An Elite Afghan Soldier Braved the World's Deadliest Jungle Trying to Reach the US

CANAÁN MEMBRILLO, Panama—The Afghan colonel hurriedly stamps out his cigarette with his pink Crocs as a border patrol officer approaches. Smoking is prohibited in this government camp in the jungle because it could cause a fire, and the colonel doesn’t want to be seen breaking the rules. 

A year and a half earlier, Colonel Mohammad Ahmadi was leading 2,500 elite soldiers into battle against the Taliban in the final days before the Afghan government’s collapse. Now, the 38-year-old father-of-three was in a village he had never heard of deep in the Panamanian jungle, covered in mosquito bites, his life belongings stuffed into a backpack.

The border patrol officer doesn’t care about the cigarette. He has questions about the war. 

How many soldiers had the colonel commanded? 

What was the terrain like? 

What lessons could be applied in Panama?

The colonel pauses. He is trim and strong with straight black hair, high cheekbones, thick eyebrows, and a mustache. Four days earlier, he had set off across one of the most dangerous regions in the world: the mountainous, swamp-filled jungle called the Darién Gap that separates Colombia and Panama. The 66-mile stretch is a no-man’s land, used by drug traffickers and home to venomous snakes. It has no roads or trails. Bandits roam the region robbing, and sometimes raping, migrants. The bodies of those who’ve died trying to cross are often left behind, food for wild animals.

It’s considered so impenetrable that when the Pan-American highway was built in the 1930s, connecting Argentina to Alaska, engineers skipped over the Darién Gap entirely. 

“Well, we were fighting the Taliban,” the colonel says in Dari, which a fellow migrant translates into English, and I translate for the border patrol officer into Spanish. “Panama is completely different.” The officer agrees. The two men shake hands.   

For most of its existence, the Darién Gap was inhabited by Indigenous peoples and more recently by the Clan del Golfo cartel, which trafficks cocaine from Colombia. But in the past year alone, migrants and asylum seekers from more than 60 countries—from China to Afghanistan, Egypt to Mali—have passed through en route to the United States. Because they can’t obtain visas that would allow them to fly to the U.S., or any country nearby, they are taking the only route available: Flying to South America, where countries like Brazil and Ecuador have relatively loose entry requirements, and joining thousands of other migrants making their way north, country by country—by foot, car, bus, boat, and horseback. 

First, they have to brave the Darién Gap. It wasn’t until 2010 that the number of people crossing the jungle became high enough that Panamanian authorities started taking count. In the following decade, the number of crossings averaged 11,788 per year. Last year, they soared to 248,000. Around 800 migrants arrived daily in January, putting this year on pace to set a new record. More migrants now cross the Darién Gap than the Mediterranean Sea. 

Chinese migrants are the latest nationality to pass through the Darién in significant numbers. They started appearing in big groups at the end of 2022, after President Xi Jinping dropped his “zero Covid” policy and began allowing residents to freely travel out of the country. In January, 913 Chinese migrants crossed the Darién. Few spoke English; almost none spoke Spanish. “Ni hao,” the Panamanian border patrol agents said, doubling over with laughter as the Chinese watched on seemingly unfazed. 

The colonel exuded a cool calm in the jungle but he was eager to keep moving. The decision, though, was out of his control—the boats that would transport the migrants didn’t leave until the morning. He had to spend the night in Canaán Membrillo, an indigenous village with a population of 223 that’s four hours from the nearest port. It is a speck in the isthmus of the Darién. Those here are escaping the world’s problems: a drought in Somalia; violence in Ecuador; the Taliban’s repressive regime in Afghanistan; ruthless gangs in Haiti; and China’s authoritarian government. 

Nearly all want to reach the U.S., a country they talked about in starstruck terms. A place of opportunity and liberty. 

Fleeing Kandahar 

Colonel Ahmadi’s life as he knew it ended on Aug. 13, 2021, when the Taliban surrounded the airport in Kandahar during its stunning rout of the U.S.-backed government. He was the top commander in charge of elite commando units in Kandahar, Zabul, and Helmand provinces. A special forces unit within the Afghan military, the U.S.-trained Afghan commandos spearheaded combat operations against the Taliban and formed the backbone of the Afghan government’s security efforts. 

But as the U.S. began withdrawing from Afghanistan in May 2021, it became woefully clear that the Afghan military, hobbled by fatigue and corruption, couldn’t hold off the Taliban on its own. On Aug. 6, the Taliban seized its first provincial capital and kept on going, reaching Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, a week later. A VICE News team was embedded with one of the colonel's units during that hectic time. With Afghan troops under siege, the colonel was ordered to evacuate to Kabul in a C-130 transport aircraft, he said. “We were fighting and didn’t want to stop.” 

The Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15. A 20-year mission by the U.S. to remake Afghanistan collapsed in nine days. The colonel, who had fought alongside the Americans for 13 years, was on his own. 

Over the next two weeks, U.S. troops helped evacuate nearly 130,000 people from Kabul airport. But the colonel didn’t go to the airport because he feared Taliban fighters would recognize him. Staying in Afghanistan was also too dangerous. Within days, the colonel said, he had fled to Iran through a poorly-manned border crossing, leaving behind his parents, wife, and two sons. His third son was born nine months after he left. 

The colonel’s life in Afghanistan was reduced to memories and photos on his phone. Among them is a photo of him giving U.S. Army Col. Adrian Bogart III an embroidered tapestry featuring an Afghan and American flag and a handshake, symbolizing the strong relationship between the two countries. I reached out to Bogart, who worked alongside Colonel Ahmadi in Afghanistan from 2018 to 2020 and has since retired from the Army. Ahmadi’s reputation was “impeccable,” Bogart said, describing him as a “courageous,” “loyal,” and “devoted leader.” 

Ahmadi could have qualified for a special immigrant visa to the U.S. meant for Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. But the program has been mired in bureaucracy and delays, and the wait for approval is years-long. Advocates estimate that at least 78,000 Afghans who were eligible for such visas were left behind after the U.S. withdrawal. The colonel, who joked that he was the only poor general in the Afghan army, couldn’t afford to wait indefinitely, he said. He needed to make it to the U.S. so he could find a job and send money home to his family.  

In May 2022, he flew to Brazil and began selling clothes and luggage left behind by families seeking to migrate. As soon as he had saved $3,000, he said, he packed a bag and set off for the U.S., joining a growing number of Afghans making the same trek. They were, on the whole, an erudite group: professors, doctors, journalists, engineers. From October through January, 1,817 Afghans passed through the Darién en route to the U.S., compared to zero in 2020. 

Some of the Afghan migrants I spoke with in the Darién told me they felt abandoned by the U.S.—their work with international aid groups or the U.S. military had put them in the crosshairs of the Taliban and now they were being left to fend for themselves. Others expressed wistful gratitude. “For the last 20 years USAID did a lot for our country. Sacrificed their soldiers,” said Mohammad Rafi Wakman, a writer who said he was working in the administrative office of Afghanistan’s president when the government fell. 

Even in their worst nightmares, none expected to have to cross one of the world’s most dangerous jungles in an effort to reach the U.S. “You don’t want your parents to know that you’ve gone from the top of the world to this,” said Ahmad Fahim Omid, 29, who was getting his PhD in banking and finance when the Taliban took over. His voice broke as he looked around at a line of exhausted migrants covered in pink antibiotic ointment to treat the mosquito bites that had left their skin with open wounds. They still had another five countries to cross before reaching the U.S. 

As recently as 2019, migrants traversing the Darién mostly followed one principal route that required seven to 10 days of walking through the jungle. But as the numbers of migrants arriving soared, smugglers began advertising other routes that required less walking by circumventing parts of the jungle via sea and even horseback. The less walking, the safer the journey, but the more money migrants had to pay smugglers.  

The colonel paid $400 to be smuggled by boat from Capurgana, Colombia to Carreto, Panama, followed by two days of walking through the jungle. While one of the safer routes, it was not without risks: Colombian and Panamanian authorities are aggressively trying to stop migrants from crossing into Panama by sea, which has led to police chases on open waters in the middle of the night. In October, several migrants were injured and one died after authorities rammed into a smuggler’s boat. 

The night of his crossing, the colonel was squashed into a motorboat with migrants from China, Iraq, Pakistan, and Ecuador, including children as young as two. The smuggler told them to keep their heads down and lights off. The boat raced across the sea at breakneck speed in pitch-black for four hours, reaching Carreto at dawn. From there, they began their trek across the jungle. 

January is dry season in the Darién and the colonel’s group was lucky the mud only reached their ankles. The strongest helped the children and weaker migrants. Those with tents shared them, and the group divvied up food. The colonel brought biscuits, chocolate, canned fish and two liters of water—he didn’t want to carry too much weight. But the mountains were higher than most expected and by the end of the first day the group had gone through its water supply and resorted to drinking straight from a river. A day and a half later, a Chinese woman was still vomiting.

Injury or sickness can be a death sentence. “Even if you want to help the person, you cannot,” said Harun Said, a 17-year-old from Somalia who crossed the Darién in January and dreams of becoming a computer engineer. “Because while you are helping [the smuggler] will go and you don’t know the road. You don’t have a choice. It’s not that you are merciless but you don’t have a choice.”

For two weeks in January, migrants emerged from the jungle nearly every day pleading for authorities to rescue a Haitian woman who was around six months pregnant. She had hurt her leg and couldn’t walk, and was too deep in the jungle for them to carry her—a two-day hike from the nearest village. The Panamanian authorities said that unless someone had taken a picture of her location—which they could use to determine her coordinates—it was a wasted effort to try and look for her. After 15 days stranded, residents of an Indigenous community found her and authorities rescued her by helicopter.

She was an exception. Over the years, hundreds, if not thousands, are believed to have perished in the mud and mountains of the Darién—no one knows exactly how many. 

Around the same time as the stranded pregnant woman was missing, a Venezuelan father told border patrol officers that he had seen 11 dead bodies while crossing the Darién and offered to help authorities locate them. But they told him that in order to send out a search team, he would have to first make an official report with the prosecutor’s office, a process that would likely take several days during which time he couldn’t leave the migrant camp. He balked—he couldn’t subject his family to more waiting. 

Eliezer Castillo, a Panamanian border patrol officer, said he believed the Venezuelan’s body count. Castillo had worked 21 years in the Darién and as we zoomed down a river on a motorized canoe, he pointed out some two dozen alligators. He had gotten used to putting dead migrants in body bags. But it was those that were never found that haunted him. “How many people have been left behind in the jungle that no one has reported?” he said.  

In 2021, an explosive report from Doctors without Borders drew public attention to the gangs of armed men raping migrants. The report triggered the arrest of some 30 people but authorities were angry with the nonprofit for going public.   

“Possible terrorist link”

The U.S. keeps close tabs on migrants crossing the Darién and pays for equipment to take their fingerprints and biometric eye scans. The colonel, unbeknownst to him, had come back with a “possible terrorist link.” A Panamanian official who does the biometrics tests told me such warnings are not infrequent—it didn’t mean the colonel was a terrorist, but he wouldn’t be allowed to leave Panama until the U.S. Embassy cleared him. 

The colonel’s frustration was palpable when he texted me two days later. The other migrants in his group had already continued north to Costa Rica, but authorities had temporarily confiscated his passport so he couldn’t travel. “People who have no history of working with the United States in Afghanistan are allowed to travel, but I, who performed all my duties with the United States’ forces, [am] not allowed to travel,” he texted.  

That afternoon, four officials from the U.S. Embassy arrived at the migrant camp to interview him. He said they asked him a lot of questions about his time in the military, his family, and destination. At the end, he said, they returned his passport to him and said he could continue his journey to the U.S.  

Panamanian officials were happy to see the colonel leave. The country’s official migration policy is “controlled flow.” In other words, it welcomes all migrants and facilitates their journey, so long as they don’t stay. Smugglers are a different story. Prosecutors are seeking decades-long prison sentences for people caught transporting migrants, which they hope will lead to fewer migrants crossing the Darién. 

But waves of people keep arriving, fueled by desperation as well as social media. Many of the Chinese migrants were inspired by videos on YouTube and Douyin—TikTok’s domestic Chinese version—explaining how to move to the U.S. via the Darién Gap, followed by a Telegram username to contact for information. 

The majority of Chinese crossing the Darién were men in their 20s but a surprising number of parents with children were also braving the journey. They came prepared. They wore hiking clothes and shoes, with floppy hats that covered their necks. Some traveled with portable instant translation devices to communicate. 

An interior decorator from Hebei province in northern China said he had left his home 23 days earlier. He flew from mainland China to Macau and then traveled to Hong Kong, Turkey and Ecuador, and worked his way up from there. He didn’t want to give his name because in China, he said, “doing interviews with foreign reporters is considered to be inciting treason.” He was told the journey would cost around $15,000, he said.

He wanted to move to the U.S. because he yearned for more freedom. “We don’t have Twitter in China, or YouTube or WhatsApp. There’s no real internet,” he told me over Google Translate. “The Chinese government doesn’t care about us.” He said he didn’t consider moving to neighboring countries because they too had dictatorships. “I will only be free in the U.S.” 

Two weeks after meeting him, he texted to say he was in New York City. After crossing into the U.S., he had been detained by ICE and then released with an order to appear in court in a few months. He now calls himself Tim. 

Haitians and South Americans are far less likely to be allowed into the U.S. compared to Africans and Asians. Under U.S. immigration policies, they could do the whole journey only to be deported back home or expelled to Mexico. The Biden administration has shifted its stance on border policies so frequently that migrants are utterly confused.

Mexico

After U.S. authorities gave Colonel Ahmadi the greenlight, he took a 12 hour bus ride to yet another government-run camp on the border with Costa Rica. The trip cost $40 per person. Those who can’t pay clean bathrooms and do other chores around the migrant camp in exchange for traveling for free on the floor of a bus. In February, a bus transporting migrants out of the Darién flipped, killing at least 39.  

Two days after leaving Panama, the colonel texted to say he was lost somewhere near the Nicaraguan border. Other migrants he was traveling with had taken off with a smuggler’s number but he didn’t feel comfortable. “Now I don’t know where the immigration office is. I’m alone.” He eventually found his way to a bus station. 

If the colonel makes it safely to the U.S. border, it’s almost certain that he will be allowed into the U.S. to pursue an asylum claim, because the U.S. isn’t deporting Afghans back to Afghanistan. In the Darién, he had nostalgically talked about his past life. About the son he had never met, and the high regard the soldiers he commanded had for him. Now, his only goal was to find a job—any job—in the U.S. After a lifetime in the military, he didn’t have any “special skills,” he said. So long as he could send for his family, he would be content.

But first he would have to make it through Mexico.

The last I heard from the colonel was Feb. 9, when he texted to say he had reached Tapachula in southern Mexico. It’s a hot, dusty city where tens of thousands of migrants are stuck, waiting for documents from Mexican authorities that would allow them to travel north. He had been told that Mexican police tear up even legitimate documents to prevent migrants from advancing. One of the colonel’s Afghan traveling companions had been arrested trying to leave the city and held in a notorious migration detention center for four days. 

The colonel wasn’t sure what to do next.

Alan Wong contributed reporting to this story.