Pentagon spokesperson mentioned that the U.S. army deliberate to again the Afghan safety forces it had constructed. “Senior U.S. officers repeatedly knowledgeable the Ghani authorities and [Afghan security forces] that the U.S. supposed to proceed to supply vital help to the Afghan Air Drive, together with salaries, upkeep, logistics, pilot coaching, seemingly by means of contracting and from outdoors of Afghanistan,” Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, the Pentagon’s Afghanistan spokesperson, informed The Intercept in an e mail.

The U.S. “continued to fly missions in help” of Afghan operations “into early August” of final yr, Lodewick added, however he didn’t say what occurred between early August and the center of that month, when the Taliban took management of Kabul — a vital interval within the struggle. Former Afghan safety officers and pilots informed The Intercept that U.S. air help had stopped by the point the Taliban have been advancing towards Kabul. Even specialists working for the U.S. Particular Inspector Common for Afghanistan Reconstruction famous that by mid-August of final yr, “U.S. forces had withdrawn; even ‘over-the-horizon’ U.S. air help had ceased — and the Afghan Air Drive (AAF), a vital a part of a safety drive that the US had spent twenty years and $90 billion constructing and supporting, was nowhere in proof.”

Lodewick, nevertheless, doubled down on the Biden administration’s chorus that Afghans’ “lack of a will to battle” led to their defeat by the Taliban.

“They’d the individuals. They’d the tools. They’d the coaching. They’d the help,” Lodewick wrote. “Lengthy-term commitments similar to these, nevertheless, can solely accomplish a lot if beneficiary forces should not prepared to face and battle. One wants solely to take a look at the present state of affairs in Ukraine for an instance of what an geared up, skilled and resilient drive is really able to reaching.”

Nonetheless reeling from the swift flip of occasions in Kabul, Ahmadi had reached a terrifying crossroads. There out there bazaar in Foroshgah, the world clanged noisily round him. Automobiles honked. Shopkeepers slammed their home windows and locked their doorways. Police and troopers surreptitiously slipped out of their uniforms whereas civilians whizzed by shouting into their cellphones. Time was operating sooner than Ahmadi’s ideas. He needed to determine to return to his household or comply with the orders of a army that was crumbling by the hour.

Afghan Boots, Overseas Wings

Ahmadi’s dilemma was not a brand new one. Afghanistan’s army historical past is replete with tales about pilots who both helped would-be rulers safe energy in Kabul or spirited them to security when their political methods failed. King Amanullah Khan first established the Afghan Air Drive in 1921 with plane donated by the Soviet Union, Italy, and the UK.

Within the decade following the 1979 Soviet invasion, the Afghan fleet grew to 500 plane, all Soviet-made. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, infighting between mujahideen factions backed by the US destroyed many of the planes and helicopters. However a few of the plane survived. When the Taliban took energy the primary time round in 1996, they did so with the assistance of about two dozen Soviet-made Mi-21 helicopter gunships that that they had captured throughout battles with forces loyal to the late Northern Alliance chief Ahmad Shah Massoud and the federal government of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

However then, as now, the plane rapidly fell into disrepair; the Taliban’s pariah standing meant that they might not import elements or depend on the extremely expert labor and experience of international army advisers to take care of the air fleet. Then, as now, Termez Worldwide Airport in neighboring Uzbekistan briefly served as a approach station for Afghan pilots who flew over the border when the Taliban seized management of Kabul. In a minimum of one case after the Taliban took the capital in 1996, the Uzbek authorities turned over an plane to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan Uzbek warlord and chief of one of the vital infamous jihadist factions of the Eighties and ’90s. The Taliban nonetheless had the higher hand, albeit with a small air drive, together with about 20 Soviet-made fighter jets.

Within the first 10 years after U.S. troops swooped into the nation following Al Qaeda’s assaults on New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, American and NATO jet fighters, helicopters, and drones dominated the Afghan skies. But it wasn’t till practically a decade later that the US started to considerably spend money on constructing the Afghan Air Drive.

Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban protection minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, was a vocal advocate for constructing the brand new Afghan army alongside the strains of NATO nations. His obsession with American-made F-16 jet fighters was a daily speaking level at any time when he met with Pentagon officers. It was an costly proposition: Even below the most effective circumstances, the price of working the Lockheed Martin-made F-16 Falcon can be about $8,000 an hour, in keeping with a minimum of one estimate.

Past the monetary limitations, there was the sensible problem of establishing a everlasting U.S. coaching and tools mission. It wasn’t till 2005, 4 years after U.S. and allied Afghan forces routed the Taliban, that then-Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the institution of a devoted command construction for the U.S.-led mission to coach and equip Afghan safety forces. However that entity didn’t flip to increase the Afghan Air Drive till two years later.

There have been different issues as nicely. In Washington, a significant political transition was underway between the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who despatched hundreds of American troops surging into Afghanistan in a renewed try and pacify it. It was solely in 2009, as resurgent Taliban forces swept from their southern redoubts ever nearer to Afghanistan’s heartland round Kabul, that Afghan pilots might start offering air help to the nation’s floor troops — after which solely with assist from American army advisers.

Corruption affected every little thing from fleet upkeep to gas suppliers, flight efficiency, and capacity-building. As an example, Afghan officers usually awarded coaching slots based mostly on patronage and household relations, in keeping with a 2019 report by the U.S. Particular Inspector Common for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.

One other problem was a string of “green-on-blue” assaults by which Afghan troopers attacked their U.S. and NATO counterparts. A turning level got here in April 2011, when an Afghan Air Drive pilot fatally shot 9 People on the air base command headquarters in Kabul. An inquiry led by the united statesAir Drive Workplace of Particular Investigations indicated that some American army advisers on base on the time believed that the shooter, Col. Ahmed Gul, had been secretly recruited by the Taliban to infiltrate the Air Drive.

The bloodbath of the American advisers to the Afghan Air Drive was one of many deadliest of its type. It modified the best way the Pentagon supplied air help to Afghan forces, former Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat, the final commander of the Afghan Nationwide Army Particular Operations Command, informed The Intercept.

“Earlier than 2008, the U.S. Army had fairly informal guidelines of engagement with the Afghan Army. At the moment, we didn’t have the green-on-blue assaults, and the chance for the U.S. and Afghan troopers working collectively was very restricted,” Sadat, who now lives within the U.Okay. and runs a safety agency, recalled in an interview in July. “It was after 2008 that the green-on-blue matter elevated, and the partnership between the U.S. and Afghan officers grew to become tough as a result of big danger.”

Whereas some Afghan army officers lobbied for a NATO-style air regiment, others argued that sticking with Warsaw Pact tools was extra pragmatic. In the long run, the Pentagon cut up the distinction, regardless of issues in regards to the prices and dangers of counting on international suppliers like Russia and Ukraine.

In 2013, the U.S. mentioned it might pay $572 million to Rosoboronexport, the export wing of Russia’s state-owned arms firm, Rostec, for 30 Russian-built Mi-17 army helicopters. However the Pentagon canceled the deal after a furor erupted in Congress over the acquisition of Russian plane at a time when the U.S. was urgent Russia to cease supplying Syria with weapons. After the U.S. sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea and army incursion in japanese Ukraine in 2014, the Pentagon stopped supplying Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters to Kabul altogether.

In 2016, the Obama administration ordered a halt to all dealings with Russian arms producers, together with Rostec. A yr later, the Pentagon started transitioning the Afghan Air Drive from Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters to the U.S.-made Black Hawk assault helicopter. It was a jarring change for many Afghan Air Drive pilots, who had many years of expertise flying and fixing Russian plane. Black Hawks have been notoriously tough to take care of and couldn’t function as nicely at excessive altitudes.

The U.S. ban on Russian weaponry and the battle between Russia and Ukraine, in the meantime, additionally made it subsequent to unattainable for the Afghan Air Drive to restore and preserve its remaining Russian-made plane. Russia objected to the scheduled overhaul of the Mi-17s by Ukrainian firms, calling the deal “unlawful.” Russian firms additionally accused Motor Sich and Aviakon, the 2 Ukrainian companies contracted by the U.S. to restore the Afghan plane, of poor oversight and of endangering the lives of American and Afghan troopers.

This was the story of the Afghan Air Drive below the People: Suspicion, distrust, begin, cease, begin once more, and reset the technique. By July 2021, in keeping with a Might SIGAR report, the Afghan Air Drive had 131 usable plane and one other 31 in varied states of disrepair.

Deserted and Afraid

In January 2021, eight months earlier than Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, SIGAR warned the Protection Division in a labeled report that the Afghan Air Drive would collapse with out continued U.S. coaching and upkeep.

The report got here as Afghan safety forces sustained growing casualties amid an aggressive Taliban offensive. Battlefield medical evacuation missions that had been vital to the Afghan army’s continued capabilities grew far more difficult. A yr after the Taliban takeover, interviews with greater than a dozen former Afghan army and authorities officers and Western diplomats verify what many Afghan pilots like Ahmadi already knew: The Afghan Air Drive was struggling to remain alive in these last weeks and was wholly unprepared to carry the road towards the Taliban when President Joe Biden determined to maneuver ahead with the Doha settlement that his predecessor Donald Trump had negotiated.

By July 2021, a month earlier than the Taliban surged into Kabul, one in 5 Afghan plane have been out of service, in keeping with Reuters. In the meantime, an estimated 60 p.c of Afghanistan’s UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters have been grounded with no plan by the Afghan or U.S. governments to repair them, in keeping with a senior Afghan Army officer interviewed by SIGAR. Because the Taliban superior in the summertime of 2021, many of the 17,000 help contractors have been withdrawn from the nation.

“The system wouldn’t have collapsed if the logistical help that was promised by the U.S. army continued,” Sadat informed The Intercept. “As an example, when the primary province fell to the Taliban, in all the [Afghan Air Force] there was just one laser-guided missile.” (Lodewick, the Pentagon spokesperson, declined to touch upon provide ranges with out “figuring out the precise airframe or munition being referenced … nor a selected date window” however mentioned that the Afghan Air Drive “had a big quantity [of] aerial munitions in its stock,” together with “a small variety of GBU-58 laser-guided bombs which afforded the AAF precision strike capabilities from their A-29 plane.”)

The tempo of the Taliban advance shocked many Afghan pilots interviewed for this story, together with Ahmadi. The Afghan Air Drive’s three main airfields within the western metropolis of Herat, the southern metropolis of Kandahar, and the northern metropolis of Mazar-i Sharif fell like dominoes to the Taliban on August 12, 13, and 14, respectively, leaving some Afghan Air Drive pilots and workers scrambling to get to Kabul, whereas others flew their plane to neighboring Uzbekistan.

“Within the final yr previous the Taliban takeover, the army become protection mode and solely in the previous couple of weeks have been allowed to launch assaults,” Ahmadi recalled. “By that point, the Taliban had already made main territorial developments.”

Selecting Flight

On August 15, 2021, the state of affairs grew extra tense by the hour as rumors unfold in regards to the Taliban’s advance into the capital. Ahmadi, satisfied by the rising chaos round him and the urging of his commanders, turned and began operating towards the airport.

He was one among dozens who heeded the order to rapidly muster on the Afghan Air Drive’s operational headquarters on the essential airport in Kabul. As soon as there, at round 11 a.m., he discovered a variety of his colleagues in uniform, standing close to their plane.

A couple of hours later, information broke that Ghani and his aides had flown overseas. On the Air Drive headquarters, panic set in. Ghani’s departure meant the top of every little thing. Days after his escape, on August 18, Ghani posted a video on his Fb web page by which he mentioned that he’d left the nation to keep away from bloodshed. The previous Afghan president, who’s now within the United Arab Emirates, stands accused of taking thousands and thousands of {dollars} in money, although a current report by SIGAR signifies that Ghani and his entourage might have taken solely round $500,000 with them.

Ahmadi appeared round at his fellow pilots as they absorbed the information that the nation’s commander in chief, the person who by legislation held their destiny and that of 38 million Afghans in his fingers, had deserted his publish. Straight away, all their years of laborious work appeared to evaporate.

Ahmadi picked up his telephone to name his spouse, an engineer and civil servant. He tried to maintain his voice calm as he informed her that he didn’t know the place he would find yourself or whether or not he would see her and their daughter once more anytime quickly. His spouse had burned all of Ahmadi’s army service paperwork and his uniform and buried his service weapons of their yard backyard. Ahmadi couldn’t cease excited about what would occur if the Taliban got here knocking on the door of their household dwelling in Kabul after he had flown over the border, leaving his spouse and daughter behind.

Ahmadi boarded a PC-12 surveillance airplane with eight different Afghan Air Drive workers. His boss, Ziarmal, and Zia, the previous chief of Army workers, ordered Ahmadi to fly to Uzbekistan, the place Ghani and different senior officers of his authorities had landed solely hours earlier. The U.S. army managed the Kabul airport on the time, which means that American air visitors controllers would have been conscious of the Afghan pilots’ flight routings.

However Uzbek officers on the bottom, overwhelmed by an inflow of a whole lot of Afghan army personnel, refused to grant Ahmadi entry to Termez Worldwide Airport, he mentioned. The federal government of Uzbekistan didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark. Ahmadi was compelled to show again to Kabul and refuel earlier than making ready to fly out once more close to midnight on August 15. By then the Taliban had consolidated management over many of the Afghan capital, however following a tenuous deal struck with U.S. officers in Doha, that they had largely stayed outdoors the airport.

Ahmadi thought of how a minimum of seven of his colleagues had reportedly been killed after Taliban squads hunted them down of their houses. That’s when he made up his thoughts to go to Tajikistan. He contacted Tajik authorities, asking if he might land; they mentioned sure.

Ahmadi felt a rush of reduction when he touched down hours later at Bokhtar Worldwide Airport in southern Tajikistan with eight workers members of the Afghan Air Drive onboard. Almost 143 Afghan pilots and Air Drive personnel, who flew in on three planes and two helicopters, reportedly landed at Bokhtar within the early hours of August 16. As Ahmadi disembarked from his airplane, he thought that the worst was over. However the feeling was short-lived. As soon as the Afghan pilots have been on the bottom, Tajik authorities confiscated their cell phones and different belongings and transferred them to a dormitory at Naser Khosrow College.

Ahmadi mentioned that Tajik officers quickly got here to him with a requirement: Be a part of the “resistance forces,” a gaggle of armed males, together with some members of the previous Afghan Army, who have been combating the Taliban in Afghanistan’s northern Panjshir province close to the Tajik border below the command of Ahmad Massoud. The son of the legendary mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who fought the Soviets and the Taliban earlier than he was assassinated by Al Qaeda in 2001, the youthful Massoud had brazenly referred to as for the U.S. and NATO to arm his fighters, often known as the Nationwide Resistance Entrance, or NRF. However there weren’t many takers amongst U.S. officers, and a few Afghan pilots have been equally skeptical about becoming a member of the resistance.

Exhausted and disillusioned, Ahmadi and most of his colleagues couldn’t think about moving into one other struggle and returning to the hell that they had simply fled. Abruptly, the Tajik authorities’s heat reception for the Afghan pilots turned chilly. After refusing to battle for the resistance forces, Ahmadi and his fellow pilots have been transferred to a sanitarium on the outskirts of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, the place they needed to go right down to a close-by river for ingesting water. Tajik authorities had seized their cellphones, which means that that they had no option to contact their households again dwelling. Ahmadi’s story strains up with related reviews printed within the days and weeks after the U.S. withdrawal.

The Tajik authorities didn’t reply to requests for remark, however Zia, the previous chief of Army workers, denies that the Afghan pilots in Tajikistan have been pressured into becoming a member of the NRF. Many of the plane flown into Tajikistan have been fixed-wing planes like Ahmadi’s, Zia informed The Intercept, and would have been ineffective in mountainous Panjshir province, the place there have been few appropriate touchdown zones. “Pushing the pilots to affix the resistance forces was not demanded by the Tajik authorities nor by the resistance management,” Zia mentioned, including that a variety of pilots in Tajikistan aspired to affix the resistance forces and had talked about it with their colleagues.

The one factor that stored Ahmadi sane throughout his days in Tajikistan have been surreptitious calls to his spouse on a cellphone that one of many pilots had one way or the other managed to cover from the Tajik authorities. Finally, the pilots used the telephone to name their outdated U.S. army advisers and ask for assist in securing their launch and secure passage out of Tajikistan. Ahmadi and his colleagues have been in the end evacuated and flown to the UAE with assist from officers on the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, he mentioned. Three months later, in April, Ahmadi was allowed to to migrate to the U.S.

A Double Betrayal

Within the days main as much as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan final yr, movies and photographs of the Taliban flying U.S.-made Black Hawk helicopters cropped up on social media. On the time, the Taliban claimed to have captured greater than 100 Russian-made fight helicopters. However the make-up of the Taliban’s air fleet stays unclear. Taliban representatives didn’t reply to requests for remark from The Intercept. With out a absolutely functioning air drive, the Taliban can’t suppress ongoing resistance within the north or fend off what the White Home calls “over-the-horizon” assaults, just like the drone strike that killed Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in late July.

Whereas there’s all the time an opportunity that Pakistan, Iran, China, and even Russia would possibly think about serving to the Taliban exchange the plane that Afghan pilots flew overseas final yr, doing so wouldn’t be with out dangers. Since the US has sanctioned many of the Taliban’s key leaders, any transfer by one other nation to materially help the present Afghan authorities would elevate the prospect of extra U.S. sanctions on the Taliban’s suppliers.

Within the months since Ahmadi settled in the US, the Taliban have continued to fixate on rebuilding the Afghan Air Drive, calling on former Afghan pilots to return to service, promising that they might be granted amnesty. However these ensures ring hole to Ahmadi and plenty of of his fellow pilots. For the reason that Taliban’s declaration of normal amnesty for Afghan safety forces, a whole lot of former authorities officers and Afghan troopers have been forcibly disappeared and assassinated, in keeping with Human Rights Watch.

In the meantime, an estimated 4,300 former Afghan Air Drive workers, together with 33 pilots, have joined the Taliban. A few of these pilots have since been captured by Nationwide Resistance Entrance forces. In a video taped by the NRF and posted on YouTube in June, one Afghan pilot mentioned that he was captured by the group whereas on a mission to supply Taliban forces with tents and different provides. The pilot additionally mentioned that he had served the Afghan Air Drive for 33 years no matter the ruling political regime. Extra lately, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed accountability for an assault on Taliban autos in Herat and an IED assault in Kabul that killed two Taliban army pilots.

Ahmadi and the pilots who helped maintain Afghan plane out of the Taliban’s fingers at the moment are grappling with a double betrayal: Let down by their Western allies after years of joint warfare, they sacrificed the protection of their households for a authorities that deserted them.

As we speak Ahmadi lives in New Jersey, sharing a one-bedroom condominium with an Afghan Air Drive colleague. A federal program for refugees covers his lease, utilities, some transportation, and different prices for as much as eight months, however Ahmadi is determined to complement his earnings.

“I’ve a household who I haven’t been capable of ship a penny to since I left Afghanistan,” he informed The Intercept. “I hope that when individuals and authorities within the U.S. learn this story, they perceive what we’re going by means of and they’re going to hopefully assist me reunite with my household.”

He spends his days looking out Google for aviation jobs — flight attendant, flight operations, floor crew — and filling out purposes. Having misplaced the profession he spent his life constructing, he hopes to fly once more sometime. Whereas he’s grateful to be in the US, he stays involved about his spouse and daughter, now 4. They’ve moved twice since Ahmadi left to make sure their security.

“My daughter now not speaks to her father on the telephone as simply,” Ahmadi’s spouse informed The Intercept. “It’s as if she doesn’t acknowledge him anymore.”