That is funny only because it sounds much like something Texas would do.
I tell ya, though, the photos of the Chinook helicopters flying low over the cities remind me
so much of Saigon.
And now it’s too late for many Afghans to get out. If you want to get depressed, read this story of one of the interpreters we’ve abandoned. Not left behind…abandoned.
We may not be good at much else, but we still know how to betray our friends.
The danger Haji and his family face grows every day as the Taliban claims more territory across the country, yet his repeated efforts to reach safety through a US visa program for interpreters keep hitting a brick wall.
www.cnn.com
Anyone who worked in Afghanistan will testify to the quality, courage, decency, dogged idealism and - yes - integrity of the staff (above all, interpreters - who were also often fixers and advisers, but also other local staff) who worked with us.
They were wonderful, not just eyes and ears, but advisers who very often became friends and who were invaluable - they offered incredible advice re navigating the contours of the local culture, and did it kindly and with grace - and were an incredible support.
It is unconscionable - appalling, disgusting, disgraceful and shaming - that it is not automatically axiomatic that they haven't been offered whatever support, sanctuary and asylum that they need.
I remember sitting with an interpreter - over coffee - he was briefing me on things he thought that I needed to know - recommended by some of my colleagues, within a matter of weeks of my arrival in the spring of 2013 in our compound in Kabul.
To my astonishment, he - speaking softly, quietly, seriously, earnestly - offered the extraordinary information that Mullah Omar "might have died" - that there was a "strong possibility that he had died" - this was not long after Easter 2013 - I had been in the country a mere matter of weeks - and he said, while he couldn't (formally) confirm this, that I needed to "factor it - this (strong) possibilty - in" to any analysis or reports that I would write.
Of course, as we now know, this was exactly when Mullah Omar had died, - around two years before it was formally confirmed - and my source (not for the first time, and this was something I experienced to my awed, stunned, and gratified amazement on many occasions) was extraordinarily well informed.
I vividly remember the night the Vice President dropped dead of a cardiac arrest. Between 22.30 and midnight, five separate Afghan sources phoned me to inform me of this fact, - it had not yet been publicly announced - keeping me informed, and knowing that I would have to give a political briefing at 08.00 to the EU mission where I served as Polad (political adviser/counsellor); my - astounded - question (this was in the middle of the 2014 election campaign) - "was it natural?" (i.e. was he assassinated? was he killed?) elicted shouts of laughter: "Hey," (addressing me by name - but kindly - and in English, which is my language but not theirs), "is a heart attack natural? You be the judge."
I loved some of them; they were wonderful and brave and decent, and deserve an awful lot better than has what befallen them.
news.trust.org
