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.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump walked out to a roaring standing ovation just ahead of the start of the UFC pay-per-view card at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, combining two things close to his heart: fierce battles inside the octagon and New York City.
Trump was accompanied by UFC President Dana White and the pair headed to their cageside seats to Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass.”
UFC aired a video package of Trump’s road to reclaiming the White House, calling it, “The great comeback in American History,” while fans stood and applauded. Trump, wearing a red tie, pumped his fist toward the crowd when the video ended.
The president-elect also had his clenched fists pumping back and forth and briefly danced to the Village People’s “YMCA” just outside the cage. He later again thrust his fist skyward as “Takin’ Care of Business” played.
Elon Musk, picked by Trump to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., joined the president-elect and White at the Garden, as did Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in his incoming administration.
Trump shook hands with the UFC broadcast team that included Joe Rogan. Rogan hosted Trump on his podcast for hours in the final stages of the campaign ahead of his election win last week. The announcers for the pay-per-view audience later declared, “Festive doesn’t even begin to describe” the scene before later proclaiming, “47’s in the building. Let’s go.”
The MSG crowd chanted “USA! USA!” right before the main card was about to start and then again throughout the action. After a year delay, Stipe Miocic is getting his shot at a third heavyweight championship reign when he battles current champion Jon Jones in the main event at UFC 309.
Trump is a longtime UFC enthusiast and frequent attendee of major fights. He made promoting hypermasculine tones a signature of his campaign — as he looked to further widen the gap among male voters between himself and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump and his top supporters embraced alpha-male terms and often accentuated them with vulgar and demeaning language.
While campaigning, Trump appeared frequently on podcasts, gaming platforms, and with key supporters who described a vote for Trump as a way to demonstrate true manliness. While Trump taped a podcast with Rogan, who himself has spoken about hypermasculinity, Harris failed to do a similar appearance, citing scheduling conflicts.
A return to Madison Square Garden means revisiting the place where a comedian caused an uproar at a Trump rally last month by likening Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage.” Yet Trump continues to relish visits to New York, where he lived for decades, before moving to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump’s son, Don Jr., also attended the fight.
Except for a day trip to Washington this week to meet for nearly two hours with President Joe Biden, and separately address House Republicans, Trump has been spending his time since his Election Day victory at Mar-a-Lago. The club has hosted galas and conservative events throughout the week.
Trump has been close to White for more than two decades.
White hosted a 2001 UFC battle at Trump Taj Mahal, a former casino-hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Trump has frequently attended UFC matches since – including during his 2024 campaign. Trump has turned up at fights recently with famous entourages, including White, musician Kid Rock and former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson.
In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he and White starred in a UFC video where the then-president was called the “Combatant In Chief.”
As Trump has strengthened his grip on the national Republican Party over the last near-decade, White’s personal political profile has grown exponentially. White spoke at the 2016 and 2020 Republican conventions, and when the party gathered in Milwaukee this past July. He also addressed the crowd at Trump’s Florida victory party in the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.
“This is what happens when the machine comes after you,” White said then. “What you’ve seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like: couldn’t stop him. He keeps going forward. He doesn’t quit.”
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Carolina’s Spencer Martin recorded his first career shutout and made 24 saves as the Hurricanes beat the Ottawa Senators 4-0 on Saturday night.
Martin, in just his second start of the season and his first home appearance, made 11 of his saves in the third period.
Jordan Martinook, Sebastian Aho, rookie Jackson Blake and William Carrier scored goals. Shayne Gostisbehere and Jordan Staal each provided two assists, and Martin Necas notched an assist to push his career-best points streak to 12 games.
Ottawa was blanked for the first time this season, and Senators goaltender Anton Forsberg also stopped 24 shots.
Martinook scored his sixth goal in his last six games eight minutes into the first period. Aho’s first goal in eight games came eight seconds into a power play in the final minute of the second period.
Blake’s power-play goal 43 seconds into the third period made it 3-0, and Carrier scored an empty-netter.
Takeaways
Senators: A three-game points streak ended in part because Ottawa faltered on special teams after not allowing a power-play goal in its previous four games. It went 0 for 4 on power plays.
Hurricanes: Carolina hasn’t lost consecutive games this season, returning from a three-game swing to the Western Conference to win its sixth consecutive home game.
Key moment
The Hurricanes had gone 1 for 13 on power plays across three games before converting twice in 85 seconds of game time.
Key stat
Martin became the third Carolina goaltender to notch a victory this season.
Up next
The Hurricanes host the St. Louis Blues Sunday, while the Senators begin a four-game homestand Tuesday against the Edmonton Oilers.
TORONTO – Mitch Marner scored 40 seconds into overtime as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 on Saturday night.
Bobby McMann, with two, and Matthew Knies had the other goals for Toronto (11-6-2). Anthony Stolarz made 27 saves. Marner added an assist for a two-point night.
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, with a goal and an assist each, and Adam Henrique replied for Edmonton (9-7-2), which saw its three-game winning streak snapped. Stuart Skinner stopped 18 shots.
The Oilers lost defenceman Darnell Nurse after he took a hit to the head from Leafs winger Ryan Reaves in the second period.
With Toronto down 2-1 in the third, Knies and McMann scored 59 seconds apart to give Toronto a 3-2 lead before Draisaitl tied things with 1:29 left in regulation and Skinner on the bench for an extra attacker. Marner ended it in the extra period on a 2-on-1 with John Tavares.
McDavid became the fourth-fastest player in NHL history — behind only Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Mike Bossy — to reach 1,000 career points Thursday at home against the Nashville Predators.
Takeaways
Leafs: Toronto captain Auston Matthews missed a sixth straight game with an undisclosed upper-body injury. The star centre, who remains listed as day-to-day, hasn’t played since Nov. 3.
Oilers: Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch dressed 11 forwards and seven defenceman with winger Viktor Arvidsson out injured for a second consecutive game.
Key moment
Nurse wheeled around Edmonton’s net early in the second before getting caught up high by Reaves. The blueliner was left bloodied and had to be helped to the locker room. Reaves was assessed a five-minute match penalty and booted from the game.
Key stat
Leafs forward Max Domi has now gone 13 games without registering a point. The 29-year-old has no goals and six assists this season.
Up next
Edmonton continues a three-game road trip Monday against the Montreal Canadiens. Toronto hosts the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday in the second of three straight contests at Scotiabank Arena.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2024.
