Ross Wilson
When the State Department asked retired Ambassador Ross Wilson in 2019 to return to the Foreign Service as chargé d’affaires in Afghanistan, he understood what he was accepting. Afghanistan was, as he put it, “a huge mission, absolutely front burner for the United States, and very difficult.” His sense of duty prevailed: “I joined the Foreign Service to serve. Of course, I said yes.” It would become the final and most harrowing assignment of a distinguished diplomatic career.
Wilson arrived in Afghanistan as the United States was concluding an agreement with the Taliban that provided for the withdrawal of American forces. President Biden subsequently decided to complete that withdrawal in 2021, ending America’s twenty-year war.
By August 2021, Afghanistan was collapsing with stunning speed. On August 15, Taliban fighters streamed into Kabul, prisons were emptied, security checkpoints were abandoned, and the danger of American diplomats being taken hostage became terrifyingly real. Wilson called Secretary of State Antony Blinken, described the deteriorating situation, and received authorization to evacuate the embassy.
For the next two weeks, Wilson, his U.S. mission colleagues, and State Department officials worked alongside the U.S. military amid extraordinary danger and chaos to evacuate Americans citizens, partner country nationals, and Afghans whose association with the 20-year U.S.-led effort put their lives at risk - a desperate effort of massive scale. Wilson departed Kabul aboard the last American military flight out on August 30, 2021. Wilson said that what affects him and others with him in Afghanistan then is what could not be accomplished.
Born in Minneapolis in 1955, Wilson served more than three decades in American diplomacy, including as ambassador to Azerbaijan and Turkey and twice on the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. His career reflects an increasingly undervalued idea: public service is not merely a profession. Sometimes it means answering the call when saying no would be considerably easier.
“We’ve got two numbers in our heads. One is 124,000 people we were able to evacuate from Afghanistan over the course of a couple weeks. But each of us has another number in our heads, the much bigger one of those left behind. These were people we know, or we saw, or who appealed for our help. All of us will carry with us both of those numbers and what they mean for the rest of our lives.”
AFTON, MINNESOTA - JUNE 11, 2023