For David Lavery, the fall of Afghanistan comes with a soundtrack of men yelling, women weeping and babies wailing — all coalescing into a din of despair that echoes in his mind.
That cacophony surrounded him in the days after the Taliban took the Afghan capital, as the former soldier walked the perimeter of the Kabul airport searching for the Canadians and Afghan allies he was tasked with evacuating.
A founding member of JTF2, the elite counter-terrorism unit of the Canadian Forces, Lavery now operates a private security company, Raven Rae Consultancy, in Kabul. As a soldier for more than two decades, Lavery was no stranger to the devastation of war zones. But the crush of humanity fleeing the Taliban stunned him.
“It’s horrible and hard to process. There was a constant hum, a 24/7 of noise, desperation and panic,” said Lavery, recounting the chaos of the rescue in a Zoom interview from a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany, just days after he himself was airlifted to safety. “It was all about survival.”
After Kabul fell on Aug. 15, Lavery was the only Canadian on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Embassy staff had left on evacuation flights and it would be another four days before Canadian Forces arrived to help.
Lavery was given a list of more than 1,200 applicants seeking refuge in Canada. The names were collected by advocates and Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan war who had banded together to help Afghans escape the looming Taliban threat.
WATCH | David Lavery explains the complications of the rescue operation:
David Lavery describes Afghan rescue operation
13 hours ago
Canadian special forces veteran talks about the chaos of extracting refugees at Kabul airport in August. 1:09
The mission for Lavery’s team was to guide refugees to the airport, then extract those with valid Canadian documentation from the sea of people who had gathered outside the security perimeter set up by U.S. and British forces — which included the airport and the Baron Hotel — and get them on transport planes out of the country.
The Afghans were told to wear red and look for a man named “Canadian Dave.”
“It will haunt me because I can see the desperation in people’s faces,” said Lavery. “I could hear people on the other side [of the gate] who knew me screaming, ‘David, don’t leave us!’ But I couldn’t open the door.”
Niagara central command
News that the Taliban had entered Kabul on Aug. 15 triggered a stretch of sleepless nights for Wendy Long, the founder of the Afghan Canadian Interpreters (ACI) group.
For the past five years, Long, who lives in Ontario’s Niagara region, had been pushing for a path to immigration for Afghan interpreters who assisted Canadian Forces during the war and were likely targets of Taliban retribution.
The government of Justin Trudeau finally agreed on July 23 and announced that Canada would fast-track immigration applications of Afghan allies.
By then, Long and her volunteers had collected the names of hundreds of Afghans and their families. They weren’t just interpreters, but also drivers, cooks and maintenance workers who worked with the Canadian military over the past 20 years.
This group of Afghans were extracted by Lavery’s team and brought into the airport. (Submitted by David Lavery)
But to get out of the country, they needed to obtain special immigration visas, which required providing biometric information such as fingerprints and filing paperwork at the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
Long’s team worked “in a frenzy,” she said, to confirm identities of the Afghans and their connections to Canadian soldiers. Volunteers were frustrated by immigration staff who wouldn’t accept family applications, only individual ones. The process bogged down approvals, but also forced some applicants to choose between escaping Afghanistan and staying behind with loved ones.
“It caused a lot of people to have to make a choice of whether to leave when they got their facilitation letters and go to their airport without their family,” said Long.
Real-time rescues
Earlier in the spring, as the Taliban began to take over swaths of the countryside, an ACI volunteer who was a veteran of the Afghanistan war reached out to David Lavery to ask for assistance.
As the situation grew more dire in July, Canada began airlifting its embassy staff out of the country. Most diplomats were already gone when Immigration Minister Mario Mendicino announced that Canada would accept 20,000 vulnerable Afghan refugees on Aug. 13.
But thousands of Afghan allies were stranded without proper documentation when Canada’s embassy in Kabul closed two days later, as the Taliban drove armoured vehicles abandoned by the Americans into the city.
After refugees with valid documentation were extracted from the crowds, they were brought inside the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport and held for further screening. British paratroopers and the U.S. military controlled the entrances to the airport. (Submitted by David Lavery)
Before the Afghan government collapsed, Lavery and his son Brant had been transporting Afghans to the Baron Hotel, near the airport. The hotel was “behind the wire,” meaning it was protected by both U.S. and British forces. But once the Taliban took over, it was too dangerous for the Laverys to venture outside the compound without military support. So from dawn to dusk in the days after Aug. 15, Lavery would circle the airport from the main entrance to Abbey Gate, which was near the irrigation canal, to the back gate of the Baron Hotel, in search of Canadians.
His feet were battered from walking the equivalent of a marathon a day. He had to ignore the pleas of people who stood in raw sewage for hours, some of them injured and elderly, and prioritize only those who had hard-to-forge documentation like passports and visas.
Chaotic scenes
Lavery initiated WhatsApp video calls to Long’s team in Canada from his cell phone. He would show them exactly where at the airport he was, and then Long would use another messaging app to tell their contacts to wave something red and yell out to “Canadian Dave.”
Lavery tied a red bandana around his neck so he would be recognized.
“I would be in one chat room [with Afghans] and I would say, ‘Canadian Dave is looking for you,'” said Long. “Then I would go back to the other chat and I would see people waving red scarves and chanting ‘Canada’ and Dave walking toward them.”
The rescues were chaotic, especially at the back gate of the Baron Hotel. After identifying Canadians by their red clothing, Lavery would send a handful of his local staff out into the crowd to bring people closer to the doors of the hotel gate, while he negotiated with British paratroopers who controlled the entrance to open the door while holding back crowds.
WATCH | Wendy Long describes how the operation unfolded at her end:
Founder of Afghan Canadian Interpreters group
13 hours ago
Wendy Long explains how her organization communicated with Lavery’s team during the Afghan rescue operation. 1:03
“You would have hundreds of people trying to push their way in. And you would be grabbing people, grabbing their luggage, grabbing their babies and pushing people’s faces and shutting the doors [of the entrance],” said Lavery. “Peoples’ hands and feet were getting caught in the doors. There was so much screaming and crying.”
As traumatizing as those scenes were for Lavery, the results lifted the spirits of the Canadian volunteers at ACI, who were able to see some of the rescues in real time.
“Seeing those smiling faces on the other side of the gate was invaluable to us and it encouraged us to keep going,” said Long, who credits Lavery for helping save the lives of at least 100 Canadian passport and visa holders.
Once they were pulled to safety, Lavery’s wife, Junping Zhang-Lavery, would take the refugees into the Baron Hotel and ensure they had food and water. She would also help console their children and do what she could to keep them comfortable until they could be further screened by immigration officials.
Looming threat of suicide attacks
The first Canadian transport plane landed in Kabul on Aug. 19, four days after Lavery arrived at the Baron Hotel. That night, Canadian officials offered Lavery and his son a flight out of the country.
Lavery and his wife, Junping Zhang-Lavery, boarded the last German airlift out of Kabul on Aug. 26. As they were boarding, they could hear explosions from a suicide attack. (Submitted by David Lavery)
Lavery wanted to stay and help extract more Canadians, along with German banking clients he needed to assist. But Canada refused to take Zhang-Lavery, who had a Chinese passport, unless Lavery was also on the plane.
That’s when Lavery said goodbye to his son and brokered a deal with German officials for space on their transport plane.
His wife’s prolonged presence at his side was both a comfort and a burden. Zhang-Lavery bandaged his cuts and made sure he was eating and taking his medication. But Lavery also feared that he was putting her in harm’s way, especially since the threat of suicide attacks near Kabul airport was growing with each passing day.
On Aug. 26, Lavery and wife boarded the last German airlift. As they were walking up the ramp of the cargo plane, they could hear the sound of explosions and see a grey plume of smoke coming from the direction of Abbey Gate.
Fifteen minutes after the sirens started wailing, Lavery could see vehicles transporting injured people and bodies. Then the ramp of the C-17 Globemaster went up and began its taxi down the runway.
When their plane landed in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, two hours later, the couple found out it had been a suicide attack.
Since landing in Germany last week, Lavery has been trying to decompress and catch up on sleep, but he knows his work isn’t done.
The couple were transported on a German airlift to Uzbekistan after Canada refused to board Junping Zhang-Lavery because she didn’t have a Canadian passport. (Submitted by David Lavery)
The Canadian government says it successfully rescued 3,700 people, but Wendy Long estimates that only 20 per cent of the people ACI secured visas for were actually able to escape Afghanistan.
Lavery says he will go back to help get the remaining interpreters if his safe passage can be negotiated with the Taliban. He’s also concerned about his staff and their families. Raven Rae employed approximately 50 local Afghans. The employees didn’t have the necessary documentation to leave, and now their lives are at risk.
On Labour Day, Lavery received a text saying that the Taliban had taken over his company’s office.
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
___
Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/66/447/CLIP_CANADIAN_DAVE_AFGHANISTAN_mx.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/71/326/wendynew.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
