Afghan baby handed to US soldiers amid airlift chaos still missing, reveals State Dept

A 2-month-old toddler who was seen handed to the US troops over the barbed wire fence at Kabul’s airport during the concluding days of the frantic evacuations by the Biden administration in August “is still missing,” the US government has acknowledged to an agency, according to US newspaper The Post. The baby boy named Sohail Ahmadi’s disappearance since August 19 has grieved the Afghan refugee family that was relocated to Texas. The family was put on a plane bound for Qatar to the US and has to date not been reunited with their child. 

"We are committed to ensuring the protection of unaccompanied children. While we generally don't comment on specific cases, the US government is aware of this case and we are working with our international partners and the international community to explore every avenue to locate the child, which includes an international amber alert that was issued through the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children," the State Department said in a statement to The Hill.

Mirza Ali Ahmadi, his wife, Suraya, and their five children had somehow made it to the gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport during the United States troop drawdown in view of the Taliban’s siege of the territory. It was then that a US soldier was pictured pulling a two-month-old baby Sohail from over the tall fence as the family feared that the child wouldn’t be able to make it through the gate, approximately five meters away, due to stampede and chaos. 

Kabul airport’s entrance was 'too dangerous' for the child 

It had taken the entire family more than half an hour to make it to the barbed wire tall fence, the father of the child who was formerly employed as a security guard at the US embassy for 10 years, reportedly informed on Friday. US broadcasters now report, that the toddler’s whereabouts have been unknown and the Afghan family had been revisiting every venue to find the child. The mother of the baby boy had ‘let go’ of the child after being told by a US military commander that the airport’s entrance might be too dangerous for the baby. 

In an interview that he gave via a translator, the father of the missing child stated that the said US Army commander accompanied him later to locate the child, speculating that he may have been carried to the special area for children, but ultimately was not found, US’ National News report revealed. The commander’s name has not been identified. The report suggests that Ahmadi was relying on colleagues from the embassy to help with communication as he did not speak English. The latter was told that his child may have been flown out of the country in one of the aircraft all by himself, although this could not be established by the family independently. 

'Missing Baby' nowhere to be found

The 35-year-old was told by the exiting US forces that the military had “no resources” to accommodate the toddler at the airport. The rest of the children, all aged 17, 9, 6, and 3 were evacuated on a flight that landed first landed in Qatar, had a layover in Germany, before arriving in the United States. The family now lives in Fort Bliss, Texas with no information about the child that was handed to the soldiers at the Kabul airport fence. Another child had similarly gone viral who was handed to the US soldiers via a fence. The baby girl was pictured being pulled by her arm over razor wire during the final days of the US evacuations. She was later reunited with her family and has been living happily in the US.  

Missing child Sohail's grieved father reportedly says that he is often told by everyone that they will do their best to find the baby but no progress has been made with respect to the search. An Afghan refugee support group had also circulated the image of the child with the caption “Missing Baby” in an effort to find him but to no avail. A US official familiar with the development who spoke on the condition of anonymity revealed that the baby was handed to the US soldiers amid the hasty and botched evacuation process but no one can find the child since then either on US military bases or overseas refugee camps. The toddler’s mother, Suraya, reportedly cries most of the time. 

With agency inputs