Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, reflected on the Taliban’s takeover of his native Afghanistan in a recent interview and op-ed.

Hosseini, an American citizen who was born in Kabul, spoke to the New York Times about America’s military withdrawal from the country, saying that the U.S. has a responsibility to the Afghans left behind.

“So I want people to reach out to their representatives, to their leaders, and say, ‘We have a moral obligation to those people, we have to evacuate those people,’” he said. “We cannot allow our partners—the U.S. has been calling the Afghan people ‘our partners’ for 20 years—we cannot allow our partners to be murdered.”

In an op-ed for the Washington Post, noted that the Afghanistan of today isn’t the same country that it was two decades ago.

“But perhaps, in these 20 years, the Taliban changed as well,” he wrote. “Perhaps it sees the wisdom of inclusive, more moderate methods … After all, it is one thing to conquer a nation but a whole other matter to govern it…In all likelihood, this is an exercise in wishful thinking.”

On Twitter, Hosseini urged American leaders to admit Afghan residents seeking to flee the Taliban’s rule.

“After the fall of Saigon, the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act allowed 130,000 refugees from South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to enter the United States under a special status,” he tweeted. “The same should be done for Afghan refugees today.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.