Today, Explained - The allies left behind

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

While the US withdraws from Afghanistan, the Taliban is surging, which is a likely death sentence for the thousands of Afghans who helped the US military. An interpreter who escaped explains. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You know how bars or restaurants sometimes have a sign that says if you weren't born before X year, you can't drink.

It's usually just the digits of the decisive year and huge typeface. The other day, I was at a restaurant and noticed the sign said 2000. Two, zero, zero, zero. I did some hasty arithmetic just to verify 2021 minus 2000. Yeah, it checks out. But it was the first time it really sunk in that there's an entire generation of young adults who have only just heard about 9-11.

That video footage that looks old to us must look ancient to them. Or even wilder, there are young adults serving in our ongoing war in Afghanistan who weren't even born on September 11th, 2001. President Biden has promised to end that war at the end of this month. In the two decades since it began, the military has leaned on the expertise of thousands of Afghan nationals who helped the United States fight Taliban insurgents on the ground. They risked their lives alongside American

service members. The U.S. government has resettled over 70,000 Afghans in America since 2008 through the Special Immigrant Visa Program. And in July, Congress eased restrictions to help move applications through the pipeline faster. But as the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan, the Taliban is quickly taking control and time is running out to save the remaining interpreters from imprisonment, torture, or even death. 18,000 Afghans who helped U.S. forces, along with more than 50,000 members of their families, are still waiting to come here. On the show today, we're going to hear why it's been so hard to save American allies in Afghanistan. And we're going to start with one of them who made it out. My name is Ismail Khan. Call him Ismail. I was in Nengrohar, Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

When I graduated from school in 2006 and 2007, my cousin and my brothers were already working with U.S. Special Forces. And the stories that I heard from them, it kind of gave me the motivation and I started thinking, like, if the Americans are here in Afghanistan, they travel like 8,000 miles to bring peace and security to Afghan people. So we should contribute our part whatever we can to make sure they succeed. I joined U.S. Army as an interpreter in 2006. I worked with them and then went to work with OGA and then ended up working with Special Forces. You already know that you will be killed any minute,

that you are risking your life, not only your life, your entire family life. That was the risk that every single person knew before they joined. So, and we were happy to take the risk. Whatever every single person, every soldier saw, we saw it. I'll tell you a story. We were in Afghan clothes. We met a district governor. So on the way back to

our base, we are in civilian clothes, civilian cars. We are minding our business, driving down the road. We see an Afghan army convoy coming up. So they had an ambush. We are in the middle of the firefight. So if you are a soldier, someone shoots, your immediate response would be to shoot back. That's what my team started doing it. And I was like, hell no, put your damn weapons down. If you shoot, guess what? Both sides are going to shoot back at you. The Afghan National Army will think that they're the insurgent. The insurgent will think that they are with the army. So we made the right decision.

We went through the convoy and did not engage in fire and everyone survived. Every single Afghan is trying to fight. We grew up in fighting for the last 40 years. You grow up in fighting. You go out and you fear for your life that you are going to hit an IED, someone is going to shoot at someone, missiles are going to hit the city. You grow up in that time so it you kind of get used to it if you look in a Taliban perspective the enemy perspective they were they were targeting more interpreters than they were targeting Americans because they were saying interpreters, their mouth, their hair, their eye, it's their GPS.

It is a bridge between the Afghan people and Americans. Just cut the bridge and they're done. It was a small team and we were so successful. A lot of people came out to see what we do. It was incredible. The list you see, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, a lot of senators, General Petraeus, General Mulholland, General Miller. We were really successful at that time and we did whatever we could to make sure we bring peace, security, and stability to the local people.

How long did you serve as an interpreter, Ishmael? About seven years. What did you see in those seven years? Everything that someone can possibly see in a war. The Taliban kidnapped one of my nephew. He was nine years old. And they were asking for about $150,000, which we didn't have it. But then the Afghan police were able to arrest about 13 Talibans and bring my nephew back.

My work put my entire family in danger and that was the time that i decided to leave my family is still in danger uh like especially when the uh biden administration made the announcement that they're leaving at the end of August. And they've been remotely moving from place to places. It's kind of hard for them. And I blame myself sometimes, like they have nothing to do with it. I was the one who worked with U.S. Army. They didn't do anything. They deserve to live, but they are suffering because of my service. How hard was it to get a visa when you decided to leave? John McCain was the one who pushed my paperwork. It still took about three and a half years to get a visa. So if a senior senator can push and it takes you three and a half years, think about those who are just submitting their applications.

What was life like when you finally got to the United States? There were a lot of expectations, to be honest with you, and most Afghans have really different expectation. We think it's easy money in the United States. There are a lot of jobs, easy job that you go, you get it. But when you come here, it's like 180 degrees turn around. What am I into? People back home thinks that like money, like it grows on trees, you just need to go and take it up. Jobs are super easy to get but for us

we struggle back time the education that we have it's nothing here the experience that we have it's nothing here so you have to start everything from zero you have to prove yourself. For me, I had to go to school. I had to get a degree here, at the same time work and take care of the family. It was really challenging. I had to earn it. I had to work so hard to get to this point. And I moved here. I applied for different jobs, even a security job. Security shouldn't be any problem. Like they should hire me like, boom, you know, you go background check or something. It took them about two months. And when they, by the time they called me, I already had another job. I started as a customer service agent with a company called VIP Hospitality based in Seattle, Washington.

And I made my way up to the operation manager. And now that you've been here a while, have you been able to bring over any family? What upsets me here, people don't understand. They're talking about immediate family. Immediate family here is different than the immediate family back home. They call spouse and kids immediate family. Immuted family here is different than the immediate family back home. They call spouse and kids immediate family. Our immediate family is spouse, kids, of course, but mom, dad, brother, and sister. We live together. Even if your child is 21 or older, you cannot bring your child. So I have seen a lot of Afghans whose children are back home,

and they can't bring them in because they're 21. And as city after city after city in Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, are you worried that your fellow interpreters won't make it out in time? Like about two months ago, the State Department said there are about 18,000 applicants. Since they made the announcement, there are probably 50,000 plus that they are waiting to get a visa. What hurt me the most, a lot of them died waiting for visas the The day before yesterday, one of the interpreters who was waiting for his visa,

they killed him in Jalalabad. Taliban shot him in the middle of the city. Target killing is really easy for them now. They know who you are. They know every single person who works with Americans. The entire world is watching. The entire world is going to see what the Americans do with those who helped U.S. forces at the time when they needed them the most. In the future, if Americans go somewhere else, what would you think if they go to another country? Will people step up and help them? Would they not go back and see what happened to those Afghans

who fought shoulder by shoulder with the U.S. Armed Forces? If you could do it all over again, would you still choose to help the United States? I would do it for my team. I would do it for the Army. I would not do it for the U.S. Army. Never. Ishmael Khan works with No One Left Behind. It's an organization working to bring interpreters and their families to the United States. More in a minute on Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Quill, Lawrence, you covered Iraq and Afghanistan for a dozen years or so for NPR. Why is it so hard to resettle interpreters who risk their lives to help the U.S. military? It's a strange moment right now because there is finally this massive effort by people in Congress and the State Department. In Washington, the House voted yesterday to make it easier to evacuate thousands of Afghan interpreters who worked side by side with U.S. troops.

And in a way, it's come just when it's too late. What the advocates who've been working on this for years tell me is that this huge effort is too little too late. They'll say there's a visa waiting for you in Kabul and the Taliban control the road between Kunduz and Kabul. Is it always this hard? Was it this hard with Iraq? In Iraq, yes, certainly the same thing happened. It was a slower end to the war there.

This time, a few thousand U.S. troops will stay in Iraq in a support capacity and conduct counterterrorist operations as needed. Also didn't leave the country in a way that it was rapidly falling to an insurgency. It's a very different picture in Afghanistan, where President Biden is fulfilling a deal signed by former President Trump to pull out nearly all troops by the end of August. Now, parts of Iraq did fall to ISIS very quickly, but the government there never completely lost control. I don't want to minimize it. There were thousands of interpreters there who were trying to get out, and the specialrant Visa program for Iraq expired. And now there's a different way that Iraqi wartime allies can apply for asylum in the U.S. But, yeah, Afghanistan is, even though this end was broadcasted for so long,

and really, you know, the Trump administration shrunk the troop presence in Afghanistan down over Christmas. It shrunk it down to an untenable number and essentially ended the war. When the Biden administration came in and said that it was not going to reverse that course, it felt that the majority of American people were in favor of pulling out of Afghanistan. There's been this rush and, you know, a rush by veterans in Congress. As any one of us. My interpreter is an American hero, too. We promised to have their backs. They put their lives. Any of them and other people in Congress who thought this issue was important. The president did the honorable thing when he promised to get those who helped us

out of harm's way. Now we need to get it done. But it was happening at a time where the U.S. no longer had power on the ground to really make good on this promise. That's just the reality. Is there anyone in Congress who was against this idea of getting these interpreters over to the United States? No, there's no one to point to you could say is standing in the way. We, the United States? No, there's no one to point to you could say is standing in the way.

We, the United States, have essentially left Afghanistan. And our military ability there has been gone since last Christmas around then when the Trump administration drew down to a very small number. This is a decision that the United States is making. And one of the effects of this decision is that these people who helped us out are stuck and many have died. And I don't think I'm speculating to say many more are going to die. This is just something that we need to know about as one of the consequences of our decision, which is a complicated decision, to end our 20-year war in Afghanistan. I get that. But if everyone agrees on helping the people who helped the United States, why is this so hard to do?

You know, this special immigrant visa program was always designed in a way that you'd have a quota of visas you were granting for this purpose. Now, over the dozen years that it was working, there wasn't so much a problem of using up the visas. It was a problem of the process getting caught hopelessly in red tape, which was real. And you can never find the little bastard bit of red tape that's stopping a particular application from getting through, right? It's this, you know, the faceless evil of bureaucracy. But there were also points where the U.S. said that they wanted to slow walk it. I mean, I'm thinking of a former army general and U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Carl Eikenberry, who said, I think we're causing a brain drain here. Now, this was back in 2010,

11, 12, when the situation did not seem quite so dire. And it was a valid argument that people listened to. Well, why should we facilitate the evacuation of some of the most capable people in Afghanistan? Or if you can use facility in English and willingness to work with the U.S. military as a metric for that. Now, again, the problem isn't the number of visas. It's that evacuation is looking logistically less and less tenable. I mean, our guest in the first half of the show, Ishmael,, if we don't help his colleagues, that it's going to be awful hard for us to convince people in foreign countries to help us the next time we have an engagement abroad or a war abroad. Do you think he's right? I mean, that's a very pragmatic argument that I've heard from many retired U.S. generals. Well, I think we have a

moral obligation to individuals who shared risk and hardship alongside our soldiers on the battlefield. That's why they are on the boards of organizations that have been trying to make this happen. And not only that, they risk their own lives and the lives of their family members as well, because the Taliban generally know who they are. They're tracking them down. There have been a lot of assassinations. Hundreds of them have been killed in recent years. They're in a desperate situation. I mean, there are two factors at play for those veterans. One is they were the ones who stood on the ground there and said, if you help me out, you'll get a visa to the United States,

and we will take care of you. And they have a camaraderie that's forged on the battlefield. It's a very strong bond. And the position that these veterans are in is that they're having their word broken on them. And for the Afghans, yes, they're feeling betrayed. And I've heard both from Afghans, but also, you know, from senior American commanders who have said, we know that if we break our word this time, this will be a historic precedent that people will point to the next time we are asking someone for help on the ground. I'm sure there's some pithy idiom about this, that like, you know, the casualties of war or something, but it just feels like... In the grand scheme of things,

interpreters were never going to be the top priority, and they weren't, and now we're pulling out, and they're going to get screwed. Part of what came in play here was a fear in the United States that has just never gone away after 9-11 20 years ago that somehow there were these dangerous sleeper agents who were going to come in as friends and then commit some terrible attack here. And xenophobia, Islamophobia, it's all wrapped up in there. And I think that part of what was at play there, that being expressed in a fear by government bureaucrats who did not want to be the one who signed off on letting a

9-11 hijacker into the country. There was never a humongous incentive going to be given. You weren't going to get a huge promotion for having expedited the highest number of Afghan interpreters immigration to the country. However, the cost of somehow being associated with this threat of bringing a sleeper cell into the country, that felt more real. And so, yeah, the bureaucratic hurdles that were set up prevented what was an honest and well-meaning promise made by a lot of Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, that they would help out the people who helped them. The US has now been flying flights of these interpreters. They started with the ones who'd been through

that lengthy bureaucratic process with the Special Immigrant Visa Program, but there are tens of thousands more, and it's just not clear how they're going to get them all out. Quill Lawrence is the veterans correspondent at NPR. He's also the co-host of the Homefront podcast. It's all about the divide between American civilians and the U.S. forces, their lives are in huge danger.

They should have taken them out a long time ago. If they can take them out before the end of August, that would be huge. If they don't, it's a matter of life and death. Most of them will be killed.