Thank you.
Sheltered Path, or Aman Lara, is the non-profit organization of veterans, former interpreters and volunteers who get good people out of bad places.
In Pashto, “aman lara” means “sheltered path”. We were founded in the midst of this crisis by a veteran, Drummond Fraser, and his chief interpreter, Zabihullah Hamdard.
We exist because Canada needs an organization to support the evacuation of Afghans, both those who helped our war efforts and those who worked alongside us to advance Canadian democratic principles. Abandoning these people to a desperate state at the hands of the Taliban is unacceptable. We need to redeem our national honour and ensure they come to Canada. Every life we save is a victory.
Since its inception, Sheltered Path has helped almost 2,000 Afghans escape the Taliban. This month alone, we have evacuated 79 families, for a total of 449 people—each a valuable life, each a person who could make Canada stronger.
The situation in Afghanistan is fluid, but right now the problem with getting people out isn't the Taliban. It's the process.
We work closely with the Canadian government. We move only people who have a pathway to Canada and are approved by the IRCC. Once approved, we move people that very week, yet we have over 10,000 people on our list who are stuck in Afghanistan. Over half of them have applied, but have not yet been acknowledged by the Government of Canada. We can't consider moving them until they are in the IRCC system.
Of the remaining 5,000 people who are in the Canadian system, each needs at least one more step in the process to be ready to move. The crucial step is the confirmation of identity—biometrics. It's an essential security check to ensure that applicants are who they say they are. As Canada has no government presence in Afghanistan, the only way to confirm identity is to travel to a third country. Since we can't confirm identity in Afghanistan, applicants need a passport and a visa to get to a third country for processing. This adds two additional steps, which are controlled by two foreign governments, with all of the accompanying bureaucracy, delays and risks.
Two-thirds of our people don't have passports. To get a passport, Afghans are effectively telling the Taliban that they want to get away from them. Imagine: You're trying to flee the Taliban, but to do so you need to travel to an office that's controlled by the Taliban and give your name, the names of your family members, your address and all the fingerprints and photos of your family to the Taliban. Doing this exposes our people to great danger. As well, getting a visa to a third country is another obstacle. It exposes these families to another level of risk, and it can be expensive and time-consuming.
If we find a way to confirm identity inside Afghanistan, we can skip the steps of getting a passport and visa and bypass the involvement of foreign governments that we cannot control. With those obstacles removed, Aman Lara could move a quarter of its list almost immediately. We could move these 2,500 people directly to Canada, clear the backlog and free up government resources to process the remaining 7,500.
Finding a way to confirm identity in Afghanistan is our number one priority. We need the Government of Canada to work with us to find a solution.