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'They become our family:' US farming couple rescues Afghans

FERGUS FALLS, Minnesota (AP) - The U.S. soldiers called them 'œCaroline's guys.'ť They transformed farms in a war zone - risking their lives for the program she built, sharing her belief that something as simple as apple trees could change the world.

The university-educated Afghans helped turn land in an overgrazed, drought-stricken and impoverished region in eastern Afghanistan into verdant gardens and orchards that still feed local families today.

In the process, the 12 agricultural specialists, all traditional Afghan men, formed a deep, unexpected bond with their boss, an American woman who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in the region for two years.

Now Caroline Clarin is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming.

Clarin has helped get five of her former employees and their families into the U.S. since 2017, while her wife has helped them rebuild their lives in America.

Since the Taliban seized power in August, texts from those remaining have grown more urgent and Clarin says she can 'œfeel the panic increasing" as winter approaches and food shortages grow. She has stepped up her efforts, working endless hours, diligently tracking their visa applications. She calls senators to apply pressure so they don't languish like the thousands of other visa applications in the backlogged system for Afghans who supported the U.S. government during the long war.

She's driven by fear her team will be killed by the Taliban, though the new government has promised not to retaliate against Afghans who helped the U.S.. She also wants to give them a future.

Since U.S. forces withdrew, more than 70,000 Afghans have come to the United States and thousands are languishing at U.S. military bases as resettlement agencies struggle to keep up.

Clarin knows she cannot save everyone, but she's determined to help those she can.

After she left Afghanistan in 2011, she was consumed by anger over her program being gutted as the U.S. government changed its priorities.

'œWhen I got on the plane, it was like leaving my family on the helipad,'ť she said. 'œI felt like I deserted them.'ť

The most recent of her friends to escape was Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist who waited seven years for a special immigrant visa. After he texted her that two of his close friends had just been killed, Clarin withdrew $6,000 from a retirement fund to get him and his family on a commercial flight to Minnesota before the Taliban took control of the country this summer.

When Clarin picked them up at the airport in Minneapolis at midnight for the three-hour drive back to Fergus Falls, she was consumed with joy.

'œIt was like my son came home,'ť she said.

_____

Patan arrived in Minnesota with saffron, Afghan almonds, and 5 kilos (11 pounds) of Afghan green tea to share. He also gave Clarin and her wife, Sheril Raymond, seeds of Afghanistan's tender leeks for their garden.

He was the first member to join Clarin's team after she was sent to Paktika province. A confident, young university graduate, Patan spelled out what was needed in the region. It would become the basis of her program: Seeds, trees and the skills to plant gardens and orchards.

Patan considers Clarin and her wife family. His three sons and daughter call them their 'œaunties.'ť

In fact, he's decided to live in nearby Fergus Falls, a town of 14,000, instead of moving to a larger city with an Afghan transplant community.

Surrounded by farmland stretching to the North Dakota border, the town's skyline is dominated by grain elevators and the spires of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, a reflection of the region's Scandinavian roots.

The only other Afghan family in town is his cousin's. Sami Massoodi, who has a degree in livestock management, also worked for Clarin's team in Afghanistan and arrived in 2017. He and his family lived on their farm before they got established in Fergus Falls.

'œIn Fergus Falls, they have really good people, really friendly people,'ť Patan said as he drives his minivan down the tree-lined streets to pick up his 5-year-old daughter at a Head Start program.

It is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say 'œhi'ť and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican. Fergus Falls is the county seat of Otter Tail County, which voted twice for former President Donald Trump.

But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views, and there is broad empathy for the struggle of immigrants since many people's parents, grandparents or great grandparents came from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Only months after they arrived, the Patan family already feels at home in large part because of Raymond.

She helped enroll their kids in school, find a dentist for 9-year-old Sala's infected tooth, and sign Patan up for car insurance, something that was new for the 35-year-old.

She lined up English classes and state and federal services for new immigrants. She drove Patan an hour to the nearest testing site for a driver's license. After he failed twice because his English was not proficient enough, he asked if there was a test in his native Pashto language, like in Virginia and California. There wasn't. So Raymond found a site, another hour away, that would allow him to review his errors. On his third try, he passed.

Clarin has tracked down a sheep on craigslist for Eid, while Raymond watched YouTube videos on how to slaughter livestock according to halal principles, since the closest halal butcher is an hour away in Fargo, North Dakota.

For Patan, they have been a comfort in a strange place.

'œWhen we are going to their house, we feel like we went to Afghanistan and we are going to meet our close relatives,'ť he said.

He longs for his homeland, the family festivities. Patan's wife makes their traditional dishes still, like Bolani Afghani, a fried, vegetable-filled flatbread that Clarin enjoyed with him in Afghanistan.

Over there, Patan and her team were the ones helping her feel at home.

It was the longest she and Raymond had been apart since they started dating in 1988.

Raymond, who cares for the chickens, pigs and other animals on their farm, would do video calls often, staying online even after Clarin had fallen asleep.

Two years after Clarin returned, they married in August 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota.

Homosexuality is still widely seen as taboo and indecent in Afghanistan, where same-sex relations are illegal.

Yet, none of the Afghan families have asked about their marriage or expressed judgment, the couple said.

Patan calls them his 'œsisters."

'œWe have a lot of respect for them," he said.

___

Both Clarin and Patan speak passionately about farming, describing in detail how to get a good apple crop and ward off disease.

Clarin arranged for the U.S. military to take her team in convoys to remote areas to train farmers, empowering Afghans to teach each other skills. They lined canals to ensure clean water. They worked with farmers to plant trees and build stone barriers to control flooding. They distributed seeds to 1,200 families, who have since shared seeds with more people.

The program trained about 5,000 farmers in Paktika from 2009 to 2011. They provided growers hoop-houses, apple trees, pruning equipment and small grants. They taught farmers tangible solutions, including using buckets with drip lines to irrigate gardens and conserve water.

The Taliban tried to sabotage the trust they built with farmers, Clarin said. Once, an explosive blew up in a red bucket like the ones they used for irrigation.

Patan has stayed in contact with some of the farmers in Paktika and proudly shows photos on his iPhone of the tiny stems he distributed that are now trees several feet tall. One farmer texted him to say his harvest is feeding his family as millions of others in the country face severe hunger.

That offers some solace after seeing his homeland fall to the Taliban. It feels good he said to know his work left something lasting and that 'œthe people can still benefit from it. We educated one generation and those fathers will tell it to their sons.'ť

Patan misses his career back in Afghanistan. Most U.S. employers do not recognize degrees from Afghan universities so he plans to return to school to earn a U.S. degree. For now, he is training to be a commercial truck driver, a field flush with opportunities: There were 21 job openings in the area when he started his classes this month.

He wants a local truck route to stay close to home, but it will still be challenging for his family. His wife, Sediqa, does not speak English, nor does she know how to read or write, and does not feel comfortable going out by herself.

She also does not drive.

When she started learning English online, she was at 'œground zero,'ť said her teacher, Sara Sundberg at Minnesota State Community and Technical College.

'œWhen she came, she didn't know what to do with a pencil. We had to show her. She held it kind of like a Henna tube,'ť said Sundberg, holding together her thumb and index finger tightly at the tip as if squeezing something.

Five months later, her handwriting is 'œmeticulous,'ť and her pronunciation is excellent, Sundberg said. She's even learning to say Minnesota with the long 'œoooo.'ť

'œI'm teaching her how to communicate with the community and I want people to understand her,'ť Sundberg said. 'œEverything is brand new for her.'ť

Sediqa is slowly gaining confidence in speaking with her teacher, but with others she is silent, smiling and staying back with her children.

Everything is new for their children, too. Patan's sons befriended a neighbor boy and jumped for the first time on a trampoline.

His oldest son, Maiwan, decorated his first pumpkin, while his two younger sons wore their traditional Afghan clothes because their teachers told them that on the Friday before Halloween the kids could 'œdress up,'ť something that was lost in translation but went unnoticed as the other kids excitedly showed them their costumes.

They look forward to the weekends with their 'œaunties'ť at the farm.

On a warm October Saturday, Clarin jogged next to 12-year-old Maiwan driving a small tractor as Ali and his 9-year-old brother, Sala, dug in the dirt for worms with their cousins, giggling and chatting incessantly in Pashto.

'œThey are kinda free," Patan says of his kids now, recalling how bomb blasts in Kabul caused them to miss school more than once.

They still carry the trauma. When fireworks were shot off for Fourth of July this summer, Patan called his cousin in a panic and asked if Fergus Falls was being bombed.

_____

Clarin has vowed to get all her guys out.

Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, she has been starting most days around 3 a.m. when she quietly makes her way to her basement office, hours before she heads to her job in Fergus Falls as a U.S. Department of Agriculture wetlands restoration engineer.

Stacks of passport photos, recommendation letters, visa applications and other paperwork cover the tables, her desk and the top of a freezer. Across the hall, Raymond has prepared a guest room for the next Afghan family they get out.

Besides the guys from her program still in Afghanistan, she is aiding other Afghans, including several women. 'œWhy US government did this to us? Why did they leave us behind?," one texts. Desperate pleas for help from more Afghans keep popping up in her phone as word spreads of her efforts.

'œMy sister said, '~You got your own little Underground Railroad in the basement,''ť Clarin said.

So far, the couple has spent just under $10,000 since May. That includes the airfare for the Patan family, a contribution toward the family's used minivan, and fees for five applications for humanitarian parole for families still in Afghanistan.

Raymond keeps the tally in a notebook.

'œIt does make me a little nervous because we've lived on the edge for so long,'ť said 57-year-old Raymond, who sews her dresses, knits hats, and bakes bread.

'œSo I work another year before retiring,'ť Clarin, 55, answers with a shrug.

Two other Afghan families Clarin helped chose to settle in Austin, Texas, and San Diego, partly because in both places there are mosques, halal butcher shops and established Afghan communities. None of that exists in Fergus Falls. They also wanted to avoid Minnesota's winters where wind chill temperatures a few years ago dropped to as low as 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, (-45 degrees Celsius), something Patan was shocked to learn.

But Patan knows there are drawbacks to cities. Another former member of Clarin's team who moved to California recently returned to Minnesota after complaining about the crime in Sacramento. They now live about an hour away but close to Fargo, where there is a mosque.

Patan, who speaks Dari and Pashto, translates documents for Clarin for the visa applications. He worries about his former colleagues, who remain his close friends.

'œI hope that one day they can also come here and we will make a big Afghan kind-of-family over here,'ť he said. 'œAll of them want to come here to Fergus.'ť

Raymond worries more than Clarin about money, and she finds the government fee of $575 per application for humanitarian parole outrageous.

But she also acknowledges they cannot step back now.

'œWhen we bring in a family, they become our family,'ť she said.

Pigs roam the farm of Caroline Clarin, left, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, as they pause along the water's edge for a photo in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Clarin has helped get five of her former employees and their families in Afghanistan into the U.S. since 2017, while her wife has helped them rebuild their lives in America. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin, right, talks with her wife, Sheril Raymond, as their dog, Iorek, looks out the window at their home in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Raymond worries more than Clarin about money they've spent to bring families over from Afghanistan, and she finds the government fee of $575 per application for humanitarian parole outrageous. But she also acknowledges they cannot step back now. "When we bring in a family, they become our family," she said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
The setting sun illuminates a barn near the home of Caroline Clarin and Sheril Raymond in Dalton, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Surrounded by farmland stretching to the North Dakota border, the landscape is dominated by barns, grain elevators and the spires of a Bethlehem Lutheran Church, a reflection of the region's Scandinavian roots. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin, right, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, prepare dinner at their home in Dalton, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. So far, the couple has spent just under $10,000 since May bringing over families from Afghanistan. Raymond keeps the tally in a notebook. "It does make me a little nervous because we've lived on the edge for so long," said Raymond, who sews her dresses, knits hats, and bakes bread. "So I work another year before retiring," Clarin, 55, answers with a shrug. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Sheril Raymond, left, and her wife, Caroline Clarin, look out from their front door in Dalton, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. When Clarin was in Afghanistan, it was the longest she and Raymond had been apart since they started dating in 1988. Raymond, who cares for the chickens, pigs and other animals on their farm, would do video calls often, staying online even after Clarin had fallen asleep. Two years after Clarin returned, they married in August 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ali Patan, 7, right, shovels dirt while looking for worms with his brothers, Sala, 9, left, and Maiwan, 12, center, and cousins, Laiba, 7, in dress, and her brother, Haiwad, 9, rear right, while visiting the farm of Caroline Clarin in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. "They are kinda free," Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, says of his kids now, recalling how bomb blasts in Kabul caused them to miss school more than once. They still carry the trauma. When fireworks were shot off for Fourth of July this summer, Patan called his cousin in a panic and asked if the town was being bombed. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Peppers sit on the dining table of Caroline Clarin at her farm in Dalton, Minn., after she picked them from a garden she in part set up to grow vegetables for Afghan families she's helped relocate locally, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
A girl plays on a giant otter sculpture in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. It is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say "hi" and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican. Fergus Falls is the county seat of Otter Tail County, which voted twice for former President Donald Trump. But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, puts the hood up for his daughter, Sujda, 5, after picking her up from daycare in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Only months after they arrived, the Patan family already feels at home. "In Fergus Falls, they have really good people, really friendly people," Patan said as he drove his minivan down the tree-lined streets. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Sala Patan, 9, walks with his brothers. Ali, 7, left, and Maiwan, 12, rear right, to catch the bus to school outside their apartment in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Everything is new for the Patan children. Sala befriended a neighbor boy and jumped for the first time on a trampoline while Maiwan decorated his first pumpkin. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ali Patan, 7, right, talks with his teacher, Hannah Herzog, at his locker during a first-grade class at Adams Elementary School in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Ali and his brothers wore their traditional Afghan clothes because their teachers told them that on the Friday before Halloween the kids could "dress up," something that was lost in translation but went unnoticed as the other kids excitedly showed them their costumes. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Sara Sundberg holds up a workbook while teaching online an English lesson at Minnesota State Community and Technical College to Sediqa Patan, a refugee from Afghanistan who recently arrived in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2021. "When she came, she didn't know what to do with a pencil," said Sundberg, holding together her thumb and index finger tightly at the tip as if squeezing something. Five months later, her handwriting is "meticulous," and her pronunciation is excellent, Sundberg said. She's even learning to say Minnesota with the long "oooo." (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin, right, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, sit in their living room with their dogs, Daisy, left, and Iorek, in Dalton, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August, texts from those Clarin worked with who remain have grown more urgent and she says she can "feel the panic increasing" as winter approaches and food shortages grow. She is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Fog hovers before dawn as a pedestrian walks through downtown Fergus Falls, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. Caroline Clarin, who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in Afghanistan, and her wife have helped two of her former employees and their families resettle in Fergus Falls. Two other Afghan families Clarin helped chose to settle in Austin, Texas, and San Diego, partly because in both places there are mosques, halal butcher shops and established Afghan communities. None of that exists in Fergus Falls. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin watches the flames of a bonfire at her home in Dalton, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Clarin knows she cannot save everyone, but she's determined to help those she can. After she left Afghanistan in 2011, she was consumed by anger over her program being gutted as the U.S. government changed its priorities. "When I got on the plane, it was like leaving my family on the helipad," she said. "I felt like I deserted them." (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin, who worked as an agricultural adviser in Afghanistan, works in her basement on applications to get the Afghans who worked for her program out of the country, in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Clarin has vowed to get all her guys out. Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, she has been starting most days around 3 a.m. when she quietly makes her way to her basement office, hours before she heads to her job in Fergus Falls as a U.S. Department of Agriculture wetlands restoration engineer. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
The photo of an Afghan woman hoping to flee Afghanistan sits with her application on the desk of Caroline Clarin, who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in Afghanistan, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021, in Dalton, Minn. Besides the guys from her program still in Afghanistan, she is aiding other Afghans, including several women. "Why US government did this to us? Why did they leave us behind?," one texts. Desperate pleas for help from more Afghans keep popping up in her phone as word spreads of her efforts. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
A patron walks behind a stained glass window of a Viking while entering the Viking Cafe in Fergus Falls, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. Fergus Falls is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say "hi" and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican in a county which voted twice for former President Donald Trump. But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views, and there is broad empathy for the struggle of immigrants since many people's parents, grandparents or great grandparents came from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, takes an English test at Minnesota Community and Technical College in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Patan stays in contact with some of the farmers back home and proudly shows photos on his iPhone of the tiny stems he distributed that are now trees several feet tall. One farmer texted him to say his harvest is feeding his family as millions of others in the country face severe hunger. That offers some solace after seeing his homeland fall to the Taliban. "We educated one generation and those fathers will tell it to their sons," Patan said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
A U.S. flag stands in the room as Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, meets with job counselor Clara Wegsheid at Minnesota Community and Technical College in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Patan misses his career back in Afghanistan. Most U.S. employers do not recognize degrees from Afghan universities so he plans to return to school to earn a U.S. degree. For now, he is training to be a commercial truck driver. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, has lunch with Caroline Clarin, right, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, at his home in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Patan considers Clarin and her wife family. His three sons and daughter call them their "aunties." In fact, he's decided to live in nearby Fergus Falls, a town of 14,000, instead of moving to a larger city with an Afghan transplant community. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Ihsanullah Patan, an agricultural specialist and refugee from Afghanistan, talks on the phone as Caroline Clarin, left, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, stands in his apartment in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Patan, who speaks Dari and Pashto, translates documents for Clarin for the visa applications. He worries about his former colleagues, who remain his close friends. "I hope that one day they can also come here and we will make a big Afghan kind-of-family over here," he said. "All of them want to come here to Fergus." (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin rides with Ali Patan, 7, as he drives her riding mower at her home in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. For the Patan family, Clarin and her wife have been a comfort in a strange place. "When we are going to their house, we feel like we went to Afghanistan and we are going to meet our close relatives," Ihsanullah Patan, Ali's father said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
Caroline Clarin, right, hugs Haiwad Massoodi, 9, on a visit by his father, Sami, rear left, and Sami Massoodi's cousin Ihsanullah Patan, right, and Patan's son, Ali, 7, at her farm in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. Clarin was consumed by anger over her program being gutted by the U.S. government. "I felt like I deserted them," she said about Massoodi, Patan and the other Afghans she worked with. Patan waited seven years for a special visa. When Clarin recently picked him up at the airport she was consumed with joy. "It was like my son came home," she said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) The Associated Press
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