Baby handed to soldier during Afghanistan evacuation reunited with family: report

An Afghan baby boy who was lost in the chaos during the fall of Kabul was reunited with relatives on Saturday, Reuters reported.

Sohail Ahmadi — who was only two-months-old when he went missing — was found in Kabul in the care of Hamid Safi, a 29-year-old taxi driver who discovered the infant on the floor of the airport and decided raise him as his own after failing to find his parents.

As Reuters reported, Safi agreed to return Ahmadi to his grandparents after several weeks of negotiations and a brief detainment by the Taliban.

Ahmadi’s family said they will now seek to reunite the child with his parents who were evacuated to the U.S. last year. His father, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, worked as a security guard at the U.S. Embassy for about 10 years.

In November, Mirza Ahmadi, 35, told Reuters that he handed his son to a U.S. soldier out of fear that he would be crushed by the crowd at the Kabul airport. Ahmadi thought at the time that he, his wife and his four other children would be able to make it to the entrance of the airport.

Sohail Ahmadi was separated from his family in the chaos of the Kabul evacuation. At last, he has been found and reunited with his relatives https://t.co/35gAah2ZgP pic.twitter.com/dlbiFYx6TT

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 9, 2022

However, soon after he handed his son to the soldier, the crowd was pushed back and it would be half an hour before he entered the airport. By that time, his son was missing and U.S. personnel were unable to tell him what had happened. Ahmadi and his family were evacuated out of Afghanistan and eventually made their way to a Texas military base.

In December, Ahmadi and his family resettled in Michigan.

According to Reuters, Sadi’s neighbors recognized Sohail from photos shared from a previous Reuters article and Facebook photos that Sadi had posted. After Soahil’s whereabouts were discovered, Mirza asked his father-in-law, Mohammad Qasem Razawi, to recover the child.

Razawi travelled for two days to Kabul bearing gifts for Sadi, but when he arrived, Sadi refused to return the child. After Razawi contacted the local Taliban police, a commander worked out an agreement in which the baby’s family would compensate Sadi 100,000 Afghani ($950) for the expenses that were incurred in the five months Sohail was in Sadi’s care.

Sohail’s parents, who were able to view the reunion over video chat told Reuters that they were overjoyed and hope to be reunited with their child soon.