Not willing to secure their own country. Let America do it. Update to this story.
Via FOX News
Three Afghan soldiers who vanished during training in Massachusetts last month and resurfaced days later at the Canadian border said they want asylum because returning to the homeland they are sworn to defend could mean death at the hands of the Taliban.
“They catch us, they kill us,” Maj. Jan Mohammad Arash, 48, told the Boston Globe of the Taliban, the terrorist government driven into exile by coalition forces. “They tip those who kill us.”
Arash and the others, Capt. Mohammad Nasir Askarzada and Capt. Noorullah Aminyar, say the lives of their relatives back home have been threatened. The soldiers fear they’ll be targeted by Taliban militants for fighting alongside Americans if they return to Afghanistan, they told the newspaper.
The soldiers, who were seeking asylum in either Canada or the U.S., said they researched their trip on YouTube and spent more than $1,600 on taxis to travel from Cape Cod to a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls. That’s nearly four months’ pay for dodging sniper fire in Afghanistan, they said.
“For me is not important, Canada or America,” Arash continued. “I need just asylum.”
The men, who spoke to the newspaper on Tuesday at a federal detention center in New York, are scheduled to appear in immigration court in upstate Batavia on Wednesday. Military officials said the soldiers had been participating along with officers from Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia in a U.S. Central Command Regional Cooperation training exercise at Joint Base Cape Cod. They were reported missing Saturday after leaving Camp Edwards on an off-day visit to Walmart.