Baby lost in Kabul chaos back with family

An infant boy handed in desperation to a soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and reunited with his relatives in Kabul.

The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he

went missing on August 19 as thousands of people rushed to leave

Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.

The baby was located in Kabul where a 29-year-old taxi driver named Hamid Safi had found him in the airport and took him home to raise as his own.

After more than seven weeks of negotiations and pleas, and

ultimately a brief detention by Taliban police, Safi finally

handed the child back on Saturday to his jubilant grandfather and other

relatives still in Kabul.

They said they would now seek to have him reunited with his

parents and siblings who were evacuated months ago to the United

States.

During the tumultuous Afghan evacuation,

Mirza Ali Ahmadi – the boy’s father who had worked as a security

guard at the US embassy – and his wife Suraya feared their son

would get crushed in the crowd as they neared the airport gates

en route to a flight to the US.

Ahmadi told Reuters in early November in his desperation

that day, he handed Sohail over the airport wall to a uniformed

soldier who he believed to be an American, fully expecting he

would soon make it the remaining five metres to the

entrance to reclaim him.

Just at that moment, Taliban forces pushed the crowd back

and it would be another half an hour before Ahmadi, his wife and

their four other children were able to get inside.

But by then the baby was nowhere to be found.

Ahmadi said he searched desperately for his son inside the

airport and was told by officials that he had likely been taken

out of the country separately and could be reunited with them

later.

The rest of the family was evacuated – eventually ending up

at a military base in Texas. For months they had no idea where

their son was.

The case highlights the plight of many parents separated

from their children during the hasty evacuation effort and withdrawal of US forces from the country after a 20-year war.

With no US embassy in Afghanistan and international

organisations overstretched, Afghan refugees have had trouble

getting answers on the timing, or possibility, of complex

reunifications like this one.

On the same day Ahmadi and his family were separated from their baby, Safi had slipped through the Kabul airport gates after giving a ride to his brother’s family who were also set to evacuate.

Safi said he found Sohail alone and crying on the ground.

After he said he unsuccessfully tried to locate the baby’s

parents inside, he decided to take the infant home to his wife

and children.

Safi has three daughters of his own and said his

mother’s greatest wish before she died was for him to have a

son.

In that moment he decided: “I am keeping this baby. If his

family is found, I will give him to them. If not, I will raise

him myself,” he told Reuters in an interview in late November.