"Every person has a story and it feels like each one is worse than the last about how they got out. You know, what they experienced when they were getting into the airport, one of our families, they were on a bus to try to get into the airport and came under crossfire," Colleen Denny who is the Spirit of America European Regional Director about the refugees she has helped resettle in Albania.
"He has two sons, a five-year-old and a six-year-old. Him describing just pulling the kids down as low as he could, and, you know, the futile attempt of trying to put his backpack up against the window to try, you know, to do anything he could to stop bullets from coming in or getting close to his kids. You know, and then he told his sons later that that was just fireworks," she told Connecting Vets.
When the government of Afghanistan collapsed, refugees poured out of the country as they attempted to escape the draconian and authoritarian rule of the Taliban. The United States military and various non-governmental organizations evacuated over 120,000 civilians in mere days. While most will be resettled in America, the small Eastern European country of Albania opened its arms to up to 4,000 refugees.
"It's been humbling and incredibly heartbreaking," says Denny. "But also, you know, there's that little piece of hope too, you know, you see these families coming off the plane, and they have little kids, who, some of them are confused, some of them are tired, some of them are scared."
Denny attended the Coast Guard Academy and served for eight years before leaving the service and attending graduate school. During her job search, she found an organization called Spirit of America and applied for a position there.
Spirit of America is a privately funded non-profit group that exists to fill gaps where the U.S. government's diplomatic and national security endeavors may fall short. As Denny explained, the government's bureaucracy grinds slowly, and funding for projects can take a long time to get approved.
"Our operating model works is a deployed team or country team or military team identifies a need, and they have, so they have this local problem," Denny told Connecting Vets. "They come up with a local solution, but they can't solve it with traditional USG means. And that's when they reach out to us."
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Denny had been on the ground in Albania for 15 days at the time we spoke with her, and things were changing by the hour. By working with the Albanian government and the U.S. embassy, Spirit of America personnel had helped gain clearance for aircraft ferrying refugees to land, met them on the tarmac, settled refugees down in hotel rooms, and provided them with food and other necessities. Many Afghans fled for their lives with only the clothes they wore, so Spirit of America helps to provide everything from toothbrushes to baby formula.
"One woman, she said to me, her mother had been killed by the Taliban a year ago and she said to me that, while my body is here in Albania, my heart and my mind are in Afghanistan," Denny described. "You know, just hearing these people speak, especially so many of the women who have been able to get really excellent educations and build really impressive careers for themselves, you know, kind of mourning the loss of that for the next generation of girls.
"And then also having guilt that they were able to get out and so many words so it's really all across the whole spectrum of emotions for them getting off the plane and trying to figure out you know, what's next for them their family their country?"
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According to Denny, the Albanian government does not want to set up tent cities and create refugee camps, as they want the Afghans to live in as dignified a manner as possible.
To that end, they have been putting the refugees in hotels, which were mostly empty since it is not tourist season. "You know, we're working out the specifics here with Albanians, who have just been such gracious, amazing partners and hosts," she said.
Despite the suffering and pain present in the Afghan refugees, Denny has found hope in the work she does as well as the warmness of the reception provided by the Albanian government from the Prime Minister on down to the woman to helped Denny assign rooms at one of the hotels.
"It was that authenticity, of course, this is what we do and no second thoughts to it has really been encouraging and coming from the United States where things are so polarized and divided about pretty much every topic. It's really, it's a unified message here in Albania," she said.
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