In May, Afghan Special Mission Wing pilot and U.S. asylee Wahidullah Wahdat learned that his wife was killed in a gunfight outside a money exchange in Kabul. The tragedy has now left Wahdat’s children, all under the age of 13, without parents inside Afghanistan. News of his wife’s death and Wahdat’s ties to the former Afghan military have run rampant on social media. American benefactors from the Afghan American Development Group are attempting to keep Wahdat’s children safe. Without action from the State Department, however, the children have no chance of being reunited with their father.
Wahdat’s voice breaking with sadness, he told me that his children are “not in a good situation, especially emotionally.”
Two years after Wahdat graduated from Afghanistan’s National Military Academy, he began his aviation career as a copilot in the Cessna 208, used to transport Afghan National Army personnel around the country. One year later, he leaped at the chance to join the Special Mission Wing, an elite group of pilots trained to support Afghan and American special operations forces units operating throughout Afghanistan. Wahdat racked up 2,000 combat hours as a pilot. “We loved our job, we tried to keep our people safe and serve our country, and that was our big goal, to bring stability and peace.”
