Afghanistan Forgotten

I started reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini a couple of days ago. I’m only a few chapters into the book, and already I find it disturbing and upsetting. That really isn’t a surprise to me. The book is about Afghanistan, and there are very few happy stories that come out of that country. Afghanistan has been a land of war and violence for nearly half a century. At this point in history, Afghanistan is almost synonymous with suffering.

I have never gone to Afghanistan. It is unlikely that I ever will. However, I have learned much about the country vicariously. I have unexpectedly heard many stories about that land, none of them happy.

It’s odd, but I got an email from an Afghan friend on the day I started reading The Kite Runner. My friend is a young man with a wife and a small child. His little boy is only a few months younger than Asher, my toddler grandson. He was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He and his family fled Kabul just before the city fell to the Taliban. They wound up in Pakistan for several months. Then, by the grace of God, they were allowed to immigrate to a small European country. My friend and his family have settled down there. They are slowly adapting to a strange land with a strange language and strange customs.

In his email to me, he asked about Asher, and then he wrote this:

“By the way Mr. Frank if you know any lawyer there that can favor and help me about the process of my parole case?”

My friend applied for humanitarian parole for his family to live in the United States. A humanitarian parole is a temporary visa. The applicant needs to show that there is a life-threatening reason for them to come to the U.S. If the person proves that such a condition exists, then they can stay in America until that life-threatening situation ends. I read an article in Time several months ago about Afghan refugees seeking humanitarian parole. The article said that USCIS (a component of DHS) is backlogged trying to process thousands upon thousands of applications from displaced Afghans. The estimated wait time for processing an application is basically “Whenever they get to it.” Unless I knew some high-ranking individual in DHS, nothing would speed up my friend’s application. I don’t know any lawyers, and even if I did, they wouldn’t do much of anything for my friend.

I feel bad about not being able to help my friend. I can’t get him here. He might not get permission to live in the U.S. for years, or perhaps he never will. All I can do for now is to stay in contact with him and remind him that he is not forgotten. Most of the Afghans who have fled their homeland are forgotten by America. These people trained with us, worked for us, trusted us, and then we burned them. Theirs is not a happy story.

I know a woman, Kathy, who worked for years with Afghans in Kabul. She worked alongside an idealistic group of young people, the Afghan Peace Volunteers. That small organization did what it could for the poor and abandoned in Kabul. They initiated the Duvet Project to get warm bedding to kids who had none. They ran the Steet Kids School to tutor Afghan children, especially girls. Kathy and her friends struggled to provide some peace and stability to Afghan children.

Now, that’s all over. Since the fall of Kabul, Kathy has put her heart and soul into finding homes for her Afghan friends. Many of them are stranded in Pakistan, with little hope of going to a safe haven. Kathy has used her international network of colleagues to get visas for her former coworkers, in particular for the young women involved with the Aghan Peace Volunteers. She has helped a number of people to find refuge, including the family I previously mentioned. My wife and I have contributed whatever money we could spare to get these refugees to new homes. It always feels like we can’t do enough.

This too is not a happy story.

I have a Ukrainian friend from the synagogue. He’s a very old man. His son fought in Afghanistan. He fought for the Soviet Army. The son was severely wounded by an IED. He was the sole survivor of the explosion. The son suffered from PTSD and alcoholism for forty years. We buried him in April. My friend, the father, wept when they lowered his boy into the ground.

Not a happy story.

I know more stories that are not happy. I used to talk with vets in the psych ward of the local VA hospital. A few of them had been in Afghanistan. Our war in that country was just as futile as that of the Soviets. I talked with young people at the VA whose lives had been crushed, just like the life of that Soviet soldier. For what?

Thousands of Afghan lives were ruined. Thousands of American lives were ruined.

What do we do? How do we make amends to them?

________________________

Frank (Francis) Pauc is a graduate of West Point, Class of 1980. He completed the Military Intelligence Basic Course at Fort Huachuca and then went to Flight School at Fort Rucker. Frank was stationed with the 3rd Armor Division in West Germany at Fliegerhorst Airfield from December 1981 to January 1985. He flew Hueys and Black Hawks and was next assigned to the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, CA. He got the hell out of the Army in August 1986.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.