Wichita man works to help friends escape Afghanistan as city prepares for refugees

When Wichitan Michael Pointer traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2009 with a volunteer group to help set up a dental laboratory for a free clinic, he didn’t bring a security detail, wear body armor or carry a weapon.

Instead, he made friends in the community. When it was dangerous for him to be outside, they took care to keep him safe.

“They let me know, you need to be inside for the next couple of days. There’s Taliban in the area and they’re recruiting, and I would stay inside,” Pointer said. “Then they would come get me when the threat was over and I’d go out and we’d go have tea.”

Pointer said what’s stuck with him more than almost anything from his time in Kabul is the kindness and compassion of the Afghan people.

“They’re warm, they’re welcoming, they’re hospitable,” he said.

Since 2009, Pointer has maintained his contacts in Afghanistan, writing grants for a foundation to help Afghan children and serving a stint on the advisory board for the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan.

When the Taliban seized power in the war-torn country amid a hasty withdrawal of American troops over the last two weeks, Pointer knew his friends were in trouble.

“At first, I reached out to the people that I knew were under threat in Afghanistan to see what I could do — what they needed from me,” Pointer said.

Two local dentists he had worked with at the clinic were in peril. Their association with the American volunteer group had turned them into targets for the Taliban.

“It was a free clinic. We offered services to anybody, whether they were Taliban sympathizers or not,” Pointer said. “Just that American affiliation makes them vulnerable to the Taliban, and they knew that when they came to work at the NGO.”

Pointer said he’s been working with Congressman Ron Estes’s office to get the dentists’ applications for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) into the right hands, but processing centers are being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people desperate to escape the country.

Pointer has also been in close contact with Rahraw Omarzad, head of the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan, who he described as “a leading force for contemporary arts in Afghanistan for over two decades and an internationally recognized and awarded artist.”

When Pointer spoke to The Eagle Thursday, he believed Omarzad was on a plane heading out of Afghanistan. Less than an hour later, he got word that his friend was unable to leave the Kabul airport and had narrowly avoided the bombing attack that killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.

“He left the airport just before the bombings,” Pointer said.

For now, Omarzad will have to wait until he can safely board a plane out of Afghanistan, if the Taliban allows it.

Pointer said it’s harrowing to watch the crisis unfold from a distance. In texts, his Afghan contacts tell him how sad and afraid they are.

“They’re terrified. They don’t want to die. They certainly don’t want to be maimed or blown up, and they hate the violence that’s taken place,” Pointer said.

“They want to enjoy the same freedoms that most of the rest of the world enjoys on a daily basis without the kind of oversight from religious zealots and people in the guise of religious zealotry who just have a taste for killing and torture.”

Families coming to Wichita

Michele Green, executive director of the International Rescue Committee Kansas, said staff members have been deployed to Texas to help process new arrivals from Afghanistan. Before long, some refugees will be relocated to Wichita, she said.

“The IRC in Wichita expects to receive many Afghans in the near future,” Green said. “We know of at least 16 families that will arrive in Wichita once they have been processed. These families are just those that we know about and I expect that number will increase significantly over the next few months.”

Green said she has seen an “outpouring of community support” from Wichitans and that “a family’s ability to resettle and become contributing members of our community is directly linked to the support from that community.”

Green said IRC is planning a donation drive and that an Amazon wish list will be posted soon with the most needed items for setting up new households.

“Even the smallest commitment or donation makes a difference for a family,” she said.

Pointer said he hopes Wichitans can show as much kindness and compassion to Afghan refugees as the locals showed him in Kabul.

“It would be such a great relief to all of us who have joined in the effort of trying to elevate the conditions of the Afghan people for us to be able to bring some of them home here and help them to have an elevated life, a safe life,” he said.

This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 3:00 PM.