OTTAWA – Canada will be a safe haven for more than 20,000 Afghans in a “vulnerable condition”: the Minister of Immigration, Marco Mendicino, announced it on Friday during a press conference with Foreign Minister Marc Garneau, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan and the Minister of Women Maryam Monsef. A commitment that adds to the initiative put in place for previous thousands of Afghans who have worked for the Canadian government as interpreters and employees of the embassy. 

“As the Taliban are willing to take over more of Afghanistan, the lives of many more Afghans are increasingly threatened”, Mendicino said. “We know the situation is terrible. It is getting worse by the hour”, he added. And precisely for this reason, as reported by the Minister of Defense, Harjit Sajjan, the Canadian special forces are in Afghanistan to favor the relocation of people in danger, in those considered most vulnerable as female leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, persecuted minorities and members of the gay and lesbian communities.

Afghans will come through sponsorship of families already in Canada, government-assisted refugee programs and private sponsorships. “We share the sense of urgency”, Mendicino said again.

Canada ended its mission in Afghanistan in 2011, the year in which 158 members of the Canadian armed forces and seven Canadian civilians died in the conflict. But in the following years Ottawa continued to support Afghanistan with humanitarian aid and to promote its development. Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said that while observing the unfolding of the situation in Afghanistan in these hours, he was thinking “of the sacrifices that Canadians have made to guarantee the country’s future in so many years. We went there – he added – because we believed in the Afghan people and we believe in their future”. “This determination has not changed and will not change”, he added.

But the intervention of the Canadian federal government comes, according to some, too late, that is when the Taliban have, in fact, regained total control of Afghanistan. This is supported, for example, by Andrew Rusk, co-founder of the advocacy organization Not Left Behind. “While we are grateful for today’s (Friday) announcement, we are concerned that it is too little, too late. We urge the government to focus fully on this humanitarian crisis in the weeks and months to come”, Rusk said, as reports The Globe and Mail. And the same newspaper also reports the statements of Dave Morrow, a Canadian veteran who is helping to resettle former Afghans who have worked with Canada. “Those who have not yet left the country are desperate. It’s just a shame we didn’t act sooner,” he said, adding that he had received news from people begging to take their families out of the country. In light of the closure of passport offices and embassies, Morrow also said Canada must get people out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible and worry about documentation once they are safe. “Fill [the planes],” he said. “We will arrange the paperwork on Canadian soil”.

Meanwhile, on Friday the NDP foreign affairs critic Jack Harris called for action to support the peace talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan. He further said that the government of Pakistan should in turn be urged to put pressure on the Taliban to observe an immediate and real ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. Finally, he stressed the urgent need to defend women’s rights. And precisely on this last point, Maryam Monsef, Minister for Women and Gender Equality, reiterated the need to save women: the most at risk, in a Taliban regime.

UPDATING Meanwhile, today Canada shut down its embassy in Kabul and suspended diplomatic relations amid a Taliban advance on the capital. “After consulting with Canada’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, the decision was made to temporarily suspend our diplomatic operations in Kabul,” the federal ministers of foreign affairs, immigration and defence said in a joint statement. After these events, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the mission to help the Afghans would depend on “the extremely fast evolving” conditions on the ground. “We will continue to work to get as many Afghan interpreters and their families out as quickly as possible as long as the security situation holds,” he said. Mission impossible?

In the pic, the tweet from Marco Mendicino’s page on Twitter with the photos of  first Afghans’ arrivals in Canada