The first time Nowroz Ali ran for his life, he was just a boy. The memory remains clear as an Afghan alpine dawn.

Born in the small village of Sarasyab in the historical province of Bamiyan, famed for its giant sixth-century monumental statues of Buddha, life was initially peaceful. He enjoyed playing with his nine siblings in the rocky, barren landscape, and paying attention to his religious studies.

But as the 90s drew to a close, the hardline Islamic Taliban movement grew stronger. Sharia law was ruthlessly enforced. Girls like his three sisters were no longer allowed to go to school, or venture out in public alone. As Pashtuns who had ruled Afghanistan largely for the last two centuries, they felt they were following in the footsteps of their clans. There was no space, in their minds, for the members of the Hazara ethnic group like Ali’s family.

In 1996, there was a massacre in his hometown. His family, fearing for their safety, fled to the Kuhi Baba mountain range, the western extension of the Hindu Kush. There, they hid, not knowing when they might ever be able to return.

It all changed on September 11, 2001 when the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four aeroplanes and carried out suicide terrorist attacks on American soil. Led by the son of a Saudi billionaire Osama Bin Laden, the Americans believed he had been harboured by the Taliban and was hiding out in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.

While the US started missile attacks and Special Forces raids on suspected, fortified Bin Laden caves, which would ultimately lead to a 20-year war and occupation that only ended this year, the Ali family cautiously came out of hiding.
They stumbled into horrendous scenes. Bodies of massacred relatives were piled at Bamiyan city’s airport. Among them was Ali’s grandfather.

They carried the bodies home for a proper burial. There, they found a smouldering scene. Their houses had been burned down; all of their possessions stolen or destroyed.

So when the foreign soldiers arrived, scattering the Taliban into the dust, local families welcomed them. This was seen as a new hope for lasting peace. While Ali completed high school, focusing on general studies and the English language, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) set up a Bamiyan base.

Sarasyab was just one kilometre from what had become known as Kiwi Base.

The soldiers were friendly there, everyone knew. They stopped and spoke with everyone, including the kids like Ali. They had chocolate and smiles. The soldiers, New Zealanders, started English classes for local people. Hearts and minds, rather than bullets and bombs. Ali went along.

He was a fast learner. His boyish enthusiasm and positivity rubbed off on the troops. Ali, fresh out of high school, decided to teach the funny language to others in the community.

“Even though I was not a professional teacher, everyone welcomed my idea,” he says.

The New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZ PRT) — deployments of Kiwi soldiers posted to Afghanistan and headquartered at Kiwi Base in Bamiyan — helped him out, fed him stationery. He soon had around 50 students attending his free classes.

The PRT’s padre paid a visit and was struck by this youthful community leader who had a strong grasp of English and of what the New Zealanders were trying to do in the region. Ali was asked if he wanted to work at the base’s front gate as a volunteer. He leapt at the opportunity.

It was 2010 and the war was yet to really heat up for the New Zealanders there. For a long time in the war, Bamiyan had been a relatively peaceful region, with the Taliban staying largely underground and impotent, especially compared to the heavy fighting the British were doing in Helmand Province and the Americans in Kandahar and elsewhere.

Ali’s job was translating meetings at the Kiwi Base main gate between soldiers and locals, including head of councils. Later, when he became a more official interpreter, he even attended high-level summits with NZDF intelligence forces and PRT commanders.

It was a dangerous, unpaid job. Eight New Zealanders were killed in the region, including Lance Corporals Rory Patrick Malone and Pralli Durrer during the fierce Battle of Baghak, and a fortnight later on August 19, 2012, Corporal Luke Tamatea, 31, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, 26, and Private Richard Harris, 21, who all died when their Humvee hit a 20kg roadside improvised explosive device.

His whole village knew Ali worked there. And so did the Taliban insurgents, who photographed him at his post. He was threatened and labelled an apostate whose head must be cut off.

But while the Kiwis and Americans were around, he was relatively safe.

Retired (Major) Ash Walker, who spent 18 years in the Army and had several missions in Afghanistan, used Ali several times as a guide and translator on logistical jobs when he’d come up to Bamiyan from Bagram Air Base.

He recalls Ali as one of a handful of young, ambitious, entrepreneurial kids who used to hang around the base gates offering their services.

“He was not backwards in coming forward to offer free services in order to feather his nest for a position as an interpreter or translator in the NZDF. He was just entrepreneurial, energetic, go-get-’em — good assets and attributes really, someone that I would welcome into New Zealand with open arms,” Walker says.

US Army Lieutenant Colonel Fred Cost also remembers meeting Ali and his mates. They were all “very ambitious” to get jobs with them.

He says Ali was “a good kid” and taken on by the Americans as an interpreter.

“Most of the US and NZ service members knew the interpreters well enough to develop personal relationships based on missions they’d been on,” says Cost, who retired as a full colonel in 2018.

Ali taught him Dari and they would meet on Sundays after dinner to chat and go over the language.

Like Walker, they have kept in touch and Cost says Ali has “developed into a respectable man”.

In September 2011, Ali was rewarded for his services, with a “certificate of appreciation” by the US Security Force Assistance Team for his “outstanding performance of duty as an interpreter for Task Force Patriot (Bamiyan)”.

He felt he had done all the right things. And so when he started hearing about other interpreters who had worked with the NZDF being resettled in New Zealand, he applied to do the same. It was an opportunity like no other.

But in 2015, then Minister of Immigration Michael Woodhouse replied to say he was unsuccessful. “I have carefully considered your submissions and particular circumstances. I advise that I am not prepared to intervene in your case to grant you residence,” the short note stated.

Ever since, he has continued to argue his case with New Zealand authorities.

He discovered that other volunteers from his same village had been given three years’ salary to start a new life safely elsewhere in Afghanistan. Ali struggled to understand why he was being treated any differently.

And so when newly-elected US President Joe Biden announced earlier this year that all US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September — coming after a major scale down during the Trump administration — Ali could see the writing on the wall. This was what the Talibs had been waiting for, all the time in the world.

Back in January this year, a desperate Ali approached Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, pleading for help. She passed it on to Associate Minister of Immigration Phil Twyford who gave him the bad news.

Ali told the Herald in March.

But even as Nato allies began withdrawing and the Taliban immediately started recapturing provincial capitals, port towns, remote rural zones, border checkpoints and highways, New Zealand didn’t want to know.