(CNN) Belal Khohestani wishes the United States would feel like home. The former pilot for the Afghan Special Mission Wing -- the elite of Afghanistan's military -- recently moved from Fort Pickett in Virginia to Chicago, where he has found a place to live and a roommate.
He is adjusting -- slowly, he admits -- to a new country. But everyone who would truly make America a place he could call home -- his wife and four children, his two sisters and his mother -- is still thousands of miles away, trapped in his native Kabul.
"I am starting from zero to build up my life," Khohestani told CNN, "but now I have a big issue and big problems in Afghanistan."
In mid-August, he and other pilots from the Special Mission Wing flew their aircraft across the border to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in a desperate bid to keep some of the Afghan military's most advanced equipment from falling into Taliban hands and thereby enabling their own de facto air force.
Many fled the country without their families during the audacious move. They have waited for the US to evacuate their loved ones ever since.
"All those families, they're stuck in Kabul," Khohestani told CNN.
Full Article Read https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/02/politics/afghan-pilots-us-resettle-families/index.html
Afghan Pilot defects to US fears for family left inside Kabul
He is adjusting -- slowly, he admits -- to a new country. But everyone who would truly make America a place he could call home -- his wife and four children, his two sisters and his mother -- is still thousands of miles away, trapped in his native Kabul.
"I am starting from zero to build up my life," Khohestani told CNN, "but now I have a big issue and big problems in Afghanistan."
In mid-August, he and other pilots from the Special Mission Wing flew their aircraft across the border to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in a desperate bid to keep some of the Afghan military's most advanced equipment from falling into Taliban hands and thereby enabling their own de facto air force.
Many fled the country without their families during the audacious move. They have waited for the US to evacuate their loved ones ever since.
"All those families, they're stuck in Kabul," Khohestani told CNN.
Full Article Read https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/02/politics/afghan-pilots-us-resettle-families/index.html
Afghan Pilot defects to US fears for family left inside Kabul
