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08-07-2023
WASHINGTON: Nasrat Ahmad Yar, like thousands of other Afghans, came to the United States in the wake of the 2021 Taliban takeover, using a special visa for those who worked for the US military.
The 31-year-old interpreter envisioned a new life where he, his wife and his four children, aged 13, 11, 8 and 15 months could live safely, make money, go to school and prosper, his friend Rahim Amini told media.
Instead, shortly after midnight on July 3, Ahmad Yar was found shot to death inside of his car, which he was driving for the Lyft rideshare company, in a neighborhood in northeast Washington, DC.
“He was not my blood brother, but he was more than that to me,” Amini said. “The only times we were separate from each other was when he was sleeping. We worked together, laughed together, were eating together.”
The two men had met at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan during Ahmad Yar’s 10-year stint as an interpreter for the US military. Like Ahmad Yar, Amini fled the country after the Taliban takeover in August 2021 but Ahmad Yar initially had to stay behind, though he vowed to look after Amini’s family as they holed up in Mazar-i-Sharif, a city defended by government security forces in northern Afghanistan.
Mazar-i-Sharif fell to Taliban control in mid-August, and Ahmad Yar eventually fled to the United Arab Emirates. He then left for the US.
“I’m so happy that I’m in America,” the 36-year-old Amini remembered his friend saying. “I am safe. My children will be educated here.”
In the wake of his death, attention has now turned to Ahmad Yar’s family, with friends from his work with the US military and the local Afghan community launching fundraising efforts.
Those include drives on GoFundMe and Facebook.
“It is a difficult time for the family and also for the community,” Noorullah Ahmadzai, an Afghan community leader in the Washington, DC, area, told media. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
