Making a difference

I’ve watched as the world becomes increasingly polarised about issues many (including me) don’t fully understand. I’ve had to stop conversations at my dinner table mid-volley – close enough to pass the pepper and salt, miles apart in opinion and thought.

I’ve been privy to too many conversations this year that ended with a blanket acceptance of things as they are – sure what can we do?

You remember the story of the kid walking the beach tossing starfish back into the ocean? When an enlightened adult cautions him that he can’t save them all, the kid says: ‘I made a difference to that one.’

Some people keep at it until they make that difference.

In 2012, my friend Tom was the medical and safety officer on a US military base in northern Afghanistan. He was assigned a local interpreter called Z. He was one of many host country nationals working on site at the US mission.

When Tom’s contract was drawing to a close in 2014, he saw early signs of America pulling out of Afghanistan. Bases were closing. It was a matter of time. He began looking into getting Z the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) he was entitled to as an Afghani supporting the US mission in a war zone.

Tom had Z send him all the letters he’d received from previous supervisors from the various coalition forces he had helped, and forwarded them along with his own letter to the US Department of State. Job done. Boxes ticked. All taken care of. The visa might take a year to come through, but both were confident it would, as it already had for others.

From Afghanistan, Tom headed to Kurdistan. He kept in touch with the State Department about Z’s visa. By this stage, the base had closed and Z had retrained as a pharmacy technician. The USA was still a visible presence in the country so neither felt any great urgency. The wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly. But they were turning.

Then 15 August 2021 dawned.

Under pressure from the advancing Taliban forces, US troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan. Although the process had started in January 2020 under the Trump administration, the Biden decision seemed sudden. Too sudden.

Kabul fell to the Taliban while evacuations were still underway. The airport was the last bastion of US protection and although Z and his family went to the gates every day during the evacuation, they couldn’t get into the airport to get asylum. The 125,000 or so people evacuated in one of the largest airlifts in history didn’t include Z and his family. Neither were they among the 170 Afghanis killed alongside 13 US service members at Abbey Gate on 26 August, blown up by a suicide bomber.

The footage I saw looked like a scene from a movie – The Killing Fields from 1984, 13 Hours in 2016, or The Post in 2017. Later, it too, would get its own screen time in Escape from Kabul in 2022.

Tom sent out appeals to anyone who might know of anyone who might be able to help get Z and his family out. His emails to the State Department became increasingly frantic. Z, his wife, and their small children went into hiding in an alleyway apartment in a burned-out neighbourhood of Kabul.

Things didn’t look good.

Reports of locals who had helped US forces being executed were pouring out of the city. Z couldn’t work. He had no way of supporting his family. He was forced to rely on the goodness of family and friends.

On this side of the world, the media was reporting on the chaos in Kabul calling it disastrous. Humiliating. A betrayal. The pressure was on to do right by those who had helped the USA on the ground for years.

Tom and Z finally began getting responses to their emails. But still chaos and confusion reigned. They’d send off the documents requested, only to receive another email from a different SIV office asking for the same documents. Again.

Eventually, in early 2024, confirmation came that Z’s documents had been received and verified, and his visa was “provisionally” approved. This approval did not grant him a real visa, though; it only gave him access to the online SIV portal, where he had to fill out the application (again) and upload his documents (again). [Do bureaucrats ever stop and wonder how inhumane their processes are?]

Z was also navigating a treacherous tightrope with the Taliban – how to get passports for his two daughters without saying why. And he needed those passports. Tom was chomping at the bit. They were so close: “It infuriated me that the US government would delay the issuance of a visa to people who were in imminent danger because two babies didn’t have passports, but eventually, it was done.”

The next step in getting his official visa was the in-person visit to a US consular mission for interview. But the US embassy in Kabul had closed during the withdrawal and all local operations had terminated. “Z and his family were left with an invitation and no way to accept it”, Tom told me. All rescue flight operations, government and private, had long since ceased.

Tom spent six months emailing private pilots, NGOs, and even his local Senator. All were long on sympathy but short on solutions. Z wasn’t the only one travelling this road. The US government had multiple evacuees in the same situation and had created a special operation CARE (Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts) to help them get out. The Taliban, in an attempt to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the USA and the world, allowed some of them to leave the country.

That walk through Taliban security and onto the US flight had to have been nerve wracking. Z and his family landed in Rammstein Airbase in Germany where they went through the last background checks and interviews. As their sponsor, Tom was checked out, too. Finally, after years of trying, they were granted formal asylum and the visa needed to start a new life.

An NGO specialising in resettling Afghan refugees arranged for Z and his family to fly to Portland and settled him near Tom only last month, ten years after he first applied for the SIV. Ten long years.

Instead of looking over his shoulder and worrying if this time would be the last time he’d see his family, Z is now busy with school enrollments and getting use to how things work in America. Tom says he’s looking forward to “the fun of taking him to Walmart and Home Depot and seeing the look on his face at these gigantic monuments to American consumerism. Although he was around Americans often, this is his first experience of us in our native habitat, and I have a feeling I’ll be guiding him through a lot of culture shock.”

There’s a strong, decades-old Afghan community in Portland so Z and his family will have some familiarity to help ground them in their new life.

Having struck out with finding anyone in my contacts who could help back in 2021, I checked in with Tom once or twice to see what was happening with Z and if there was anything I could do. I wasn’t close enough to pass the pepper and salt but I felt I’d had a look at the menu.

Then my life, my troubles, my woes pushed everything else out of sight. Until last month, when Tom posted a photo of himself and Z on Facebook.

I cried. And I cried. And I cried.

Months of pent-up emotions flooded out. I thought of that kid and the starfish and how one person, if committed, can truly make a difference. Even if it takes ten years.

The reaffirmation of the goodness of people and the confirmation that we can all make a difference are all the Christmas presents I need.

Happy Christmas to Z and his family – their first in America. Happy Christmas to Tom and his family with heartfelt gratitude for being the light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel. Boldog Karácsonyt. Nollaig shona daoibh. Happy Christmas to you all. May you find peace and harmony in your worlds, wherever you are.

Mary Murphy is a freelance writer, copyeditor, blogger, and communications trainer. Read more at www.unpackingmybottomdrawer.com | www.anyexcusetotravel.com | www.dyingtogetin.com