An Afghan baby who went missing after being passed over the razor-wire barricade of Kabul airport to a US soldier during the Western withdrawal has been reunited with his grandparents.
A frantic, months-long search ended with tense negotiations to get the baby back from a taxi driver who had always longed for a son and claimed the child as his own.
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Sohail Ahmadi, who was two months old when he went missing, was last seen in some of the most desperate footage captured outside Kabul airport during the chaotic August US evacuation as the Taliban prepared to take over.
Sohail’s father Mirza Ali Ahmadi, who worked as a security guard for the US embassy in Kabul, was relocated to Michigan with his wife, and four other children, after making it through crowds and into the airport on August 19.
But their infant went missing in the mayhem, after they handed over to the US soldier standing on the wall, fearing he would be killed in the scuffle of people competing to board planes during the US-run airlift.
Sohail was reunited with his grandparents on Monday, after going missing for four months, Reuters reported.
The grandparents spent seven weeks trying to persuade Hamid Safi, a 29-year-old taxi driver from Kabul who found the baby and decided to look after him.
The complete withdrawal of US embassy personnel, many humanitarian workers along with the collapse of the government meant there were few official resources for the Ahmadi family to use in their search for their baby.
They resorted to putting out calls on Facebook in the hope of locating Sohail.
The infant was being cared for by the Safi family in Kabul as their own for months, before neighbours realised that Sohail was the baby advertised as missing on social media in November.
Safi, father of three girls, wanted to keep Sohail to fulfil his mother’s wishes of having a grandson. He was reported to the Taliban and briefly jailed before agreeing to return the baby, Reuters reported.
Sohail’s grandparents were overwhelmed with joy after being reunited with their grandson, but now they need to figure out how to get the baby to the US and reunite him with his parents.
“I was so sad and always crying for my baby,” Sohail’s mother, Suraya, told Reuters. “Now I hope he arrives here safely. Last night, I did not sleep due to happiness.”
Correction: This story originally spelled the baby’s name as Sohial Ahmadi. The correct spelling is Sohail Ahmadi. We regret the error.
