Name withheld — Kabul, Afghanistan

(Name withheld) spent 10 years as a vehicle contractor for the U.S. military. Special immigrant visa applications were repeatedly rejected because of errors in the recommendation letters from his U.S. supervisors.

The situation here is really critical. We haven’t slept for four or five days, maybe one hour per night. Everything is against our expectations. I mean, it was supposed that the government in Kabul would not collapse. But it did, and everything just diminished overnight. And the Taliban just rushed to the city, to the streets.

I don’t know what the Western countries — what the U.S. — did to us. I really don’t know. If they were in such a rush, why didn’t they proceed to document their allies earlier? We are betrayed. We are trapped. We are waiting behind a closed door for someone to come and haul us outside and execute us in front of our family. This is so terrible. People are horrified. Everyone has a lot of concern and anxieties. We don’t know what’s going on and what’s happening next. But the only thing we know is that we will not survive…

My wife and one kid left for India, as they had visas. I am hiding with my two other children. We are scared, frightened, and threatened behind the door. And it’s terrible. I cannot make the words to explain the real situation. My cousin still is disappeared, and we don’t have any news.