Shame--on both sides of the Atlantic: leave none behind!
Hutson, Thomas R.
Everyone who knows anything about it agrees. It is shameful. No two
ways about it. On both sides of the Atlantic, Our vaunted, noble goal on
the battlefield to LEAVE NONE BEHIND does not apply to
translators/interpreters, or "terps".
Sure, there is a provision of law that covers them from our
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, I challenge anyone interested so
ask the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for a status report on the clearances that they must have
before final issuance of a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).
A seemingly hopeless, interminable backlog.
So, the intent of Congress is clear and the numbers have been
increased in recent years to encompass the demand which, given the
increasing peril in either country, is only increasing. Having launched
a seat-of-the pants effort more than a year ago, it has borne no fruit.
Everyone at State points the bureaucratic fingers in some other
direction. And, apparently, no one wants to take on DHS or the FBI.
At the British Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mazar-e-Sharif
(northern Afghanistan), we had a half-dozen "terps," with
backgrounds as physicians, university students or just young men with a
smattering of English who put their lives on the line for US.
Admittedly, we were helping them help their country; but, their
loyalties were not to Kabul or to Karzai. They were loyal to US or to
the UK.
As if our administration of this legal means of coming to the
U.S.A. were not bad enough; in a recent Daily Telegraph, writer Tim
Collins chastised the British government for failing to help even David
Cameron's "terp".
Being an unabashed Anglophile, albeit uncomfortable with the glut
of true refugees being thwarted from doing anything other than
subsisting near Calais, I wonder whether these programs are being
administered jointly and darned effectively--if the purpose is to thwart
their hopes and dreams.
Having questioned the wisdom of President George W. Bush's
ill-fated decision to invade Iraq (in Omaha World-Herald op-ed in
January 2003) I was spared being sent to Ramallah in the first phalanx
of PRT leaders. Indeed, when the piece appeared, I was happily ensconced
in Tashkent for six months at the U.S. Embassy as Consular Officer, only
to be fired summarily after only one month- the last time I got a
contract as a consular officer.
In hoping to bring greater firepower o the effort, only The Academy
of American Diplomacy his stepped forward, led by former U.S. Ambassador
to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann. Our union, AFSA, even under a new
administration apparently intent on being known as its predecessor as a
do-nothing union, has not even replied to a query from a near-50-year
dues-paying member. The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training
has demurred, fearing it might be seen as "lobbying" which
seems ludicrous. Even the Council on Public Diplomacy has not responded
to requests for support.
As a veteran of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the
University of Nebraska Omaha, in Nebraska which has been a warm and
welcoming home to many Afghans, our experience has been entirely
positive--although the FBI once started an investigation of my possible
use of property in Nebraska's desolate Sand Hills as a training
center for Afghan and Iranian refugees. This piece needs more
information about the situation with Iraqi "terps," and I hope
that others who know more will share their knowledge. So, I close with
two words that continue to come to mind: Shameful.
And, now shameless....
