Belal Kohistani, a Colonel and Afghan Special Mission Wing pilot, penned a letter directed at the west, questioning why NATO and the Biden Administration abandoned their mission and allies.
This week Colonel Belal Kohistani shared a letter questioning the Afghan exit plan. In a letter shared with The Daily Wire, Colonel Kohistani stated he felt left behind by the Biden Administration and Western allies after they pulled all of their forces from Afghanistan.
“My name is Colonel Belal Kohistani and I am currently in the UAE with my fellow 777 Special Mission Wing team awaiting evacuation orders for our families out of Afghanistan,” Kohistani wrote. “We are deeply concerned as we feel we are not being listened [to].”
The letter continued: “As a people stricken with unending grief, some of us have aged decades in a few years and have grown old at a young age without ever seeing the world or anything beyond our four walls. Amidst all of this, when terrorized by an extremist force, those of us who have spent years working for foreign presence in Afghanistan deserve to be saved. It is the least that can be done when our uneventful, but equally precious lives are at stake.”
Colonel Kohistani then posed a direct question to military leaders.
“Our question for NATO and Special Operations Units for US, UK, Australia and Italy is this: How can you abandon us like this? Your allies and your comrades. We fought and countered terrorism together,” he wrote. “The best of NATO and the United States trained the best fighters in Afghanistan; we felt valued, appreciated, and vital to the mission. In the end, it turns out, that was not the case.”
“The reality is that when push came to shove, when the same terrorists we fought together conquered this land, we feel as if we the fighters have been forgotten so easily and unbelievably,” Kohistani continued. “Our families are begging us to beg of you: will anything be done to save us? Are they justified in this despair? Do we continue waiting on you to do the right thing and honor your commitments to your allies? Or should we relinquish our hopes of any rescue?”
“Our question to our US counterparts is this: how were you able to publicize and rescue other vulnerable members of Afghanistan while SMW warriors who fought day and night to kill or capture terrorists, remained unimportant?” Colonel Kohistani asked. “We fought and got our hands dirty so that the rest of these people could have a peaceful life.”
“Please respond most promptly and accordingly as we are running out of time,” the letter concluded.
Many government leaders and even the Pentagon have contradicted the President’s decision to withdraw military forces from Afghanistan.
“I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan,” General Frank McKenzie stated at a Senate hearing in late September. “And I also recommended earlier in the fall of 2020 that we will maintain 4,500 of that time, those are my personal views.”
The General’s testimony contradicted what was reported by the White House.
Gen. McKenzie also testified, “I also had a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces, and eventually the Afghan government.”
Kohistani is not the only Colonel to question America’s abrupt withdrawal. On Aug. 26, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller posted a video on his Facebook page that was highly critical of America’s exit from Afghanistan.
Scheller was jailed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina for refusing to follow an order to stop posting to social media, an order that was made after he posted a series of videos that have since gone viral.
The high-profile case was embarrassing for the Biden Administration and military brass, and likely contributed to the colonel’s uncharacteristically quick release from custody and relatively small fine ($5,000).
“All our son did is ask the questions that everybody was asking themselves, but they were too scared to speak out loud,” Scheller’s father, Stu Scheller Sr., told Task and Purpose. “He was asking for accountability. In fact, I think he even asked for an apology [because] we made mistakes, but they couldn’t do that, which is mind-blowing.”
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