After Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) concluded at the Kabul airport in August, many Americans anxiously awaited the congressional hearings on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Those of us with connections to Afghanistan were especially interested. This included active-duty military, veterans, contractors, colleagues, and not least of all, friends and family.
We were hopeful that these hearings would provide answers and accountability for those left behind in Afghanistan, and for the nightmare that unfolded before our eyes at that airport in August.
– Original Credit: Courtesy photo
Unlike the carefully scripted talking points coming from televised briefings by the administration during the frenzied evacuation, we thought the congressional hearings would be a chance to hear from State Department and Pentagon officials directly, without the filter of the public relations statements coming from behind a podium.
Surely, we thought, our elected representatives shared our concern for our Afghan allies. After all, we had spent most of August calling and emailing dozens of senators and representatives, pleading on behalf of our Afghan colleagues to pressure the administration and State Department to do the right thing — to evacuate those eligible to leave the country.
We forwarded texts we were receiving from Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) interpreters back in Kabul: The Taliban are searching houses; I am changing my location every night; They are executing people, am I next? Why did the U.S. abandon us? Why won’t the U.S. let us into the airport? The embassy told us to come for our flights…
We knew Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was not receiving these kinds of texts, and even if he was, the State Department had washed its hands of its responsibility to our SIV interpreters.
We had seen him testify before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs two weeks earlier, mentioning no concrete steps he would take to aid abandoned SIV interpreters or any attempts his department would make to pressure the international community, specifically border countries, to help interpreters and vulnerable Afghans escape the threat of Taliban retribution.
And, so, we threw our last hopes to the Senate. Surely, they would be successful in demanding the answers and accountability the House could not. Surely, they would not waste their limited time debating the broader merits of nation-building as a way to sidestep discussing the failures of an evacuation which left thousands of American citizens, legal permanent residents, SIV interpreters and other vulnerable Afghans stranded.
Sadly, we were wrong, and left once again heartbroken as we watched an Armed Services Committee hearing late last month turn into the same partisan boxing match that nearly all congressional hearings take on these days: one party defending the administration, the other attacking it, neither engaging in meaningful fact-finding, lest it damage their political brand.
What should have been an opportunity to identify the acute interagency failures that undermined evacuation operations, instead turned into an occasion for each party to, in essence, campaign for itself.
It also became a chance for the nation’s top military advisers to shift blame for the bungled NEO onto the Afghan national-security forces and the Taliban while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for conducting the “greatest airlift in human history.”
For anyone involved with the SIV interpreter community, the irony was not lost on us that it was the U.S. military denying airport entry to Special Immigration Visa (SIV) interpreters, the same U.S. military that those interpreters had risked their lives to serve. Both the Department of Defense and the State Department have yet to answer for that.
I’ve recently been in contact with an interpreter, Mo, with whom I worked in Afghanistan. I have heard the story of his desperate attempts to gain access to the airport in Kabul, which ultimately proved unsuccessful as the U.S. military barred entry for SIV holders for reasons yet to be disclosed to the American people.
Mo had to sell his wife’s wedding jewelry for food money because the banks are out of cash to dispense to account holders. Soon he will have to sell his car just to survive.
I wish I could help him. I wish I could reassure him that our government would account for its wrongs and take meaningful action to correct course. Sadly, after these congressional hearings, I feel like I have no hope left to give to him.
Joan Barker, who lives in Port Orange, was a defense contractor teaching English to the Afghan Air Force in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2018.
