Sixth Year, Entry Eight- Ehsan's Story

The Tankers were Burning

Day 1,836

The tankers were already burning when Ehsan reached them.

The convoy had been ambushed on a fuel run across the country, and the wrecks were blocking the road, so he drove past the fire without knowing whether another attack was coming. He named that as the day that frightened him most. For the day he was proud of, he gave a category instead of a date, which was every convoy that arrived with all of its trucks intact on roads that were under attack.

That was his work for more than a decade. He ran security for international and Afghan companies operating under U.S. and NATO contracts, and he put the numbers on it himself. More than two hundred escort missions on one contract, in twenty-man teams, on night drives that ran ten hours at a stretch. Roughly a hundred more alongside American forces, moving food and fuel and heavy equipment out to nearly every province where those forces were deployed. Before any of it, he sat interviews, gave his fingerprints, passed background checks, and carried a badge with his name on it.

Ehsan was at work when the country fell.

He applied for a Special Immigrant Visa in late 2021. Chief of Mission approval came through, then document review and the medical examination. He sat for the interview in late 2025. He said no document was ever requested that he could not produce, and that his file is complete. 

Eight months have passed since the interview. There has been no visa and no refusal.

"Many people think that completing the process and the interview means the visa comes quickly," Ehsan said. “People who finished every step stay in limbo for months or years.”

His family is in Pakistan now. Ehsan checks his email day and night, hoping for word from No One Left Behind, which he said is the only financial support the family has. Without it, he said, they would likely have been forced back to Afghanistan despite what waits there. He teaches his children at home so they do not fall completely behind. The question they put to him is how much longer they must wait before they can finally reach their destination, and he has no answer for them.

There was a day years ago, back in Afghanistan, when heavy snow closed the road, and the convoy stopped and chained the tires together, and then everyone threw snowballs until it was out of their systems. An American soldier photographed the group sitting together in the snow afterward.

Somewhere in the United States, there is a picture of Ehsan sitting in the snow with American soldiers. He has never seen it.

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