Army vets work to get interpreters out of Afghanistan
CHICAGO — In his visa application dated May 23, Romal begged for his life.
An interpreter for the U.S. military and government contractors for more than a decade, the 30-yearold Afghan man predicted that he would be among those the Taliban hunted and killed when the Americans withdrew.
“I have been wellknown to the locals and I don’t feel safe,” he wrote. “The (U.S. government) has announced they are leaving Afghanistan and day by day the situation is getting risky, and I don’t have doubt that I will be the first target to the insurgents.”
Romal’s pleas went unanswered and less than three months later, Kabul fell to the Taliban. Romal went into hiding with his wife and mother, unsure of how they’d ever obtain the necessary documentation to flee their homeland safely.
Since U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the government has promised safe harbor to Afghan allies in exchange for their services. In Romal’s case, he believed there would be an immigration visa for him and his family as repayment for his services at Camp Mike Spann, a northern military base where the locals knew he worked alongside American soldiers.
The United States, however, did not uphold its end of the deal before the Taliban gained control of the Afghan capital earlier this month, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Tribune. Romal is now stuck and, by all accounts, in grave danger.
Some 7,000 miles away near Chicago, U.S. Army veteran Chris McClanathan watched Kabul’s collapse on television. His thoughts instantly turned to Romal, the outgoing, extremely effective interpreter he worked with when he deployed to northern Afghanistan in 2011.
The two had remained in casual contact over the years, mostly through hitting the “like” button on each other’s Facebook posts as they both went about their lives. McClanathan took a chance last week that Romal still had internet access and sent a message to him via the social media app. The reply was almost immediate.
Romal, whose surname is being withheld for his family’s safety, wrote that he was moving from relative’s house to relative’s house and had, so far, evaded the Taliban. McClanathan said his friend expressed confidence that he would qualify for a refugee flight, but he needed the paperwork to pass through the airport checkpoint. To go to the airport without it and try to talk his way in would be a suicide mission, he said.
After learning of his friend’s plight, McClanathan became one of the many Afghanistan War veterans trying to help their former interpreters and their families leave Kabul and uphold America’s promise. It’s a reflection of the unique bond between soldiers and their translators, who do far more than just parrot conversations in different languages.
“These interpreters put their lives on the line, the same as us,” McClanathan said. “It’s in the soldier’s creed: You don’t leave your comrade behind. We made a promise, and we have to keep it. We cannot just leave him there to be beheaded.”
Interpreters have been the lifeblood of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan for the past two decades, providing cultural insights, muscle and consistency as American troops rotated in and out of the country, said Army Lt. Fahim Masoud of the Illinois National Guard. Before immigrating to the United States and becoming a citizen, Afghanistan-born Masoud risked his life as an interpreter for the U.S. military.
“There is nothing else like the bond between a soldier and the interpreter,” Masoud said. “A soldier goes to a foreign land and typically knows nothing about how that country works, even though they have taken courses about it. That interpreter becomes a window to the country and the culture.”
Masoud became a translator at 17, with the promise of a shot at the American Dream for him and his family at the end of his service. At his job interview, a Marine captain asked what he would do if he was in a convoy and the American next to him was shot and badly wounded. Masoud replied that he would pick up the service member’s weapon and continue fighting. He was hired on the spot, according to his National Guard biography.
Within a few years of taking the $600-a-month interpreter’s job, a U.S. soldier was so appreciative of Masoud’s service and sacrifices, he offered to sponsor him on a student visa. Masoud arrived in the United States with $99 in his pocket, became an American citizen in 2015 and joined the Illinois National Guard in 2018. He works as an intelligence officer for the Guard, in addition to his civilian job with a global intelligence firm.