In the evening after a day of patrols in central Helmand, I would often find myself sitting and talking with my interpreter Mohammad. He was a Pashtun from Kabul who had been working with British forces – to whom I was then assigned – for some time. He was often smiling and always insightful. I enjoyed our conversations, particularly when they turned to his family life and personal aspirations. Mohammad did not want to stay in Afghanistan. He was attracted by the allure of the West. He wanted to move to Europe or the United States and settle there. How would he get out? He knew he stood little chance of getting a visa, so he planned to one day hire a smuggler to get him out of Afghanistan. When I asked about these smugglers, Mohammad smiled and his answers became elusive. I let the matter drop and we moved on to something else.
Many months later, after my Afghan adventure, I was in London visiting a comrade – one of a circle of Brits with whom I became close in counterinsurgency’s crucible in Helmand. He asked if I had heard about his interpreter. I hadn’t. He went on to tell me a story both amazing and horrible. His interpreter was a gentle young man, a Pashtun from near Kabul like Mohammad. Let’s call him Hashmatullah. His family had been getting threats in their village outside the capital from the Taliban. The insurgents had heard that Hashmatullah had been working with British forces and demanded that he stop or his family would suffer the consequences. So Hashmatullah returned home from his lucrative, but dangerous job in the south. But this did not satisfy the insurgents. They wanted his blood. After a series of attempts on Hashmatullah’s life, one he survived by hiding down a well in his family’s compound, he knew he had to get out of Afghanistan. But how? His family turned to the smugglers.
After selling a great deal of land, his family paid tens of thousands of dollars to a Hindu Kush coyote to get Hashmatullah out. He was given a ticket on a flight. The proper bribes were paid to customs officials. And after transiting the Gulf, he ended up somewhere in southeastern Europe – perhaps Greece, though he was never sure. The traffickers left him and his fellow refugees in a city park and told them to stay there. Although he spoke near fluent English, as well as his native Pashto and Dari, Hashmatullah had never travelled outside of Afghanistan. He was scared. He couldn’t leave the vicinity of the park for fear that he would miss the rendezvous, although the traffickers did not give him a time or a date. He ended up staying in that park for a month. Hashmatullah lived as homeless refugee, eating out of restaurant trashcans and avoiding the authorities. Eventually the smugglers came back for him, gave him a fake passport, a plane ticket for London, and a ride to the airport.
When he arrived at Heathrow, the customs agent spotted the fake passport easily and Hashmatullah declared asylum, which he was eventually granted. To my knowledge, he is doing well enough in the United Kingdom.
Recently at War on the Rocks, Rusty Bradley – a retired U.S. Special Forces officer – wrote a moving article arguing for visas for those interpreters who have worked with U.S. forces. “Afghan interpreters are throwing themselves at the altar of freedom only to be left to die,” he writes, insisting they deserve and should be given visas to come to America. He joins a chorus of interpreter advocates – many of them combat veterans like Bradley – who have pushed hard for visas for their own interpreters and their comrades. It seems the U.S. Congress heard their pleas. Today, members of the House and Senate are introducing a bill that would extend the Afghan Special Visa Immigrant Program, which was due to end this fall, through 2015 and expand it to 3,000 more interpreters, to include those who worked for the news media and NGOs. The bill and the program are specifically targeted at those interpreters and their families who are in danger.
In my heart, I sympathize deeply with this argument. Bradley would gladly offer his own home to his interpreters until they get on their feet, and if Mohammad were able to come here, I know I would offer him the same. But in my head I know that we should try to separate our own personal feelings from what is, in reality, a decision with strategic consequences.
How do we square Mohammad’s ambitions and Hashmatullah’s plight with the needs of Afghanistan? With our own hopes for the country?
The United States and its allies have employed tens of thousands of Category 1 interpreters (local national) in Afghanistan since 2007. They were paid approximately between $800 and $1100 a month – a high salary by Afghan standards. And this is where the problem began. Of course U.S. and allied forces wanted to attract the best candidates possible. But in doing so with such an attractive salary, they distorted the Afghan labor market. With dollar signs in their eyes, university graduates, trained bureaucrats, and even medical doctors flocked to forward operating bases instead of government ministries and the security forces. Hospitals and government offices simply cannot compete with the U.S. and allied governments in terms of pay, and they were going after the same pool of relatively educated, multi-lingual, and savvy Afghan males.
These interpreters certainly deserved their salaries, with many of them seeing combat regularly and putting their lives, and sometimes those of their families, at risk. Mohammad, my interpreter, had previously worked with British soldiers mentoring the Afghan National Army and found himself in more firefights than he could remember over the years. His gig with our Human Terrain Team saw him in far fewer nasty situations. I’ll never forget the calm smile on his face as he leaned back against a burm the first time we were in caught in a firefight together. The duties of the job itself weren’t the only problem. The journey home to visit their families could be fatal as well. The Taliban routinely set up checkpoints along Highway 1 with designs to find, capture, and kill government supporters, interpreters, and security forces.
I respect interpreters for facing these dangers, but they are far from the only Afghans who put themselves in dangerous positions. The members of the Afghan National Security Forces have by and large sought out far more dangerous jobs for much less pay. But no one is calling for a special visa program for them. That would, of course, be ridiculous. We need them to stay to fight the Taliban. Similarly, the locals who switched sides from 2009 to 2011 and started providing intelligence to our forces have not been offered American visas. There is not a soul in Afghanistan who isn’t under a moderate level of mortal danger. This is a war zone, and it has been for thirty years.
What makes interpreters different? It’s simple. We know them well. They have patrolled, eaten, slept, fought, and even died alongside our men and women in uniform. We feel a natural and healthy personal attachment to them. We want to be loyal to them and do “the right thing.” But if it is the wrong thing for Afghanistan, is it still right? While the families of murder victims are afforded the opportunity to speak during sentencing hearings for the killers, they are not permitted to choose the punishment. Similarly, those of us who care deeply for our former interpreters should not be the main drivers of the State Department’s visa policies.
I admire our interpreters so much that I think their continued contributions are important for the future of their country. They are, in many respects, the most talented people Afghanistan has to offer. They are well-versed in local politics and military operations, and they come to the table with more education than the average Afghan. They know how to mediate between foreign forces and donors, locals, and Afghan security forces and government officials. These are the men and women whom Afghanistan needs to build a state that can stand on its own – a state that can prevent its territory from once again becoming a haven for terrorist networks. As such, it would be a mistake for the United States to open its doors to our brave interpreters, even with the sad knowledge that some of them will likely die as the war in their country continues.
It may not be anyone’s job to tell these souls where and how to live their lives – some might decide to hire smugglers to get them out anyway – but it is well within Washington’s right to decline to create incentives for another Afghan brain drain. If our mission is to set the stage for Afghanistan’s success as a state so that it may not once again become a haven for transnational terrorists, it would be a mistake to help deprive Afghanistan of its most important resource: human capital.
Ryan Evans is the assistant director of the Center for the National Interest and the editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks.
Photo credit: The U.S. Army
48repins 
Rick 
Ryan Evans 
Sparapet 
Mike Jacobson 
Drew 
g 
john 
You know that to transform Afghanistan into a democratic country will take at least 50 years, if American troops stay there to help in that task. In other case, if we have to pull back, I am uncertain that that objective will be terminated some time in the future. As the latter is the most probable result, that is why those interpreters -who know much better than us what the future will be, deserve to get a visa due to the extraordinary work that they are actually doing. We cannot left them in the dark future they will be facing.
There are two other arguments I would make, one ethical and one prudential:
1. Most of these interpreters were told that if they served with us loyally and well, they would be able to apply for a US visa. Perhaps it was no guarantee that the visa would be granted, but it’s pretty dirty pool to tell someone they can apply for something we have no intention of giving them. Turning this into, “Afghanistan needs you, sucka!!!” strikes me as even worse. Yes, Afghanistan needs them more than the US does. But the US military needed them desperately, and told them that their time would come. It’s time we stop abandoning our allies and reneging on our promises.
2. From that, we also get the prudential point: it’s simply foolish constantly to make offers and promises to allies — especially allies who have suffered with us so much — and then abandon them to their fates. I know that many of us in the military would *never* ally ourselves with the US, were we not already Americans. It’s a fool’s bet: a great way to be rewarded while things are easy, and abandoned when things get tough. When it is the individual, specific people who are being abandoned (along with their families)? Even more foolish. Having to count on our money to win us friends, especially when we act like everyone should be grateful we’re around to begin with us, won’t always work. It would help if we were known as faithful friends.
Rick: Did the people in the field making those promises have the authority to do so? Perhaps the people at fault are those who made false promises that they must have known they couldn’t deliver on.
Ryan,
Rick is spot on. Your response smacks of a petty bureaucrat. People, especially in societies with honor codes (unlike our own), take promises and allusions to possibilities seriously. I am with Rick, if i were not in the uniform already, i wouldnt trust a westerner as far as i could throw one.
Whatever geopolitical or social program these people may fit well into as pawns, that wasnt their incentive for working with us. Some believed we were doing good. Others maybe even started to believe it after working with us. But they came for the money, and once even a handful of them got a visa for their troubles, it became an implied option that was often enough hinted at or even explicitly promised.
I dont care about Afghanistan or Iraq in the long run, my campaign ribbons notwithstanding, but i do care about the people that were my allies. As should you. When you stump for office as President of Afghanistan feel free to appeal to their patriotism to bring the talent back to afghanistan.
Sparapet: Thanks for your response and thanks for reading War on the Rocks. I do care about the interpreters – the one I worked with in particular – and indeed have a great deal of respect for them. And I think Afghanistan and its people will be better off if they stay to build their society. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Have a great weekend.
I absolutely agree. You and I both know that one of the myriad problems facing Afghanistan is that it has been through multiple generations of culling off its best and brightest. As far as I know Afghanistan still has the largest diaspora population in the world. The Afghanistan you and I visited is a nation that has been deserted by it most capable. And none of us blame the Afghans living outside the nation for not wanting to return. But if Afghanistan is going to stand any kind of chance the brain drain and culture drain has to stop. I couldn’t agree more with your thesis.
I know this is a website written from the realist perspective, but it seems to me like it’s nothing more than cruel to tell people who, in support of US forces, have given their reputations, safety, and in many cases, their lives, that they haven’t earned the right to be granted visas.
Building Afghanistan’s human capital is a generational endeavor that must start from the ground up. Investing in schools (for boys and girls) and training programs would offer a much greater return on human capital than forcing a relatively few multilingual middle-aged men to stay in a dangerous environment. If Afghanistan is ever going to develop an economy that can truly stand on its own, it will need the international community to commit to investing in its businesses, providing access to financial markets, and educating its youth. But this is the sort of aspiration smacks of liberal interventionism and nation building that realists eschew.
So while it is easy to say, “Thanks, but no thanks…we would prefer that you stay here and get to work building a country…oh, and don’t pay attention to that menacing group of Taliban bullies standing across the road, they’re all talk anyway,”…it certainly doesn’t appear to be very practical.
Realists often complain of the imperiousness that pervades liberal policies encouraging education for women and other Western values, but I believe it is much more arrogant to tell a group of people, particularly friends, that they should stay put because we know what’s best for you and your country.
Afghanistan could certainly benefit from its interpreters choosing to stay, but its success as a nation is not contingent on them doing so. To say so is to apply a microeconomic solution to a macroeconomic problem. Instead, I believe the US should acknowledge the interpreters’ sacrifices and let those that wish to leave do so. They have played their part. It is now up to the next generation, with the continued support of the international community, to forge a new way ahead for Afghanistan.
Hey Drew: Thanks for reading War on the Rocks. Lot’s of people in Afghanistan have, by virtue of their sacrifices and suffering, earned the right to a peaceful life, untroubled by warlords and the Taliban. Sadly, that isn’t about to happen anytime soon. What about those police and their families who face greater danger for even less pay? Have they earned visas as well.
As much as I admire the interpreters, a visa was – for the vast majority of them – never a part of their benefits package and they knew that. They were working for (a) pay and (b) their country. It is not as if we have given them nothing. They worked hard for us as we sacrificed our young men and women to build their country, in a way that out-stepped, in my opinion, our own interests by orders of magnitude. I don’t think it arrogant or asking too much to suggest that Afghanistan might better off if they remained in it and continued to work for it.
It is also worth keeping in mind we are, by and large, talking about young men in their 20s and 30s. There are middle aged men among CAT 1 interpreters, but the younger men were the ones out on the FOBs and checkpoints and patrol bases. The bill and the program it supports, grants visas to thousands of these men as well as their families. So we are talking about thousands and thousands of people. It only takes one person to change history. I don’t want to take all of these people from Afghanistan, although I know that most would make excellent American citizens. Afghanistan is THEIR country. I hope they stay to change it. As I said in the article, we cannot force them to stay in Afghanistan, but we can decline to give them and their families the undeniably alluring option of a visa.
Re: schools – yes we have invested millions in that. We’ll see how that works out over the long term.
Re: realism and arrogance – slightly tongue in cheek, but realism does not claim to eschew arrogance as long as it is in the national interest.
Ryan,
I wasn’t originally going to comment because your thesis centers on interpreters. However, since we now include police and their service I will jump on and extend things a bit.
In Iraq, the indigenous head of my HUMINT cell was an Iraqi SF officer (Sunni) who had served under Saddam. Unlike most LNs that were on US payrolls, I never saw this guy smoke, drink alcohol or acquire prostitutes. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for others up to and including a number of General-level Iraqi officers. My honest efforts employing him in tasks to help achieve US policy were enough for him; he realized that long-term stability for his country rested on the achievement of those common goals.
Yes, I paid him and others in the network but that money supported US goals and came at great personal risk. His intent was achieving long-term stability in his country and hoped that the US would hang around to help see it to fruition. My un-solicited birthday gifts to his children were icing on the cake of our joint efforts towards getting rid of bad guys. And get them we did; some of them.
He was smart enough to know that political winds change everything and expressed a hope to me that Bush remain in office because he feared a change in support that might accompany a new POTUS. He was also smart enough to know that although he risked his life accomplishing my tasks, those risks were worth it to him to try and make his country a better place. But, he was promised nothing beyond my word to try and help improve his country.
I don’t know where he is now, but I hope he and his family are safe. Iraq needs guys like him but I fear for the state of that country. I would have loved to try and bring him and his family to the US. With his work ethic and values he would have excelled in this safe, freedom loving nation which we enjoy. But if all men run away from the sound of guns, then no one will be left to carry the heavy and uncommon burden which few in societies carry.
G: Thanks so much for your story. I will keep him and his family in my thoughts. Very powerful words: “But if all men run away from the sound of guns, then no one will be left to carry the heavy and uncommon burden which few in societies carry.”
The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was a stupid idea and you can’t fix stupid
We have spent a trillion which is about 40000$ per Afghan or 250K per family. Can anyone think that there may have been abetter way to change Afghanistan ?
It costs about 1 million per year to keep an American soldiers boots on the ground
It costs about 50 million to kill a Taliban
Oh by the way I spent 6 months in Patunistan in 76-77 and no they didn’t have any bottled water there then and they treated me great i bought a horse and rode it around