The baby was injured in a U.S. military raid that killed her parents and five siblings and was being raised as a daughter by her newlywed adult cousin and his wife.
The young Afghan couple raced to the airport in Kabul, clutching their baby girl close amid the chaotic withdrawal of American troops last year.
The ordeal has drawn in the U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and State, which have argued that the attempt to spirit away a citizen of another country could significantly harm military and foreign relations. It has also meant that a child who survived a violent raid, was hospitalized for months and escaped the fall of Afghanistan has had to split her short life between two families, both of which now claim her.
The Masts call the Afghan family’s claims “outrageous, unmerited attacks” on their integrity. They argue in court filings that they have worked “to protect the child from physical, mental or emotional harm.” They say the Afghan couple are “not her lawful parents,” and Mast’s attorney cast doubt on whether the Afghans were even related to the baby.
In 2019, they were living with their sons in Palmyra, a small rural Virginia town, when Joshua Mast was sent on a temporary assignment to Afghanistan. Mast, then a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, was a military lawyer for the federal Center for Law and Military Operations. The U.S. Marines declined to comment publicly, along with other federal officials.
The International Committee of the Red Cross told the AP that they began searching for her family with the Afghan government, often a plodding process in rural parts of the country where record-keeping is scant. At first, they didn’t even know the baby’s name. “I was aware that it may not be smooth sailing ahead, but that just made me more determined to do the right thing,” the State Department official said.
American adoptions from Afghanistan are rare and only possible for Muslim-American families of Afghan descent. The State Department recognizes 14 American adoptions from Afghanistan over the past decade, none in the past two years. They petitioned the local Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, describing the baby as a “stateless minor recovered off the battlefield.” In early November 2019, a judge granted them legal custody. The name of this judge is not publicly available because juvenile records are sealed in Virginia.
In the meantime, Joshua Mast enrolled the baby in the Defense Department health care system, made an appointment at a U.S. International Adoption Clinic and asked to have her evacuated.In late 2019, Afghan officials told the U.S. Embassy that the baby’s paternal uncle had been identified, and he decided his son and daughter-in-law were best suited to take her, according to court records.
The Masts, represented by Richard Mast, sued the secretaries of Defense and State in a federal court in Virginia, asking for an emergency restraining order to stop them. The Masts claimed they were the baby’s “lawful permanent legal guardians.” Justice Department attorneys argued that the United States must meet its international obligations. Attorney Alexander Haas put it simply: Taking another country’s citizen to the United States “would have potentially profound implications on our military and foreign affairs interests.”The next day, she was united with her biological family. The Afghan couple wept with joy.
Over the course of a year, Motley called for updates about the child and occasionally asked for photos. In July, around the baby’s first birthday, the couple sent Motley a snapshot of the child in swim trunks, smiling and splashing in a wading pool. But the Afghan man now raising her, who had worked in the medical field, did not think her burn scars, a leg injury and mysterious allergic reactions amounted to a life-altering condition in the way Mast described. The couple declined sending the baby to the United States.
Mast applied for special visas for the Afghan family and for relatives of Osmani, the translator, according to court records. They characterized the Afghan couple as an escort for a “U.S. military dependent” — the baby. When the family arrived in Germany for a stopover, Joshua Mast and his wife greeted them at the air force base. It was the first time they had met in person.
The Afghan couple asked to be taken to Fort Pickett Army National Guard base, a location specified by Mast, according to the lawsuit. Thousands of Afghan refugees were temporarily housed there. Richard Mast is also named as a defendant in the Afghan family’s lawsuit. He wrote in legal documents that his brother’s adoption of the child was “selfless;” it saved both the child, and the Afghan family fighting to get her back, “from the evils of life under the Taliban.”
And so they tried to maintain contact with Mast. They were also scared of him. If he could abduct their child in broad daylight, they worried he might hurt them too, their lawyers wrote in legal filings. Soon the couple sought legal help; by December 2021, the Afghan couple had asked the Fluvanna judge to reverse the adoption. But those proceedings, almost one year in, have been opaque and slow.
Earlier this month, Joshua Mast arrived at the Fluvanna County courthouse along with his wife and his brother Richard. Mast was dressed in his starched Marine uniform, holding his white and gold hat in his hand. The hearing stretched on for roughly eight hours.
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