No Child Left Behind — Except in Afghanistan

A missing child is the existential nightmare of parenthood. This account from Afghanistan to America is a staggering story of a parent’s relentless audacity of hope.

May 4, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

In October, 2021, I wrote a post entitled “Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS-K, Credibility.” It was critical of the poorly planned and chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan that diminished the U.S. President and America’s reputation in foreign policy. My post highlighted, among other truths, the $80 billion in U.S. military weapons left behind to be exploited by the Taliban. But that was not all that was left behind.

The Wall Street Journal recently published a heart wrenching story by Jessica Donati entitled “A Dad Hunts for His Lost Boy in Kabul,” (April 16, 2022). It’s a well written account of a little known incident that took place during the catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, 2021. An Afghan man, identified only as “Mohammad” to protect his family, was among a vast crowd trying to leave the Kabul airport that day. Just two days before, an ISIS-K bomb exploded at the airport killing 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. soldiers. Both the Marines and the Taliban waiting for them to leave were on high alert. On the day the bomb exploded, Mohammad’s wife gave birth by emergency cesarean section. She was in no condition to travel, but travel they must. Days earlier, Taliban fighters showed up at Mohammad’s house looking for an American. Then the U.S. State Department advised all Americans to leave Kabul. Mohammed, who was trained in psychology and addictions treatment, had served as an advisor to the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. He also held dual American citizenship.

He also knew that his family would be in danger if they remained so they were among a mob desperately trying to board a last chance American transport plane. At the Kabul airport, they were cleared by soldiers to pass through a gate to board the plane. Mohammad carried a few hastily packed necessities and the newborn baby while escorting his ailing wife, Bibi, who took the hand of their eight year-old son, James.

The Taliban were watching close by. Pressed by a crushing and panicked mob, the family was pushed through the gate to board the plane. In the chaos, their son became separated from Bibi and forced back into the crowd. Once the parents realized he was missing, they could see no sign of him in the mob on the other side of the fence. Mohammad tried to go back, but soldiers barred him saying that he would not be able to return.

With his wife on the verge of collapse and still holding his newborn infant, Mohammed was faced with a crushing spontaneous choice. Does he abandon his wife and newborn to save his son? He had to get his wife and infant aboard that plane first. There were no seats on the crowded transport and most people were standing, but someone on the packed floor of the plane gave up a space for Bibi who then collapsed.

Placing the infant with her on the floor, Mohammad again tried to go search for James. Outside the plane, panicked mobs were barring his exit as they tried to force their way aboard. We all saw footage of fleeing Afghans trying to cling to the outside of that plane. As it prepared for takeoff, Mohammad could only pray in despair for the safety of his son.

Few of us reading this can fully comprehend the existential state of anxiety such an event would produce in any parent.

Afghans crammed onto an Air Force transport plane to escape Kabul.

A Parallax View

Mohammad tried to phone James from inside the plane on the tarmac, but because of the bombing two days before, soldiers were on high alert. They threatened to smash his phone if he tried to use it again. None of the fleeing passengers even knew where the plane would later land. Then the WSJ account switched to a parallax view, a view of the same event from another perspective: that of eight year-old James.

Being small, the crush of the crowd forced James from his mother’s hand while pushing him ever more deeply into the frantic mob. When he realized he had lost his family, he sat on a curb and cried under the weight of his own despair. He was holding only a small plastic bag with his passport and a cell phone. As he heard the plane’s engines, he became one of an unknown number of children separated from parents and left behind stranded and alone in Afghanistan.

The WSJ article points out that the State Department was overwhelmed by the flood of refugees seeking admission to the United States. In addition to those from Afghanistan, the ongoing refugee crisis was also impacted by daily chaos at the U.S. Southern Border. President Biden has since pledged to also accept 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, a story I wrote of in “Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us.”

Back to eight year-old James: Another Afghan man at the scene with his nephew was unable to get his own family onto that plane. He saw James on the ground crying and knew he had become separated. He also knew that the Taliban would only exploit him. So he, too, was forced into a spontaneous decision. He took James with him and his nephew in search of safety.

The courageous stranger (unnamed for his own safety) later told The Wall Street Journal, “I found a little boy crying in a corner. I couldn’t just leave him there.” He brought James to his home in Kabul while his nephew tried to call a number programmed on James’ phone. Aboard the plane in flight, Mohammad’s phone was receiving no signal.

Only in flight did the passengers learn that they were bound for a U.S. air base in Bahrain on the western side of the Persian Gulf. Upon landing, Mohammad charged his phone, but he and others learned that their SIM cards would not work outside of Afghanistan. The base was crowded with thousands of Afghan refugees. Mohammad tried in vain to get someone to try to contact his son. Soldiers wrote his name and description down. Three days later, Mohammad and his wife and baby were placed aboard another plane bound for a military base in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, Mohammad heard accounts out of Kabul that some of the Taliban were searching for lost children with American ties so they could hold them under torture for ransom. He feared revealing to contacts in Kabul that his son was alone and stranded there. He finally reached Bibi’s sister in Northern Afghanistan but no one knew the whereabouts of her brother, Sayed, the one person who Mohammad knew would go to any lengths to find James.

Mohammad tried in vain to arrange his own return to Kabul to find his son, but ran into the same roadblock as in Kabul. If he went back there he would not be allowed to return. Finally, on his second day in Wisconsin, he was able to get a Wi-Fi signal and learned that his son had been rescued by a stranger in Kabul. A full week had passed when, to his great relief, there were multiple messages on Mohammad’s newly accessed phone from James and the stranger who rescued him.

He called right away and tearfully heard his son’s voice. There are 1,500 Afghan children who arrived in the U.S. on refugee flights without their parents. To date, only about 60 have been reunited with family members. Most remain in U.S. Government custody. But the problem with James was the opposite. There seemed to be no protocol for bringing a minor child from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to reunite him with parents in the United States.

Task Force Argo helped some flee Afghanistan. Here they are about to leave Mazar-e-Sharif. Photo courtesy of Task Force Argo.

Task Force Argo

Mohammed learned from another evacuee at the Wisconsin base that a volunteer group of American veterans and former government employees known as Task Force Argo was working to charter evacuation flights out of the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mohammad kept trying to reach his brother-in-law, Sayed, who had been studying in Kabul. When the city fell, Sayed relocated to a remote region with no phone reception. He worried about his family in Kabul so a friend climbed with Sayed to a remote mountaintop to try to get a signal. When he connected, he saw multiple urgent messages from his sister, Bibi. By chance, his phone rang just then. It was Bibi.

When Sayed learned what happened, he vowed to return to Kabul to search for James. While there, he messaged Mohammad for the name and location of the stranger who rescued him. Sayed then learned of the hope that Task Force Argo might help. In Kabul, he and his traumatized nephew had a tearful reunion. Then they boarded a bus bound for Mazar-e-Sharif. Jesse Jensen, a co-founder of Task Force Argo, told The Wall Street Journal:

“America needs to step back up to the plate and demonstrate that we don’t abandon allies or children of American citizens. If the U.S. government won’t do this, we will.”

The day after Sayed retrieved his nephew, the stranger who had rescued him in Kabul was visited by Taliban fighters looking for the son of an American. They searched the house, but found nothing. The man then took his own family and hastily left Kabul.

Task Force Argo arranged to get Sayed and James aboard a flight from Mazar-e-Sharif to United Arab Emirates where they were relocated to a secure compound of 9,000 Afghan refugees called “Emirates Humanitarian City.” The U.S. Embassy there has an office for interviews, but progress in vetting the stranded — many of whom were allies who assisted the American effort in Afghanistan — is very slow.

The story, for now, ends with Sayed and James safe but now stranded in the United Arab Emirates. It was not the fault of eight year-old James or his parents that the process for evacuating them from Kabul was so poorly planned and chaotic. Eight months after that day, the U.S. State Department could easily fix this, but hasn’t. I hope the attention to this by The Wall Street Journal, coupled with the heroic efforts of Sayed and Task Force Argo, might bring a happy ending to this horrific but still hopeful account.

Under current White House policy, the only other option might be for Sayed to somehow get James into Mexico and the Southern Border where they could simply wade across the Rio Grande into the United States with little in the way of obstacles.

Please pray for James and his family.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this story on social media. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS-K, Credibility

Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us

The Annunciation: The Consecration of Russia and Ukraine

The Despair of Towers Falling, The Courage of Men Rising

James reunited with his uncle Sayed. Photo courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

A Catholic Priest 27 Years Wrongly in Prison in America

Father MacRae being led to prison, September 23, 1994

On the Feast of St Padre Pio, Fr Gordon MacRae marks 27 years of wrongful imprisonment amassing tools for coping mentally and spiritually with life’s unjust wounds.

September 22, 2021

Note from the Editor: The title for this post was inspired by a 2019 article at LinkedIn by Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D. entitled, “A Catholic Priest 25 Years Wrongly in Prison in America.” It was written by Father Valladares from excerpts of his acclaimed book on priesthood cited below. Still in prison two years later, this version is written entirely from the perspective of Fr. Gordon MacRae as his 27th year in prison comes to an end.

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Wounds from the Church

As most readers know, I was convicted and sent to prison on September 23, 1994, the same day the Church honors Padre Pio, a great saint whose shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world. Padre Pio was canonized by another saint, Pope John Paul II, on June 16, 2002 at the height of the Catholic sex abuse scandal as it emerged out of Boston and spread like a virus.

For fifty years, Padre Pio bore the visible wounds of Christ on his body. He also bore the less visible wounds of slander and false witness inflicted from inside the Church. On several occasions in his life, his priestly ministry was suspended because lurid and ludicrous accusations were hurled at him from unscrupulous critics, many of whom were Church personnel. It was because of this, and some uncanny threads of connection, that Padre Pio entered our lives and became a Patron Saint of Beyond These Stone Walls. This is an account last told in 2020 in “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

In 2012, Australian Catholic priest, psychologist, and author, Fr. James Valladares, Ph.D., published a widely acclaimed book, “Hope Springs Eternal in the Priest1y Breast” (iUniverse). It cites a good deal of my own writing on the subjects of sacrifice, suffering, and priesthood. I am not at all worthy of this citation that appears on his "Acknowledgments" page:

“Fr. Gordon MacRae — an extraordinarily heroic priest with indomitable courage, unrelenting tenacity, unwavering patience, and Christ-like magnanimity who personally reflects what Pope Benedict XVI confessed: ‘All of us [priests] are suffering as a result of the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust or failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse.’”

— Hope Springs Eternal in the Priest1y Breast, p.xviii

I don’t know about any of that, especially the part about “unwavering patience.” (Maybe Pornchai, writing from Thailand will weigh in on that.) Anyway, the book extensively cites the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal whose three major articles on my trial and imprisonment took this story out of the darkness of one-sided suppression. It also cites the work of Ryan A. MacDonald, most notably his investigative journalism compiled in “Truth in Justice.”

However, the cryptic statement of Pope Benedict cited by Father Valladares above needs clarification. The Pope’s reference to “the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust” needs no explanation. His further statement referring to those who “failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse” is broader in scope. Fr. Valladares understood it to refer to some in the Church who tried to remedy one injustice by inflicting yet another. Some bishops went far beyond what has been required by the rule of law and also acquiesced to demands of the media and others with an agenda by publishing lists of priests deemed “credibly accused” but without basic due process of law.

Before my trial in 1994, for example, a past bishop of my diocese wrote a press release declaring me guilty of victimizing not only my accusers, but the entire Catholic Church. Two years ago, twenty-five years into my unjust sentence, a subsequent bishop joined the mob with stones in hand by publishing anew such a list with the stated goal of “transparency.” A year later, that same bishop was himself accused in a case that on its face is “credible” according to the standards bishops have used against priests.

The claims against Bishop Peter Libasci are alleged to have taken place in 1983, the same year as the claims against me. His defense is being handled by a law firm that most priests could never afford. But as I have documented in the post linked below, I believe the claims against him to be untrue and unjust. I was criticized for defending my bishop after my own name appeared on his list, but I am not looking for the mob approval my bishop was apparently looking for. I wrote of the injustice he faces in “Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

Detective James McLaughlin celebrates his 350th arrest.

Wounds from the State

I cannot bring myself to rehash the litany of false witness and official misconduct that sent me to prison on September 23, 1994. I just read a report by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). It reveals the disturbing fact that in more than half of the cases overturned with new evidence revealing that the person in prison did not commit the crime, misconduct by prosecutors or police was the primary cause. (See Dale Chappell “Report Shows Official Misconduct Responsible for More than Half of Exonerations.”)

In the cases of many falsely accused Catholic priests, however, misconduct usually has a different outcome. There is never any “planted evidence,” but there is usually a lot of money in play as accusers become plaintiffs in civil lawsuits. Money is often an enticement to corruption and false witness. In many of these cases, no actual crime was ever committed 20, 30, or 40 years earlier when claims were alleged to have occurred.

In the Exonerations Report, sex offenses constituted the second highest category of wrongful convictions. Exonerations in that category encompassed a wide range of official misconduct including police threatening defendants and witnesses, falsified forensic evidence, police not pursuing exculpatory evidence, and police lying under oath. All of this was in the background of my trial and is documented in “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct.”

Many people ask me why I am still in prison when others have come forward with evidence and testimony that casts doubt on the integrity of my conviction. I believe that the most important factor in my continued imprisonment is that the officer behind it has scored convictions via lenient plea deals in over a thousand cases of suspected sexual abuse. Lenient plea deals bolstered his conviction rate without totally destroying the defendants for life. As most readers know, I was offered such a deal in 1994 which would have had me released from prison by 1996 had I actually been guilty or willing to pretend so.

Reversing a conviction based on Detective James F. McLaughlin’s malfeasance in my case may have the unintended consequence of reopening a thousand others that he was involved with. It would have required moral courage and judicial integrity on the part of the judge, a former federal prosecutor who declined a hearing in my habeas corpus appeal. Judges rely on a procedural ruling giving state courts a right to finality. No judge has ruled on the evidence or witnesses that have arisen in the years since my trial. No judge has ever even heard the evidence or witnesses.

This raises a hard truth about our justice system. Guilty defendants are inclined to accept lenient plea deals while many innocent defendants cannot or will not. I am one of them. As a result, many guilty defendants spend far less time in prison than innocent ones. You have already seen a glaring example.

As a direct result of my writing about the horrific crimes perpetrated against Pornchai Moontri when he was brought to America against his will at age 12 in 1985, Richard Alan Bailey was found and arrested in Oregon. Due to extensive evidence, he pled no contest to forty felony charges of sexual assault in the State of Maine in 2018. He was sentenced to 18 years probation and never saw the inside of a prison. In nearby New Hampshire, I refused a one year plea deal and faced trial with no evidence. I was then sentenced to 67 years in prison. Let that sink in.

The Prophet Jonah: A Final Chapter

But none of this addresses what I intended to be at the heart of this post that marks those 27 years. There is nothing I can do to secure justice or freedom for myself. And there was nothing I did do to bring about my loss of them. But there was a lot I could do to secure justice and restore freedom for one whose path on this journey from Jerusalem to Jericho crossed with mine.

I did nothing so grandiose as the conversion of Nineveh, but through the Grace of God I became a necessary instrument in the conversion of Pornchai Moontri who once was lost and broken and now lives free in the light of Divine Mercy. In a September 10 telephone call to him in Thailand on his birthday, his first as a free man, he told me that his deliverance from both prison and his past could not have happened without me. I do not regret paying that ransom. I today believe this to be the purpose for what I have endured.

In my recent post, “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner,” I wrote about the Seventh Century BC Prophet Jonah and why much of the Book of Jonah is today considered to be a parable. I did not want to detract from the hopeful outcome of that story, so I held its final chapter until now. Its last chapter also took place in Nineveh, but in our time and not Jonah’s.

Though the story of Jonah and the Great Fish is a parable, the Prophet Jonah was a historical figure honored by all three of the great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When Jonah was sent by God to the ancient city of Nineveh in the Seventh Century BC, it was the capital of the Assyrian Empire in its time of glory. Nineveh was a center for commercial trade routes on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq, just opposite the modern city of Mosul. Nineveh was established in the Neolithic period more than 8,000 years ago, and inhabited almost without a break until about 1500 AD.

In the centuries before the Prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh, the city was known as a religious center, but it fell far away from its religious roots. The city honored the Assyrian goddess, Ishtar, a goddess of healing who somehow was transformed by the time of Jonah into a goddess of war. The Assyrians built the city with broad boulevards, parks and gardens, and a magnificent palace of more than 80 rooms.

Today, Nineveh is reduced to two large mounds beneath which are the ruins of a city once thriving. The mounds are called, in Arabic, “Kuyunjik” and “Nebi Yunus” which means “place of Jonah.” In ancient times, a massive tomb in honor of the Prophet Jonah was built in a Sunni mosque in Nineveh on the site of an Assyrian church where the remains of Jonah were thought to be buried. This part of the city was revered by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The Tomb of the Prophet somehow managed to survive intact until just a decade ago. After standing for over a thousand years, the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah was blown up and destroyed in 2011 by the fundamentalist Islamic group, al Qaeda.

The Taliban had been doing the same thing in Afghanistan. Islam was preceded there by Buddhism which was eventually eclipsed by Islam and driven out around the Seventh Century AD. In the Sixth Century AD, Buddhist monks carved into a cliff side the world’s largest statue of Buddha. Standing at 180 feet, it survived for 1,500 years before it was blown up by the Taliban in 2001. It was destroyed at about the same time the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda while the September 11, 2001 assault on the United States was planned.

I bring all of this up now because witnessing in my own recent lifetime the demise of people, places, and things once held sacred by many people has had an outsized impact on me that some might find perplexing. Why would I care so much about the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah or a 1,500 year-old gigantic stone Buddha? No matter who these monuments ultimately served, they arose from the hearts and souls of a people. When religious icons are destroyed by evil intent, so is the spirit of those people.

Catholicism and the cancel culture assault on the priesthood now risk this same fate. That risk is manifested most in America over just the last two decades. This threat does not come from the Taliban or Islamic State — though they may be poised to take advantage of the vacuum of hopelessness left in its wake. The terrorism behind this threat is called “apathy.”

If the priesthood and the Mass fall away, it will have as its primary cause the agendas of a few and the silence of too many.

We have witnessed in just recent years a chronic disparagement of the priesthood even from Pope Francis and our bishops, a canceling of a widely reverenced ancient form of the Sacrifice of the Mass, a handing over of the Church’s patrimony to the Chinese Communist government, a disparaging of our Church and faith as a “non essential service” by secular authority, a rampant capitulation to that by some bishops, a failure to defend the sanctity of life and the sanctity of the Eucharist, and a Catholic President who believes in neither.

This is why the Taliban despise us and judge us to be “Infidels,” which means exactly what it implies: “A people of little faith.”

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From a Homily of Padre Pio

“Why does is there evil in the world? Listen closely to me. There was a mother who was embroidering on a small weaving frame. Her young son was seated in front of her on a small low stool watching his mother work. But as he watched, he saw only the underside of the weaving frame. And so he said, ‘But Mother, what are you doing? The embroidery is so ugly!’ So his mother lowered the frame to show him the other side of the work, the good side with all its colors in place and all the threads in a harmonious pattern. That is it. Have you seen what evil is like? Evil is the reverse side of that embroidery and we are all sitting on a small stool.”

— From a homily of St. Padre Pio

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I want to thank readers who have consulted our Special Events page to assist our friend Pornchai in the daunting task of rebuilding his life. As you know, he was taken from Thailand at age 11. On his September 10 birthday this month, he had a touching reunion with his cousin who was eight when they lived together and is now 45 and an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. They met on September 10th for a birthday celebration at the Gulf of Thailand.

You may also wish to review the related posts linked herein:

Padre Pio, Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

Bishop Peter A. Libasci Was Set Up by Governor Andrew Cuomo