How One Veteran Put His Life on the Line for USAID Coworkers When Kabul Fell
It has been more than two years since the Taliban seized control over Afghanistan, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis. This Veterans Day, we recognize the courage of veteran and USAID Humanitarian Assistance Advisor to the Military Adam Tousley who acted quickly in the early days of the takeover to assist our staff in the country.
When he arrived at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport on an August night in 2021, Adam Tousley was greeted by pitch darkness. Scenes of chaos and commotion from this very place had been plastered across TV screens for days as news channels covered the flight of desperate people seeking to escape an impending Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. For the time being, however, things seemed calm.
Tousley knew this was an illusion.
Earlier, he was preparing to return home from an assignment in Bahrain to propose to his girlfriend Christina when he received an urgent call from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance asking him to board an Air Force plane in three hours and head to Afghanistan. He had been tasked with helping coordinate the evacuation of USAID personnel from Afghanistan and launching humanitarian operations from the airport. Though Tousley is a U.S. Army veteran, this would be his first time in Afghanistan. Just before 9/11, Tousley had enlisted in the Indiana National Guard to pay for college, later joining the active duty Army as a commissioned Field Artillery Officer and deploying to Iraq in 2005.
Hanging up the phone, he decided his proposal would have to wait a little while.
Settling Into An Airport Under Siege
Life at the airport was eerie, Tousley recalls. “I had read a lot about World War II and cities under siege that were just about to fall,” he said. “And I thought this was probably what it was like.” Sporadic gunfire rang out in the distance beyond the airport walls; living quarters were littered with family photos and personal items left by previous tenants who had evacuated in a hurry; soldiers drove large vehicles across an empty airport where people should have been waiting to board commercial flights.
Running on little sleep, Tousley got to work. It took some time to find and win the trust of the security teams who could help him venture beyond the airport gates to reach USAID staff. He credits his time in the military and the humanitarian sector for his ability to quickly adapt to these types of situations. Military personnel from multiple countries were moving feverishly in all directions pursuing their own missions to get their people into the airport, onto planes, and out of the country.
In the meantime, the buzz of WhatsApp notifications on his phone overwhelmed Tousley as teams across multiple time zones learned about his arrival and scrambled to put him in touch with staff.
Moving Beyond the Wall
On August 25, 2021, Tousley approached Abbey Gate, one of the airport’s main entrances, alongside security details who would help him get outside. “The gate was blocked by a huge wall,” he remembered. “But everybody could hear a roar, like a crowd at a sports stadium or a concert.” When he finally got a good look over that wall, he saw two parallel roads separated by a wide ditch filled with wastewater. He also saw a sea of people. It was now his job to move about that crowd and find USAID staff and their families.
It was a stressful task.
Security personnel didn’t want to spend more time than they absolutely had to beyond the wall, and it wasn’t exactly easy to match faces with photos sent via phone. “Those photos were from normal days,” he said. “The people showing up were rough. They had been through a Taliban checkpoint, and I also couldn’t just yell out [to the crowd] ‘Hey I’m Adam from USAID!’”
After instructing USAID staff to flash a peace sign to a bearded man wearing a vest with a large white patch sewn on, Tousley eventually located a group of about 20 USAID staff and family members. He quickly moved them through the gate and into the airport. “You feel like you’re on cloud nine. You cry a little,” he said, thinking back to the moment the group reached safety. “At the same time, the situation lacked dignity. These people were smarter than me, but when you got them to the other side you had to search them for knives and guns.”
Going Back One More Time
Back inside the airport gates, night was approaching, and time for additional rescues was dwindling. The joy Tousley felt earlier in the day gave way to other emotions. “I was pretty angry by the end of the day,” Tousley noted, thinking about all the people still waiting outside the walls. As he stewed, messages asking him to look out for another USAID employee, Pacha, flooded his WhatsApp inbox.
Feeling defeated and unable to get approval to go outside one more time, Adam vented to a security contractor who had randomly sat next to him on a couch. Adam didn’t know Pacha personally, but multiple people were pushing really hard to get him out, he explained. It was frustrating being confined within the airport’s walls when he needed just one more run. At this point, the man who had been a stranger mere minutes before unexpectedly replied:
“Hey bro, I’ll get you there.”
In a matter of minutes, the two were in a truck en route to Abbey Gate to find Pacha. The chaos of the situation drained the duo of their energy as they searched. But just as it was waning and their window of time outside was closing, “we made eye contact with him, and he was so excited he jumped.” The two got Pacha and his family into the airport and eventually out of Afghanistan.
Tragically, that night was the last Tousley and many others were able to conduct rescue operations. The next morning, a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate claimed the lives of 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. Following the incident, Tousley knew his time in Kabul was limited. Two days later he was on a flight home.
Big Questions Back Home
During his mission, on the return flight, and back home, Tousley constantly reflected on other moments when he had been called upon to make the best of a dire situation. In particular, his mind returned to Burma’s Rakhine State in 2017, when he was working for a humanitarian organization and had to facilitate the evacuation of aid workers, both nationals and expatriates, as the horrors of the Rohingya genocide were unfolding. “One minute you’re just a young person,” he noted. “The next you’re somebody people are relying on to get them in and get them out.”
Then and now, he couldn’t stop thinking about those who didn’t make it out and why. He had met many more who deserved a story ending with a rescue and a life of safety and security. How was it decided who got that ending? Tousley also knew many people in the military and the aid sector who would never be able to shake the pain and guilt they felt from having to make such decisions in the field.
He knew he would continue grappling with these questions for a long time given his line of work.
Finally settling back into life back home, however, Tousley decided it was time to resurrect the question he had put on hold in August. In the end, Christina said yes.
In recognition of his selfless work in Afghanistan, Adam Tousley received the USAID Award for Heroism.
Get more information on USAID’s humanitarian work in Afghanistan.
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