Left to right: Bryce Klehm, Shala Gafary; bottom, left to right: Matt Zeller and Col Steve Miska
Brookings Panel on US Failure to Protect Partners in Afghanistan
By Elaine Pasquini
Washington: The chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan last August remains a subject important to American military veterans concerned about the large number of Afghans who provided valuable assistance to the United States and were not evacuated from the country.
To address the efforts being provided for our Afghan allies, on June 13, Washington DC’s Brookings Institution and the Lawfare Institute co-hosted a webinar, moderated by Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm.
Shala Gafary is managing attorney for Human Rights First’s Afghan Legal Assistance project which aids refugees in the US who have no support from the government.
Absent the passage by the US Congress of the proposed Afghan Adjustment Act (AAA) which would allow Afghan evacuees after living one year in the US to apply for a green card, “we have to get creative and make sure that all of the 85,000 Afghan nationals that are here apply for the legal services they are eligible for,” Gafary said.
In addition to entering the US with a Special Immigration Visa (SIV), many are eligible for asylum in the US through the law that allows people fearful of persecution in their home country to remain in the US. With respect to Afghanistan these include ethnic and religious minorities, military members, pilots, police, lawyers, judges, human rights activists and government officials, she noted.
Col Steve Miska served more than 25 years as an active military officer and is now on the steering committee of Evacuate Our Allies (EOA), a coalition of human rights organizations working alongside veterans and frontline civilians to evacuate and support the resettlement of at-risk Afghans.
Beginning its work following President Biden’s April 14, 2021, announcement that all US troops would be withdrawn by September 11, EOA continues seven days a week to get people out, Misk explained.
“It’s hard, it’s difficult, but at least we are getting some people out and we’re keeping at it every day,” Misk said. Last month the organization received over 860 requests and they are getting calls from people “not just wanting out, but in need of food and stuck in third countries,” he added. “We get calls from people who made it into the US, but receive no benefits and rely on the help and goodwill of whoever they have met in the US.”
Misk lamented the lack of international coordination to assist in relocating Afghans. “It’s a challenge, especially when the world is distracted by Ukraine and that has drawn away the media and political attention of our European partners.”
As a result of the chaotic withdrawal of US troops, “a large majority of the veteran community rose up as we saw the trainwreck coming and partnered with organizations like Human Rights First,” Misk said. “The writing was on the wall when we started pulling out. The contracting community was traumatized by what happened and they were coming to our coalition asking how they could get their Afghan employees out.”
Matt Zeller, co-founder of No One Left Behind, faulted the US for trying to build a modern technologically dependent Afghan army, a “military in our own image which couldn’t function without the contractors,” who were required to leave under the Doha peace agreement of 2020, he said. “The country began to collapse as soon as they were gone.”
A recent report by the Association of Wartime Allies (AWA) which tracks those left behind in Afghanistan found at least 30,000 Afghans have been vetted and are waiting for SIVs, while 160,000 of the special visa applicants remain.
Because of the collapse of the Afghan economy, there is an ongoing active famine, Zeller said. “There is food available, there is just not enough money for anyone to purchase it. People are skipping a third of all meals in the last month. And because of the war in Ukraine, the food aid that should be reaching Afghanistan is not. The Taliban has run out of money and are paying their fighters a 10kg bag of wheat each week.”
Without passage of the AAA, which has not been even introduced for a vote, “we are hurting our credibility and ability to recruit future allies,” Zeller stressed. “We have already done about as much damage as we can to our credibility around the world by abandoning these people in the first place.”
Members of the Afghan military who remained on their jobs and helped evacuate Afghans are the ones in desperate need of the AAA to pass, Zeller said. And one obstacle to obtaining an SIV is the requirement for applicants to have an in-person interview at the American Consulate in Kabul, which no longer exists. The AAA would grant the authority to conduct these interviews elsewhere.
“The fundamental difference between someone really integrating and being properly resettled in this country or ending up in endemic poverty is the degree to which – and the speed at which – we can pair an Afghan with a veteran,” he insisted. “There is not a better advocate for an Afghan to help start a new life within the American community in a productive and fruitful way.”
In addition, he said, veterans have suffered a tremendous moral injury with the way the Afghan war ended. “The best way I found to address and heal from that moral injury is to assist in the resettlement of these people…who were our cultural ambassadors and guides, and we now get to be that for them here and there is something that is deeply healing about that relationship.”
Zeller is actively involved in Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which is building a national program to partner veterans with all of the Afghans who have been resettled. “We are trying to build relationships that will last a lifetime,” he stated, urging any veteran interested in being involved to contact him at matt.zeller@iava.org.
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
