These veterans want America to keep its wartime promises. They found a country full of indifference.
December 10, 2022 at 7:30 PM EST
Members of the Denver-area Afghan American community wave the flag of Afghanistan during an event promoting the Afghan Adjustment Act in Thornton, Colo., in October. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post) Comment on this story
comment
OMAHA, Neb. — The tone was well trained the moment they arrived Omaha District Office of Senator Deb Fischer. “I’m just alive talking to you today,” Army veteran Matt Zeller explained to the two-term Republican’s staff. “because my Afghan interpreter shot and killed these two Taliban fighters who were about to kill me in a battle 14 years ago.” The woman, dressed in a leopard-print T-shirt and with a slight frown on her face, listened quietly from behind a Plexiglas security partition.
It was day eight, mile no. 1,240, of a hastily arranged road trip to win over Republican senators. At stake: a stalled effort to permanently resettle tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States as America’s longest war came to a catastrophic end last year. But with Congress preparing to lift the year and the temporary permission for evacuees to be in the country nearing its end, Zeller said time was running out.
He and his three partners: another ex-soldier, James Powers, Navy reservist Safi Rauf and his brother Zabih — he needed the support of seven Republican senators to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act. It just wasn’t the right thing to do, Zeller said. America made a promise to these Afghans: “We must finish this mission.”
The woman behind the glass asked them to write down their contact information and promised to pass the message on to colleagues in Washington. A success, the group concluded, thanking him as they left. The four men said they were hopeful. A spokesman for Fischer declined to comment on the meeting or reveal his position on the legislation.
Last year, lawmakers from both political parties attacked the Biden administration for its handling of the withdrawal. Fischer was among Republicans who, at the time, pleaded with the White House to do more to protect America’s Afghan allies, saying it was working aggressively to help people escape the Taliban’s takeover. “America made a promise to these brave Afghans. If you work with us, we said, we will take care of you and your family,” he said as the airlift operation drew to a close.
Others whose commitment Zeller hoped to make sure had made public statements warning President Biden to “reconsider the onerous requirements for Afghans” seeking to flee and provide “all resources necessary to process and resettle these refugees.”
The Afghan Adjustment Act would eliminate the possibility of deportation or unemployment for the population nearly 73,000 evacuees who entered the U.S. on “humanitarian parole,” a two-year asylum that expires in 2023. The legislation would give them a chance to receive green cards after undergoing additional vetting and expand the government’s options to extract hundreds of thousands of others who were left behind. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the bill along with five co-sponsors: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (RS.C.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), Roy Blunt (R- Mo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
But some of the same Republican lawmakers who once championed America’s accountability to its allies have begun to question whether those guided in the evacuation flights of the US last year had sufficiently demonstrated their loyalty. Others have come to see the idea of citizenship for thousands of Afghans as part of a broader liberal immigration agenda that they oppose. Republicans in the last days removed a provision in the annual defense policy bill to expand a special visa program for Afghan allies.
Thousands of Afghans were evacuated. Will America let them stay?
lawyers they want “Triple A”, as they call it, included in a massive financing package for the whole year that Congress was expected to vote on this month. That’s their best option, they say, before Republicans take control of the House majority and add new uncertainty to their prospects there, though there’s also no guarantee Congress will pass a bill of this type in time.
Zeller and his fellow travelers took their message to 25 states this fall, driving 7,600 miles in five weeks in hopes that if they could rally support from local veterans groups and other constituents, still-uncommitted senators would too. they could embrace his sense of urgency. A Washington Post reporter traveled through Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
His journey was fueled by notions of military honor, loyalty and obligation. On the road, however, they found no assurance that these convictions still resonated in postwar America. They were often met, by both the public and legislative staff, with an uncomfortable reality in which the moral code that bound so many in the midst of withdrawal had once again given way to indifference to those at risk of abandonment.
It took three hours from Omaha, mostly on back roads shorn fields of yellow corn, to reach Manhattan, Kan., home of Kansas State University and a local pub where Zeller had arranged to meet with a district staffer from Sen. Jerry Moran’s office . He is the ultimate Republican member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
They traveled in three SUVs: Zeller, 40, followed by Powers, 38, and then Safi Rauf, 28, and Zabih Rauf, 40, who belong to an Afghan-American family who settled in Omaha. in the 2000s
Each brought work experience to convince politicians of a greater good. Zeller, a senior advisor to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, has spent years advocating on behalf of Afghans who helped the American mission. Powers, an Iraq War veteran, has campaigned for veterans’ rights and benefits, including the PACT Act passed last summer to care for people exposed to toxic burns. The Rauf brothers have focused The Afghans were left behind after the American airlift concluded. But the idea of a road trip through red America, a group of Tuned to Washington of activists passing local Senate offices and veterans bars, more was created despair
They called it a “fire vigil”—a 24-hour “accountability” vigil, they explained, after just one such action on the steps of the U.S. Capitol had helped push the PACT Act when Republicans they stagnated during the summer. It was Safi Rauf’s idea to make an Afghan version. Congress then went into recess and became a “fire watch on the road.”
“All we ask is to keep a promise,” Zeller said in an interview. For 20 years, the U.S. government has told Afghans, ‘Work with us, we’ll take care of ourselves,’ and Congress needs to remember it, he said. “That’s why we have to be here doing this. Whatever it takes.”
Was on a Tuesday afternoon when they brought the fire watcher to Kansas. “I saved you a seat,” Zeller told Moran’s staff when he entered the restaurant to find not only Zeller but his entourage, including a couple of local veterans plus some Afghans and reporters he had invited.
The issue Zeller leans on is moral damage: the idea that when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, it wasn’t just the Afghans who suffered. American war veterans did too, he explained, as the group settled into a lunch of cookies and sliders.
It’s personal, he said, to describe his inability to sleep at night knowing that Afghan “brothers and sisters in arms” have been left in limbo. And it’s the issue he thinks is most likely to come up with Republicans, the party that has long presented itself as a champion of America’s military and the importance of in tribute to its veterans.
“I know five boys who committed suicide last year during the evacuation. I don’t want to hear about any other,” Zeller said. “So I see this as a national security issue, as a veterans mental health issue. Like the right thing to do.”
But they needed Moran to pass the Afghanistan Adjustment Act, he pointedly added. He and Powers listed other senators whose votes, at the time, they hoped to secure. “But I think your head is key,” Zeller said. “Really. And I want to know: how do we get him on board?”
Moran’s staff seemed nice. He told Zeller he would do his best.
Biden welcomes Ukrainian refugees, neglects Afghans, critics say
During withdrawal, Moran and other Senate colleagues appealed to Biden in writing, asking the president to accommodate those who were fleeing and who “may not have been able to collect or gather the proper documents.” Immigration attorneys said a lack of proper documentation prevents many evacuees from obtaining asylum and is one of the main reasons AAA is needed.
At the pub, staff said they were not authorized to speak to the media and referred questions to Moran’s office in Washington. A spokesman there did not respond to a request for comment on Moran’s position on the bill.
For all the passion that galvanized so many legislators as Kabul collapsed in August 2021, public attention has also long since shifted to other issues such as rising inflation and the war in Ukraine.
“There’s so much going on right now, the temptation is to be drawn to other issues that seem more pressing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the bill’s sponsors, said in an interview. “But this bill is a moral imperative.” On Capitol Hill, “we are in active discussions, literally day in and day out,” he added, expressing optimism that it would become law.
Some Republican opponents of the AAA have argued that the bill is unnecessary because the Department of Homeland Security prioritizes Afghan…