ithin Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), we can see the last vestiges of a 20-year and trillion-dollar gambit. Outside its barbed wire, beyond the city of Kabul and imperiled by the Taliban stranglehold across every major city, a breed of Afghans born under Taliban rule but raised in a fledgling democracy are waiting with an American visa in hand to travel through the Taliban cordon to HKIA. They also endure, but only just.
The Afghan partners who served with the American military are known by many names: “terps,” “combat translators,” and “SIVs” because they are eligible to receive the Special Immigrant Visa to immigrate to the United States in return for their service. They are, in a word, indispensable to successful American military operations. How the Biden Administration treats these translators will be a key component of America’s legacy in this latest misadventure. Will we withdraw with honor or accept ignominious defeat?
Terps speak Dari, Pashto, Urdu, and English and stand side-by-side with American troops. They are also cultural shepherds, aware of nuances among Afghanistan’s various peoples that Americans cannot recognize. Along the Pakistan border in 2010, I was on a mission and as rockets arced through the midnight sky, a translator kept me and my team from making some very poor decisions. He saved the lives of three men that day and because of his actions, spared me the burden of an existence living with my potentially devastating mistake. While that extreme example turns heads, the reality is that terps are not just strategic assets -- they are friends, protectors, even confidants. They ensure that troops respect cultural mores and keep the population amenable to our presence.
No veteran failed to leave something behind in Afghanistan. The adage “all gave some, but some gave all” is apt in this regard. Translators who have been able to navigate the byzantine application process can become SIVs and are awarded an American visa. Today, they are a distant consideration during the ongoing withdrawal, and the U.S. Government’s slow pace has left many veterans rightfully angry. While most veterans can accept that a strategic collapse of Kabul may have been inevitable, none countenance the failure of policy, planning and imagination that led to this humanitarian catastrophe.
For those reasons and others, the issue of protecting translators and bringing them to the United States is intensely personal. Over the past 20 months, I have served as a board member for No One Left Behind (NOLB), an organization dedicated to bringing combat translators from Afghanistan to the United States. These translators and their families are at risk of Taliban retribution because of their service. Legally – and morally – these SIVs have earned the right to come here.
Unlike most potential immigrants, translators fought and bled with Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen. They fought for a better life for their children and a chance to live free from the tyrannical rule of religious zealots. The Taliban consider them collaborators, the single most-targeted of the various and absurd classifications of “infidel” sympathizers. Americans should consider them the final, weary heroes waiting to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years.
Congress established the Special Immigrant Visa Program in 2009. Since then, efforts to streamline the 14-step interagency SIV process through three Presidential administrations, seven Congresses, seven Secretaries of Defense, and five Secretaries of State have floundered. The average time to process just one visa was 3.5 years prior to the closure of the American Embassy. By legislation, it should only take nine months. Since 2016, at least 300 Afghan interpreters and their family members have been targeted and killed due to their affiliation with the U.S. military; data predating 2016 is somewhat unreliable. In 2019, the State Department was successfully sued by refugee groups in the U.S. District Court to adhere to the nine-month legal timeline to process these visas. And yet, the clock will likely run out with thousands of them left behind.
With a mind to the then-pending collapse of the Afghan government in July, over two hundred families were flown to safety and processing at Ft. Lee, VA. There are an estimated 18,000 primary legal recipients of the SIV visa still in Afghanistan and with family members that number is closer to 32,000. Including those in various stages of the application process, the number is more likely 65,000 total. Bringing them to the United States will require immense coordination and time and though the Pentagon stated that the goal is to move as many as 9,000 passengers out of Kabul per day, only 2,000 left between 17-18 August. Understandably, the focus is on evacuating American citizens. Yet with capability and capacity limited by a withdrawal date of 31 August, the reality is that most of the SIVs and their families will be found, tortured, and killed.
The withdrawal of American forces is a watershed moment; it is also a life or death moment for SIVs. America made a promise to these translators – to bring them and their families into the safety of the United States. We must fulfill that promise and leave none of our terps behind if America is to withdraw from Afghanistan with honor and keep its integrity intact.
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Our Moral and Legal Responsibility to Save Afghan Translators
U.S. Army officer and Afghan interpreter. Photo by US Army Sergeant Russell Gilchrest via flickr.
August 20, 2021
Tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters who worked with U.S. forces - and those interpreters' families - remain stranded in Afghanistan and at risk of Taliban retribution. The U.S. has a moral and legal responsibility to save them, writes NOLB Board Member Christopher Karwacki.
W
ithin Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), we can see the last vestiges of a 20-year and trillion-dollar gambit. Outside its barbed wire, beyond the city of Kabul and imperiled by the Taliban stranglehold across every major city, a breed of Afghans born under Taliban rule but raised in a fledgling democracy are waiting with an American visa in hand to travel through the Taliban cordon to HKIA. They also endure, but only just.
The Afghan partners who served with the American military are known by many names: “terps,” “combat translators,” and “SIVs” because they are eligible to receive the Special Immigrant Visa to immigrate to the United States in return for their service. They are, in a word, indispensable to successful American military operations. How the Biden Administration treats these translators will be a key component of America’s legacy in this latest misadventure. Will we withdraw with honor or accept ignominious defeat?
Terps speak Dari, Pashto, Urdu, and English and stand side-by-side with American troops. They are also cultural shepherds, aware of nuances among Afghanistan’s various peoples that Americans cannot recognize. Along the Pakistan border in 2010, I was on a mission and as rockets arced through the midnight sky, a translator kept me and my team from making some very poor decisions. He saved the lives of three men that day and because of his actions, spared me the burden of an existence living with my potentially devastating mistake. While that extreme example turns heads, the reality is that terps are not just strategic assets -- they are friends, protectors, even confidants. They ensure that troops respect cultural mores and keep the population amenable to our presence.
No veteran failed to leave something behind in Afghanistan. The adage “all gave some, but some gave all” is apt in this regard. Translators who have been able to navigate the byzantine application process can become SIVs and are awarded an American visa. Today, they are a distant consideration during the ongoing withdrawal, and the U.S. Government’s slow pace has left many veterans rightfully angry. While most veterans can accept that a strategic collapse of Kabul may have been inevitable, none countenance the failure of policy, planning and imagination that led to this humanitarian catastrophe.
For those reasons and others, the issue of protecting translators and bringing them to the United States is intensely personal. Over the past 20 months, I have served as a board member for No One Left Behind (NOLB), an organization dedicated to bringing combat translators from Afghanistan to the United States. These translators and their families are at risk of Taliban retribution because of their service. Legally – and morally – these SIVs have earned the right to come here.
Unlike most potential immigrants, translators fought and bled with Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen. They fought for a better life for their children and a chance to live free from the tyrannical rule of religious zealots. The Taliban consider them collaborators, the single most-targeted of the various and absurd classifications of “infidel” sympathizers. Americans should consider them the final, weary heroes waiting to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years.
Congress established the Special Immigrant Visa Program in 2009. Since then, efforts to streamline the 14-step interagency SIV process through three Presidential administrations, seven Congresses, seven Secretaries of Defense, and five Secretaries of State have floundered. The average time to process just one visa was 3.5 years prior to the closure of the American Embassy. By legislation, it should only take nine months. Since 2016, at least 300 Afghan interpreters and their family members have been targeted and killed due to their affiliation with the U.S. military; data predating 2016 is somewhat unreliable. In 2019, the State Department was successfully sued by refugee groups in the U.S. District Court to adhere to the nine-month legal timeline to process these visas. And yet, the clock will likely run out with thousands of them left behind.
With a mind to the then-pending collapse of the Afghan government in July, over two hundred families were flown to safety and processing at Ft. Lee, VA. There are an estimated 18,000 primary legal recipients of the SIV visa still in Afghanistan and with family members that number is closer to 32,000. Including those in various stages of the application process, the number is more likely 65,000 total. Bringing them to the United States will require immense coordination and time and though the Pentagon stated that the goal is to move as many as 9,000 passengers out of Kabul per day, only 2,000 left between 17-18 August. Understandably, the focus is on evacuating American citizens. Yet with capability and capacity limited by a withdrawal date of 31 August, the reality is that most of the SIVs and their families will be found, tortured, and killed.
The withdrawal of American forces is a watershed moment; it is also a life or death moment for SIVs. America made a promise to these translators – to bring them and their families into the safety of the United States. We must fulfill that promise and leave none of our terps behind if America is to withdraw from Afghanistan with honor and keep its integrity intact.
