When Loyalty Translates as Body Armour

When Loyalty Translates as Body Armour

In a war zone, what you don’t under­stand is poten­tial­ly as dan­ger­ous as bul­lets, bombs and shrapnel.

Body armour, com­mon sense and luck will help keep you safe from the lat­ter. But the only pro­tec­tion from the per­ils of igno­rance or mis­read­ing of local cul­ture is a smart, loy­al interpreter.

Putting on body armour Iraq
Help­ing dri­ver adjust body armour

For jour­nal­ists that also includes fix­ers and dri­vers, whose val­ue often seri­ous­ly exceeds the job title, and pay scale.

I can­not begin to count the num­ber of times I was saved by a local employee’s read­ing of a sud­den turn for the worse I hadn’t ful­ly picked up on.

To cov­er start of  NATO airstrikes in the mid­dle of the night against Serb forces in Koso­vo (March 24, 1999), five of us took over a cou­ple of rooms with a bal­cony on the top floor of the five-star (actu­al­ly three burned out and two twin­kling) Grand Hotel in Pristina.

Facade Grand Hotel Pristina
Grand Hotel Pristi­na 1999

As soon as the bomb­ing began, car­loads of armed men raced through the streets, shoot­ing at the sky and any­thing that moved. A cou­ple of hours into the mad­ness, our long-time Balka­ns dri­ver Dra­gan Drag­ic climbed ten flights of unlit stairs and warned us to hide. Serb para­mil­i­taries were in the hotel, look­ing for for­eign journalists.

It was an extra­or­di­nary act of courage, and loy­al­ty to us. Dra­gan is a Serb. If his kith and kin prowl­ing the dark­ened cor­ri­dors caught him, he’d be beat­en him to a pulp.

                                             DIRE CONSEQUENCES

Afghans who work with U.S. and oth­er NATO forces face far worse if they are found out by the Tal­iban when the last U.S. troops leave the country.

Short­ly after Pres­i­dent Biden announced the final with­draw­al, inter­preters staged a des­per­ate protest in Kabul.

“They absolute­ly are going to kill us,” Moham­mad Shoaib Wal­iza­da, a for­mer inter­preter for the U.S. Army, said in an interview.

Gen. Mark Mil­ley, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowl­edged as much when he recent­ly announced that “there are plans being devel­oped very, very rapid­ly here, not just inter­preters but a lot of oth­er peo­ple that have worked with the Unit­ed States,” for poten­tial evac­u­a­tion, by both the Defense and State departments.

That seemed to be news to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, however.

A spokesper­son told NBC News: “I can tell you we have no plans for evac­u­a­tions at this time.” SIV (Spe­cial Immi­grant Visas) were being processed in Kab­ul, with a focus “on ensur­ing that the sys­tem func­tions quick­ly and con­sis­tent with U.S. secu­ri­ty and oth­er appli­ca­tion requirements.”

It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. has become mired in bureau­cra­cy that amounts to betrayal.

                WHEN POLICY BECAME DUPLICITY

In 1996, Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and civil­ian per­son­nel aban­doned the “safe haven” in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, and an esti­mat­ed 2,000 peo­ple who worked for them. Amer­i­can staff fled the Office of For­eign Dis­as­ter Assis­tance (OFDA) in the dead of night, in secret.

It took two weeks for OFDA local employ­ees — all of who were under death threat from the Sad­dam regime — to orga­nize their own evac­u­a­tion. At the Turk­ish bor­der, we watched as hus­bands, wives, and chil­dren, car­ry­ing an allot­ted three bags per fam­i­ly, stood in batch­es of 50, in sear­ing heat, to have their names checked off a list.

For the most part, the Kurds who worked for the Amer­i­cans were skilled, edu­cat­ed, often Eng­lish-speak­ing, the upper stra­ta of their soci­ety. A one-hun­dred-yard walk over a bridge and into a Turk­ish mil­i­tary camp, guard­ed by tanks, reduced them to a sin­gle, unen­vi­able sta­tus: Refugee.

Their reward for serv­ing U.S. relief oper­a­tion dubbed “Pro­vide Com­fort” was to lan­guish in a tent city while bureau­crats who’d nev­er set foot in Iraq, and had no idea of what they had been through, mulled whether and when to let them move on and begin to rebuild their lives.

                                        AS FOR THE REST…

Back in Kur­dis­tan, an anguished, vis­i­bly fright­ened man gave me a long list of names of trans­la­tors, fix­ers and oth­ers, along with their fam­i­lies, and begged me to alert the U.S. embassy in Ankara that they too, want­ed out.

The embassy staffer who took my call said noth­ing could be done “because there are no U.S. per­son­nel in Kur­dis­tan to deal with them,” and, added, “if you’ve just come from there you know why.”

I asked him if the word “craven” rang any bells.

He said I was being “unfair”.

U.S. offi­cials insist that this time they will do what is right, with the caveat that “it takes time”.

One might be for­giv­en for won­der­ing if the bureau­crats under­stand how things work in a war zone.


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6 thoughts on “When Loyalty Translates as Body Armour

  1. Sim­i­lar angle as David Zucchi­no’s recent sto­ry in the NY Times about the ace Afghan fight­er pilot and his fam­i­ly. Dis­grace­ful how we for­get our respon­si­bil­i­ties. Well done blog, Alan

  2. Excel­lent post, on a top­ic I hope you’ll revis­it. This “craven” goes way back, at least as far back as Viet Nam, and has left thou­sands of coura­geous dri­vers, trans­la­tors and oth­er staff in Africa, the Mid­dle East and Asia alone and in mor­tal dan­ger when every­body else goes home.

    1. Thanks Phil. And to be fair, there have been times when we in the Press did­n’t cov­er our­selves in glo­ry either, like not doing maybe as much as we could have to help local employ­ees get visas, even though ulti­mate­ly that too, rests with the bureau­crats. And yes, it is s sub­ject to which I will return.

  3. Yeah, we’ve made it a habit to turn to the peo­ple who helped us for years and say, “Well, it’s been a slice. See ya.” and then grab a big bird home. To our com­plete and unend­ing shame, we did it in 1975 to thou­sands of Viet­namese who’d helped us. “It takes time”???!! Pathetic.

  4. had the same dis­cus­sion today with a local round­table group re the afghan withdrawal…the major­i­ty agreed that
    amer­i­ca has an oblig­a­tion to “take care” of the
    locals who took such good care of us…
    i recalled the advice giv­en to new­bies in conflict
    zones-“iraqis aren’t just for christmas”…don’t
    promise you’ll get them visas, etc.…
    unfor­tu­nate­ly not all heard this advice
    and the rep­u­ta­tion of the unit­ed states and
    to a less­er degree cbs news took a hit…

  5. Such a strong post, Allen. I’m sure so many of your read­ers would find it hard to count all the fixers/translators/drivers who showed the kind of courage and loy­al­ty you write about. I remem­ber being in a tight spot once and my local fix­er had every chance to dis­ap­pear, but he said he was “my broth­er” and nev­er left my side. I’d only met him a day or two ear­li­er. The notion of betray­ing that kind of friend? “Craven” is spot on.

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