A Digital Dunkirk - how one small group of dedicated Australians have helped save Afghans.

When the Taliban swiftly overran Afghanistan in August last year, Leidos Australia's Senior Program Finance Analyst Drew Franklin, a?former ADF member who worked in commercial security in Afghanistan for five years before joining Leidos, despaired at the rapid unravelling of years of work supported by countless Afghans.?

Drew turned that despair into action with the formation of a ‘Digital Dunkirk’; named after the point of evacuation for British and French forces after the Nazis occupied France in World War Two. The after-hours volunteer project supports the visa application process for Afghans who had formerly worked with Drew. To establish the group, Drew emailed his Leidos colleagues, along with Australian and overseas co-workers from his days in Afghanistan. His objective was to try to extract as many Afghanis who’d worked with his former employer as possible.?

The company played an important role in the supply chain of resources from the US and NATO nations to Afghanistan. “There were as many as 200 local interpreters working in that company at any one time, be it security, admin, training, translators, you name it. Over the five years I was there I’d estimate well over 10,000 locals were working there at one time or another.” Says Drew.

“Occasionally in the past I’d be contacted by someone on Facebook who’d worked for the company, but it wasn’t until that July-August period that you could see things were getting serious, and I decided it was my responsibility to help.”?

Drew started contacting his former colleagues to determine who had worked for the company and began organising Leidos volunteers to help the Afghans get their visas, gate passes, and supporting documents proving their former employment.

“Unfortunately, because my former company has now closed, there’s no one to contact for that stuff. So, we’re contacting former employees in New Zealand, South Africa via social media, and they’re happy to help. The whole thing sort of grew organically,” says Drew.?

“We’d confirm the Afghans had worked for us, help them with their paperwork and supply them with supporting documents, such as witness statements confirming they’d been an employee.”

“Every nation’s paperwork process is different. And at the Leidos end, while we’re not experts in filing refugee claims, we are experienced in dealing with government. Some of us have even worked in government, so we have the bureaucratic literacy to help with these forms. Some of them, like the Australian ones, are 30 pages long.

“Then (Leidos Australia CEO) Paul Chase hears of this project, and he allows his Executive Assistant to help by printing out and mailing these forms, about a hundred pages worth, to the Australian embassy in Jordon, which is where they have to go to be processed.??

“So we’re working with the former Afghan staff online, they’re suppling us with their details and what evidence they have, such as pay slips, etcetera, as proof of employment. We do a review, and send it back to them if there’s gaps. Then we’re backing that up with statements from other former staff from around the world, putting the package together, and mailing it from the Leidos Australia office in Melbourne to the Australian Embassy in Jordan.”?

Under this process Drew estimates about 200 visa applications were submitted for Afghan families to settle in countries all around the world. Of those, around a dozen were for families to come to Australia.?

All the while, dangers the former workers face under the Taliban is very real.?

“A few have been caught and beaten, some arrested, some tortured. One bloke was arrested and beaten so badly he had to go to hospital, but he slipped his guard and escaped to Pakistan,” says Drew.

“They’ve had death warrants put on their door. These are notices from the government that state that they’ve been identified as having formerly worked for ‘irreligious’ foreign organisations and they’re marked for death. So essentially they can be killed any anytime - the government approves it.”

“One bloke got caught and he convinced his captors that he was his cousin, and that the guy they were after had successfully fled to the States. In fact the opposite is true – he’s marked for death in Afghanistan while his cousin has successfully fled to America.”??

“There’s a lot of retaliation - it’s a civil war. So, maybe someone did something in the war and now there’s pay back. And then there’s war widows who’ve lost their job since the Taliban came in and now they have no way to support themselves or their family.”

“In total, probably half a dozen former workers we’ve found have been killed by the Taliban, a few in August. We give the same level of support to their surviving families.”??

At its peak, the volunteer team consisted of four to five Leidos team members who each put in many hours to develop the visa applications over the last three months. Drew’s wife and mum also lent a hand reviewing visa applications, as did many colleagues from Drew’s former employer.

But as the Taliban’s takeover drifted from the news, so has the availability of volunteers has dropped. Digital Dunkirk is largely a solo effort for Drew now, and while Melbourne is a long way from Kabul the importance of his work is still very real. “The reality of what I was doing became daunting. I’d come home with a few hours to work on the project and I think ‘I’ll help this bloke tonight’ but then I realise if I help him I won’t have time to help this other bloke out. There just wasn’t enough time for all of it.”

As assistance dried up Drew felt that processing visas for 200 families was a good place to stop. “Two hundred felt good - we’d shared a lot of information on how to apply for visas and established contacts that could help, but manually checking all those applications at the pace required to ensure their safety was becoming impossible. It was becoming a bottleneck. So two hundred felt like a good place to stop.”

“But then I found a possible alternative avenue of ‘evacuation first, visa second’, where they get out, and then get a visa while in a third country.” Using details gathered from the old company files and former company clients, Drew has since submitted visa applications for an additional 140 former colleagues. “Together with their families, that makes about 860 people. This will probably grow to more than 1700 over the next few weeks.”

As the Digital Dunkirk swings back into action, the results of the earlier stages of the project are being seen. Of the dozen Afghan families that applied for an Australian visa, three are now safely in the community. In total eighteen people have escaped the Taliban thanks to the Digital Dunkirk.

Former translator Hamid Farhat, his wife and their three children recently left quarantine in Sydney. The ABC (ABC News and ABC News Radio) has covered the story of Erfanullah Abidi, his wife, their three boys, and his parents, who are now in Adelaide. Another escapee, Sohail Sahari, has left Brisbane quarantine and moved to Melbourne with his wife, and their two boys and two girls.??

Pic: Drew with Hamid

“Erfanullah and Sohail were two of the first to contact me - they could see the way things were heading,” says Drew.?

Leidos Commercial Manager Ardathia Sulkowski, who volunteered for Digital Dunkirk confirms that the refugees are adjusting well. “Obviously the translators speak excellent English. Their families are learning, and I’m helping them to understand, adjust and socialise within the Australian culture,” she says.

Before joining Leidos, Ardathia was an APS employee within Defence and was a volunteer teacher of conversational English for immigrants; teaching the social, cultural contexts to English to help them integrate within the community. “Think of it as the meat to the bones of English,” says Ardathia.

As for Drew, the work of the Digital Dunkirk continues, but the progress of that hard work is starting to show results. “Sohail’s family has settled in Melbourne, so I’ve been able to see him a few times. We’ve had his family over to ours for a traditional Australian barbeque, and we’re planning to have Christmas lunch together.

“Sohail was a football coach at the national-level back in Afghanistan, so now he’s getting queries from a number of teams here. I’m sure he’ll be alright. And last weekend he had to mow the lawn for the first time in his life. I hope he gets used to that,” Drew laughs.