The fall in Kabul evokes memories of Saigon’s evacuation

Thao-Nguyen Le has not been Able to stop thinking in Afghanistan.

For Ler, whose father was imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists in 1975 after the US withdrew from Saigon, They are affecting images of Afghans trying to flee the country. People have been seen attached to a military cargo plane, climbing walls lined with barbed wire and filling the airport asphalt. Seeing the news at his home in Paris has made Le feel despair, sadness and anger, bringing back painful memories of his childhood in post-war Vietnam.

Born in 1983 in Dalat, a tourist destination 190 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Le grew up in poverty, begging relatives for money and trusting neighbors to get oil to prepare family food. After being considered a traitor for fighting with the Americans during the war, his father made an effort to find a job. In addition to being imprisoned after the fall of Saigon, he was caught a second time when Le was born and tried to escape by boat from Vietnam. Now, as he follows the news in Afghanistan, his family worries about the fate of those who may be left behind like 46 years ago.

“I think about my family, what they have experienced … and I think what will happen in Afghanistan [is] it’s going to be a lot worse than I can imagine, ”Lek BuzzFeed News said. ».

Since the Taliban took over Kabul, President Joe Biden and his administration have done so they advocated for retirement management As American troops move to end the 20-year war, Rejecting comparisons of the fall of Saigon In 1975. But for Vietnamese refugees and their families, the chaos and potential consequences of this moment feel alarmingly familiar.

“For me, seeing pictures of Saigon falling and that was very similar,” said Cammie P., who grew up in British Columbia after her parents fled Vietnam in the 1980s. “It’s just that desperation and seeing people do everything they can to leave, because their house is basically made.”

As North Vietnamese forces approached Saigon in late April 1975, in the final days of the Vietnam War, the U.S. evacuated thousands of U.S. and Vietnamese civilians by helicopter, with scene tension covered on news coverage around the world. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled by boat and other planes. Over the next two decades, hundreds of thousands of other countries fled the war and the subsequent communist rule to escape the economic crisis, seeking refuge in the United States and elsewhere. In desperation, some died at sea.

Hang Nguyen Mac’s father, Sam, left the North Vietnamese Army in the early 1950s, and he knew that if he was captured by communist forces, he would probably be sent to a prison camp or killed. So when Mac’s family found out that the Viet Cong was coming to Saigon, they made plans to leave quickly. On April 30, 1975, when the city fell to the North Vietnamese, more than a dozen families of six and their extended family boarded a ship outside the country.

Mac, now 60 and living in Southern California, spoke to BuzzFeed News about images of Kabul that show Afghans “packed like canned tuna.” Inside a U.S. military aircraft run away.

“That’s how we were on the boat,” said Mac, who was 14 at the time.

Mac recalled that he was responsible for caring for his 7-year-old sister and two 3- and 4-year-old nephews to leave the city. When the crowd surrounded the ship, he grabbed it by the wrists of his sister and nephew and jumped into the boat. They wore only their clothes on their backs to use as gold-plated clothes in exchange for pants to pass safely to the US.

As Saigon walked through the streets in the last days before fleeing with his parents, the smell of gunpowder came out in the hot air. The children were screaming, and people were hurrying through the city, with angry glances on their faces.

Mac said he was scared at the time, but when he saw chaos at Kabul airport this week, he thought he was lucky.

“Yes, we were scared, but we weren’t in danger. Those are them, ”he said. “I’m afraid of them.”

After taking control of Kabul, the Taliban leaders did so she pledged to respect women’s rights and forgive those who fought with them, but they have already been Afghans he was associated with violence. Many question whether the regime will renounce its popular forms of repression. More than 20,000 Afghans, as well as dozens of members of their families who helped the U.S. military, were able to obtain special U.S. immigrant visas, but it stuck processing is delayed this year. Taken by the Taliban, many civilians fear they may suffer retribution or death. Evacuation flights are being carried out from Kabul, but only for people who have the necessary documents and can arrive at the airport.

“The disappointment is much more serious, and of course it’s especially for women and young girls and children,” Mac said.

The fall in Afghanistan was much faster than U.S. officials expected, but Vietnamese Americans who thought the U.S. had abandoned families a few decades ago said that was not an excuse not enough to evacuate allies earlier.

“We didn’t learn the lesson in Vietnam,” said Sonny Phan, who was studying at Kansas University in April 1975 and lost communication with his family after falling in Saigon. “I don’t think anyone has sat down and prepared an evacuation plan.”

Phan finally found out that before Christmas 1975, his parents, brothers and sisters were alive. They decided not to flee Vietnam for fear of being separated at sea. A few years later, Phan, now 69, learned how they struggled to find food and sold Levi’s jeans that he had sent them from America to survive.

“It was a very hard life,” Phan said, but they held on to him.

Le, who ultimately emigrated to the U.S. through a prison detention program in 1993, said that despite building a better life in the United States, her father has not yet been psychologically recovered from his experiences after the Americans left Saigon.

When they found out about the program that allowed them to move, he didn’t believe it was real. When he was offered job promotions as a Seattle assembly line employee, he thought they were trying to trick his boss into doing more work. When Le’s mother tried to convince them that they should buy a house, she worried about whether it would be removed.

“He never gave up on being abandoned,” Le said.

In A Twitter thread about his family’s experience and concerns about Afghans, Le wrote that although he identifies as a Vietnamese American, he must carry a “dichotomy because they are both Americans”. [her] savior and [her] the attacker. ‘

“Without being able to come to America, I don’t think I would be where I am now,” said Le, who currently works for a technology company based in New York. “Maybe I would be like a prostitute somewhere in Vietnam or somewhere on the street and in poverty. I don’t think I could be where I am now. ‘

But at the same time, he wonders if his family would be forced to leave his country if the US did not go to war.

“I don’t know what was going to happen,” he said.

Now Vietnamese refugees are hoping that the US and other countries will take in as many Afghans as possible and give them a chance to start again.

“They need the same things my family did when we came here,” said Thuy Kim, who emigrated to Alabama at the age of 2 in 1991. “Sure, the situations are a little different. It’s another war, it’s another time, but I think the most binding community is that they’re just human beings, and they need our help as human beings above anything else.”