Two years ago, Lieutenant Eidi Mohammad Amani showcased his precise marching skills on the drill square of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun, graduating as an officer in the Afghan Army. However, today, he finds himself struggling to make a living, in order to earn bread and butter as an officer, taking on small roles as British Army officers in Hindi movies.

The recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has shattered the dreams of Amani and numerous young Afghan Army officers who, like him, received their training at IMA Dehradun and Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai. Many of these officers are reluctant to return to the repressive Taliban regime in their homeland, and they are unable to fulfill the roles they were meticulously prepared for in the esteemed military academies of India.

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“I passed out of IMA with the 149th Regular Course in December 2021 after training for one and a half years. I was part of the Poonch Company in the Cariappa Battalion. The then President of India Ram Nath Kovind was the reviewing officer of the parade,” Amani told The Indian Express in Amritsar where he is shooting for a minor role in an upcoming series. Amani was commissioned into the Infantry in the Afghan Army as a lieutenant.

Once an Al Beroni University journalism graduate in Golbahar Afghanistan, Amani now lives in Malviya Nagar in New Delhi. With no permanent job and he is forced to do odd jobs, including movie roles. “I have also acted in a movie of Akshay Kumar in July this year. I played a British officer in that too. A friend of mine got me these roles,” he asserts.

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Once he found out that he could no longer go back to his own country and the Indian Army had no policy for inducting Afghans trained by it, Lieutenant Amani enrolled in Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar and did a one-year course in digital marketing.

“The biggest problem that I and other Afghan Army officers trained in IMA and OTA face in getting jobs is the lack of bonafides. Our visas have expired, the Afghan embassy has shut down, we have no Indian paperwork to prove our identity and this causes a lot of problems,” says Amani.

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Amani went up to Colonel Bhupinder Shahi (retired), the military consultant for the series being filmed in Amritsar. Amani asked Colonel Shahi for a recommendation letter to prove his credibility. “I have requested the colonel to help me so that I can get some respectable job,” he says. His Indian Army course-mates who passed out of IMA Dehradun along with him are now about to become Captains and are posted in various parts of the country.

“My family resides in Afghanistan. While my father has passed away, my mother, two brothers, and a sister continue to live there,” he explains. He adds that, given the current conditions in his homeland, he has no intention of returning.

Colonel Shahi highlighted that many Afghan Army officers find themselves desperately seeking job opportunities. He asserts, “They need assistance in securing meaningful employment. These individuals are not just well-trained soldiers but also officers capable of leading troops.”

The closest that Lieutenant Amani can come to realising his dream of being an Army officer is donning a khaki shirt and shorts, carrying a replica rifle, and taking on the role of a British soldier.