Afghan who served Canadian military pleads with Ottawa to save his family from the Taliban

Ramin Sultani didn't take the death threats seriously at first — the phone calls to his home demanding information about his former role as an interpreter for the Canadian military.

In 2011, aged 23, he was back home in his village near the city of Ghazni and enjoying being close to his family again. It had been years since Sultani had been out on foot patrols with Canadian Armed Forces personnel in Kandahar, a province in Afghanistan's south.

One day, a local shopkeeper told him that men with guns had come to the store looking for him.

Sultani knew exactly who they were — the Taliban, looking to exact revenge on anyone who had helped western forces. The shopkeeper said he told the armed men there were too many people named Ramin in the neighbourhood and he couldn't help them.

Sultani immediately told his father.

"My father got silent for a moment. Then he said, 'You're leaving tonight, Ramin,'" Sultani told CBC News at his home in Scarborough, Ont.

"My father knew these people, [that] they're very dangerous, they could harm me."

His journey took him to Kabul and, eventually, Toronto. 

Sultani couldn't take his family with him. He came to Canada through a special program Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) offered at the time only to interpreters — not to their families.

"[The immigration official] said, 'Only you or, if you're married, your wife,'" said Sultani, who has four brothers and two sisters. "I don't have a wife, but I have my siblings, my parents. He said, 'No, you cannot bring your family.'"

Now, there's a special immigration measure in place for families of those who served the Canadian military as interpreters — but because of his former job, most of Sultani's relations are now in hiding in Kabul and can't get out.

"Honestly, I feel mistreated right now. Because what we did, nobody else could do over there," he said.

"In terms of government, I feel we were left behind over there, our families were left behind over there. We risk our life helping the Canadian Forces, and look what they're doing right now."

In Kabul, Sultani's family struggles to stay off the Taliban's radar.