Refugee Services Looking For Volunteers & Donations As More Afghans Arrive In The Area
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- One Afghan woman who moved to Baltimore four years ago has a message for the United States: rescue Afghan women now.
She's been receiving frantic messages from her friends, all of them women, all of them have worked for the U.S. and growing more fearful by the day.
"They're sending me voice messages and telling me that they don't know what to do, they're afraid and their families are afraid," she told WJZ in an interview Thursday. She did not want to be identified by name or show her face out of fear for her own safety.
But fear is what Afghans around the world are feeling. Her friends in Kabul are fearful they may be taken and killed by the Taliban.
"They know that the Taliban have the lists of their names, the Taliban will kill the girls and the women and my friends," she said.
As days go by, her hope fades and she said her heart aches for them.
"They are going house to house and looking for people that have worked for the government, for the U.S., for our allies and rounding them up and doing horrible things to them," said Mike Wilson.
Wilson, a Maryland native, served in Afghanistan for the military in 2010. He's trying to get the interpreter he worked with out of Kabul.
"He's in fear but he's also in fear for his family and the retribution that may come if he leaves," said Wilson who said he's doing everything he possibly can to help get the interpreter along with his family to Maryland.
But for the many who did make it out and are arriving in the DC/Maryland region daily, they're starting from scratch.
"Many of them are coming with literally their clothes on their backs...because they've fled a war-torn country," said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, CEO of the Baltimore-based organization, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS).
LIRS is one of nine resettlement agencies helping the refugees helping resettle the Afghans.
Vignarajah said they need help - donations or volunteers - they're accepting anyone in the area willing to lend a hand.
"Having communities willing to engage willing to step up is the only way we're gonna get this done."
For ways to help or donate, visit: https://www.lirs.org/help-our-afghan-allies/.