Friday, October 24, 2014

U.S. should learn word in Pashto for loyalty

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    On Sunday night, British comedian Jon Oliver revealed that somehow, whether through bureaucratic bungling or short-sighted penny pinching, the United States is abandoning thousands of Afghan translators who risked their lives to help NATO coalition forces.
    Recognizing that such work results in mortal danger, a 2009 law set aside 1,500 visas per year specifically for these people. In 2012, three were issued.
    A special representative for the U.S. State Department placed blame on the Afghans for the bureaucratic limbo. They hadn’t completed the proper paperwork, he told Oliver.
    That paperwork includes a 14-step process, form upon form asking for information such as proof of nationality in a country that has been a battlefield for decades, recommendations from supervisors who pulled out years ago, and employee badges because, Oliver pointed out, no one has ever lost one of those. Completion of the forms would allow an official interview, if those interviews had not been suspended in Afghanistan.
    Once before, America kept the battlefield promises it made. “We did it perfectly after the Vietnam War, and that is a sentence you don’t get to say out loud very often,” Oliver said. Fulfilling our promises then, approximately 140,000 Vietnamese were moved, en masse, to Guam. Processing took place and visas were issued following appropriate security checks; applicants were safe from the Viet Cong while processing took place.
    Mohammad, a former translator who appeared with Oliver on Sunday night, began his visa application process in 2010. After waiting three and a half years, he is finally safe in the U.S. In the interim, the Taliban killed his father and kidnapped his 3-year-old brother, returning him only after a $35,000 payment. His mother and sisters are in hiding as they await a special “Hail Mary” visa.
    The most important resource in a war, said journalist David Halberstam, is someone who will tell you in a language you can understand, “Don’t step there.” That is exactly what translators did, often at immediate personal risk. The cruelest irony of all is that their visa window closes at the end of this year for no reason.
    Oliver closed his program by pointing out that there is no word in Pashto or in English for “deep gratitude for someone’s service but also profound shame for how they’ve been treated.”
    America must find that word, now.

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