We tried to get these people out of Afghanistan. They’re still there.

When Malik Jan Zadran decided to work with The Christian Science Monitor, it felt like a promise. He would protect his American colleagues. Yes, the Taliban had just fallen, but they lingered in the shadows and along the margins – in the places reporters most needed to go.

So Mr. Zadran went to work to keep his new friends safe.

“If we planned to go to a province where the security was not good, my job was to do due diligence – talk to villagers, do my research,” he says. “I would brief the reporters and take precautions. And I enjoyed every minute of it.”

But 20 years later, the situation has reversed. Now it is the Taliban who have taken over, and it is Mr. Zadran’s American colleagues who need to protect and help him. Today, he remains in Afghanistan, the Monitor unable to bring him or several other Afghans who worked with us to safety.

Now, 2 1/2 years after the fall