Alabamians concerned as Afghan pilots go missing from nearby training base

Alabamians expressed concerns Tuesday evening as news broke that two members of the Afghan Air Force have disappeared from a military base located roughly 120 miles from the state line in neighboring Georgia.

The two A-29 Super Tucano fighter pilots were training at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, but are now missing, according to U.S. military officials.

“Both are assigned to the 81st Fighter Squadron. They have been at Moody since February 2015 and were screened prior to their arrival in the United States more than a year ago,” the U.S. Air Force said in a statement. “The students have trained alongside American counterparts for the entirety of 2015 and do not pose any apparent threat. There is a well-coordinated process among federal agencies to locate the individuals as quickly as possible and return them accordingly to the proper authorities.”

The men were scheduled to graduate next week from their training, along with seven other pilots and fourteen maintenance crew members.

“This is concerning,” Jodi McDade, a conservative activist from Equality, Alabama, said while posting a link to the news on Facebook. “Uh oh,” added Birmingham resident Justin Mooney.

Their sentiments were shared by many other Alabamians on social media, whose concerns with Islamic terrorism have recently risen in correlation with their drop in trust that homeland security agencies have a firm grasp on the problem.

This is not the first time Afghan soldiers temporarily stationed in the United States have come up missing. Three Afghan military officers — a major and two captains — walked off a Cape Cod military base in September of last year and were later found near the U.S.-Canada border. They did not flee, choosing instead to present themselves for asylum. Two Afghan law enforcement officers also went missing last year while in Washington, D.C., training with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. They were later found at an undisclosed location.

In both cases it appears the Afghan nationals did not pose a threat, but simply did not want to go home.

Yellowhammer has reached out to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency for comment and will update this article when we hear back.