They were on the run from the Taliban, abandoned by their US allies — until a Wall Street banker decided to smuggle them out of Afghanistan
Shortly before 9 in the morning, almost a year to the day after American troops withdrew from Afghanistan, Colonel Nabiullah and his family push carts of heavy baggage through the airport in Thessaloniki, Greece. Among a tide of tanned tourists, the men wear starched white gowns over pantaloons, the women scarves over long dark dresses.
After graduating from West Point, as his father had, Calbos met Nabiullah in 2013. He was assigned to"advise" the colonel, even though the older man had been serving in the Afghan army alongside the Americans for more than a decade. Before Calbos arrived at Nabiullah's outpost, just north of Kandahar, the sector had been"a bloodbath," he says, with a half dozen firefights breaking out every day.
During the US military's chaotic exit from Kabul, some 75,000 Afghans were allowed to board planes to the US. Most were barely vetted, and some weren't even qualified for visas under the government's stringent rules for Afghans. The last flights out were packed with people strong enough to bull their way through the mob and shove papers at young Marines who had been assigned to guard the perimeter and had no training in passport control.
Discouraged but undeterred, Calbos decided to arrange the exfiltration himself. Was there, in the diplomatic lingo of visas and refugees,"a way forward" for this man and his family? Maybe, he thought. Four members of the family had worked with US interests, which would give them a boost in the visa process. Plus, they had papers.
"As a veteran who has a son who served in combat in Afghanistan, where many of his platoon's soldiers were severely wounded, I understood the importance of these Afghan heroes who supported American forces," Finelli says."I felt compelled to support efforts to address America's commitment that we would not leave them behind."
The man who enabled Calbos to house the colonel and his family in Greece was Amed Khan, a global fix-it man who worked in the Clinton administration before going on to direct Paradigm Global Group, a private investment firm. Khan got involved in refugee migration in 2014, as displaced Syrians flocked to Europe by the millions."We found them living in tents, in fields and sleeping bags," Khan recalls.