Canadian Armed Forces in Kandahar, leading the security team that guarded Camp Nathan Smith. The soldiers called him Captain Smiley.“I’m a happy man,” explained Ismail, wiry and unshaven with sunglasses perched over thick black hair.
He is 35, and like many Afghans, could pass for a decade older.But as the Afghan forces collapsed over the summer amid a U.S.
military withdrawal, Taliban filled the streets, and it was hard for Ismail to stay positive.He feared his work for the army that fought the Taliban meant he would never feel safe, so he turned to the Canadians he had once protected to see if they might return the favor.Day after day, he stood in a filthy sewage canal outside Kabul airport, shouting out his name at the international.