Saboor Sakhizada, Afghan Translator: Traitor or Patriot?

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I am Denzil Mohammed, and this is Jobmakers.

Denzil Mohammed:

Last week we met Abdul Saboor Sakhizada a former translator instructor and a manager for the US Army in Afghanistan. Now living with his family in upstate New York, he spoke about life as a child of war and what it was like in the front lines alongside us troops, including Fox news contributor, Pete Hegseth this week, Abdul reveals that he is actively trying to evacuate fellow Afghan interpreters and their families, including his own baby brother. It gives us his thoughts on the US withdrawal paints, a picture of who those Afghan refugees are, and then treats Americans not to buy into the false rhetoric and to get to know these new Americans in this final of a two-part special of Jobmakers, you mentioned being seen as a traitor, betraying your country and come to the present day. You also feel a sense of betrayal, but not from those people in Afghanistan, but from America and coalition forces. Let’s talk a little bit more now about the work that you’re currently doing. So I imagine several years ago you left Afghanistan and came to the U S right? Yeah,

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

That’s right. Yeah. So it’s a duality, right? Because I think you’re right. You know, when I was there, I not only interpreted like a gazillion times of this doctrine and preach this doctrine and live this doctrine of shoulder to shoulder, making promises to the Afghan security forces, to the host nation communities, to the villagers, to the teachers that we’re going to be here, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do it right. If you promise not to support the bad guys, we’re going to be here. I know for a fact that I’ve attended countless number of meetings where a coalition forces or U S forces had promised, made those promises that, you know you trust us, we’re going to help you. We’re going to save you. We’re going to protect you. And then watching in 2021 in a fashion in which United States left Afghanistan, and here I am, after 20 years.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

I mean, I served that mission for seven years, but after 20 years, of US involvement in Afghanistan, it almost feels like all of that was a bad dream. And very novelistic that just does not have anything in reality. If I would’ve read the story of Afghanistan from 2001 until 2021 and a novel, I would have probably said, this is a made up story. So I could, but seeing it unfold in front of my eyes, seeing all of this, seeing all that effort, all that money you know, it’s hard, man. It’s hard to process it. I still can’t believe this is, this has happened. So

Denzil Mohammed:

When you hear President Biden say something like our involvement in Afghanistan was never about nation building. How do you respond to that?

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

As I said on Pete Hegseth, I’m not into criticizing politicians or, you know, their politicians but I can tell you for a fact the US was there to nation build. It’s sad. What bothers me is that we have found a way to celebrate our defeat to somehow paint a picture, this was this tragic picture somehow is to celebrate. I guess we’re either numb or we don’t understand what this all means. I mean, I remember reading a book and that book kind of talked about, you know, what winning looks like. And one of the things that this book talks about is that look, you know, in military warfare, there’s two, you know, and this is part of it is confusing for even the citizens of United States and international community and audience concerned citizens.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

It’s confusing. Did we actually win in Afghanistan? Or did we lose? So there’s, there’s two different aspects to this, right? Because if you actually look at the number of people that got killed, who lost the most? US lost about 2000, 3000 soldiers somewhere around there, roughly. And then there were in comparison, the insurgents, the Taliban may have lost hundreds of thousands of, of their lives. So from that point on us could say, and I’m not even counting the civilians that lost their lives, the teachers hospital workers, doctors, engineers, and all of it. So that’s even a side story that we don’t even want to open. That’s another wound that we don’t want to open, but the point is that from a, from a personnel standpoint, United States and international community may have not lost enough as many as, as many lives as the Taliban or the insurgencies that at that time.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

So from that point view, one can say, can make an argument saying, oh, US actually won from that because when you into a battle of warfare, they lost more fighters than we did. So we won. But the second, most important thing about warfare in Afghanistan, and particularly in the case of Afghanistan is, whose flag is up at the end of the battle. Which army has a flag up? And clearly we know that United States and Afghanistan flag is not up right now. And, and, you know, the insurgencies flag is out there, you know, all of that. So it, th this debate as to whether or not we lost, we won and I’ve got a stand. What does this all looks like? Our mission was not to nation build. Well, you’re hearing it from me. I’ve attended hundreds of meetings where we talked about building infrastructure, building a state, a nation build state building you know, USAID implemented hundreds of projects fighting corruption you know, building infrastructure there, addressing the recruitment process of who, what, what, what, how to hire women and minorities and all of this, there are hundreds of projects on governance in Afghanistan building a governance system.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

If those are all not nation building, I don’t know what is so I don’t buy that story because I know for a fact that we were there to nation build. We poured billions of dollars into that nation to nation build.

Denzil Mohammed:

I want you to bring it into the present day. We know what’s happening in Afghanistan. We’ve all seen the images and the footage from the airport, people climbing onto planes, even as they’re moving some falling to their deaths. What is your role right now?

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

When we saw thatKabul was collapsing, I immediately got on the phone. I started calling all my military buddies, including Pete Hegseth and all of anyone that I could possibly find. I said, I need help. I need to save my brother. I need to save my family. And so I ended up talking to some friends and those friends found their friends. And eventually we found the ways to save my brother and getting through those gates at airportdespite the chaos, despite the disorder that was there. So we certainly made the impossible possible, but it was all done through the efforts of a lot of folks that may hear this voice. And my heartfelt gratitude goes to all of them for doing this. And so eventually when we found out a way to make to save lives, we basically took that methodology that we had, and we started saving other interpreters, other, other, other families that w we had a system and other others made referrals to us.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

And we started doing the same thing with them. And because we had the right point of contact from that point on, up until when the blast went off, until they, the suicide bomber blew himself up. And it in the, in the, in the gate at the gate in Kabul and the Karzai airport. And so that was when the sort of our mission of evacuation kind of went through this break, this halt. Right now we’re putting up a team that are going to do some of those evacuations, because we know there are a lot of interpreters. We know there’s a lot of folks that helped us mission in Afghanistan. I have visited For Pickett, Fort Lee to get close to some of the Afghan refugees that are here in the state side and to offer some support.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

So we’re actively putting classes together for them to go deliver some of the services, whether that’s culture, whether it’s US expectations and laws, and even giving them the broader picture of what to expect when they get out of those military bases. And they start living in American society, just like all of us, you know, so we’re doing things in different levels to help as much as we can through the group that we have through the nonprofit efforts that we have sort of put together

Denzil Mohammed:

And creative ways of getting evacuees out of Afghanistan and into some kind of safety. So we are expecting refugees to be, people on special immigrant visas to be resettled in the U S that has already started happening coming from Afghanistan. Help our audience, understand who are these people? What are they like, what are their backgrounds? And I do remember reading, there was some 50,000 Afghan interpreters over the course of the war.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

So, I mean, these are people like me, you know, now you’ve gotten to know a little bit about my story. These are engineers, these are doctors, these are people with unique skills that we don’t get to see as often in United States, there are bilinguals in most cases some of them know more than two or three languages. They’re also folks that have been deprived of education in their lives. Like there are women, for example, girls. So you get a whole mixture of different categories of population to come in to the United States. And I mean, I come from a background of serving immigrants serving refugees in the United States because professionally that’s what I did for about six years of my life here. So for those that are not as equipped to be ready to contribute immediately to the American economy, then what you do is then you connect them to the right resources to make sure that they’re getting equipped or help established them on the path to self-sufficiency.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

But eventually they will all be just like all of us and their children will be just like our children here. And, or the children of American-born citizens.

Denzil Mohammed:

Sorry, I thought people moved to the US in desperate circumstances just to live off welfare. Are you saying that’s not how it is?

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

Quite honestly. I think they’re quite the contrary. I mean, there’s a benefit welfare program that offers benefit and these people are eligible by law to benefit from those programs. But no, like I said, these guys are not free riders. They are engineers and they have skills to offer. I mean, I’ve helped with my program, I used to, I specifically initiated a work program, how to transfer their certificates. So we have nurses for example, and they were nurses in their home country, but, you know, they did not meet New York nursing standards or whatever that was. So they had to go take some tests to pass their test and exams, to be certified again, as a registered nurse. But for that, it takes time.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

And for that, until that takes place, they have to learn a little bit of language. They have to learn that they have to be ready to understand the medical terminologies or medical language. And they have to also work as maybe janitors or perhaps a cleaner somewhere to make a living. And some of those folks that are, you know, have a large family or so may also benefit from welfare from other things, but that will be temporarily because once they get back the job that they had studied for, the, the goals that they have for their life, it will just be like the rest of Americans. But I have to say, and I think this question alludes to this larger, larger picture, because we don’t get to talk about it as much as the, the melting pot, the American melting pot, the crucible of, of everyone coming in and immediately overnight changing and losing their identities, losing their, their values and the things that they have, and automatically accepting American values. Keep in mind that they were, I mean, look at me, I grew up in a war zone.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

I grew up under a very highly conservative society. And for us to come in and be exposed to a whole set of new values and information, it takes time for folks to go through the melting process to go through it. And so I think we were not realistic enough. And for those that question it, had they lived on the shoes of those families that are going through this transition every single day. They would, I would almost guarantee you that they would have quite a different experience of what that would be like.

Denzil Mohammed:

That’s a really important point to make. That adjustment does take time. And so many of them didn’t have the luxury of, you know, MTV and these other things movies and Hollywood to acclimatize them beforehand, growing up in such an insular, very religious society. But the one thing that these people want is freedom. They want opportunities.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

You know, when I first came into the United States the sky was the limit, opportunities left and right. And for someone like me and full of energy, trying to do as much as it can to scale up and the social economic ladder, or perhaps being engaged, like the same energy, the same thing I did in Afghanistan, you know the sky was the limit. I wanted to seek every opportunity I possibly could for my family or for professionally or academically. And, you know, I managed to go through three different degrees in four and a half years. I did my associates. I did my bachelors. I did my masters all in four and a half years of my time in the United States. So, and part of that was that I saw opportunities out there and I wanted to utilize them.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

And because I know, I know for a fact that a lot of these families that come into the United States as community members, we support them and help them thrive the community in general thrives, the community, you know, uplifts themselves, and they have better community members to contribute back to the community. But I can also guarantee you on the contrary that if these, some of these families struggle and they cannot adjust their life, because we know how hard adjustment is, and if they struggle, and I could almost guarantee you that then the entire community will struggle.

Denzil Mohammed:

It’s important for America to remember not to retraumatize these families who have been through already so much, this is a moment where we can really show how compassionate we can be, how welcoming we can be, how to how our value system is, which is that we welcome the stranger who wants to work hard, who’s fleeing something terrible. And we need to also remind people that people were forced to flee generally don’t want to flee. They would rather stay in their home country and, and build it up, right?

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

And for their children’s and the school that their children go through. It just blows my mind. So I think, again, it comes back to the part of, you know, that one word in my mind, engage, engage, and you will learn because that’s where it all starts. But if you keep isolating yourselves and keep seeing your neighbors as this other, not as we, then that is the source of all evils in my, in my mind, that creates a gap between you and the neighbor. But when you think about “we,” then you’re putting yourself in the same circle. You’re putting yourself in the same umbrella of we’re a part of this community, and we’ve got to help each other out.

Denzil Mohammed:

I dare anyone listening to this podcast before you make an opinion public about Afghan refugees in your community. Go say hi to one, find out who they are for yourselves, and you will be incredibly enlightened, and you maybe be able to then share a different opinion on refugees being resettled in the U S. Abdul Saboor Sakhizada. Thank you so much for joining us and giving us all of your experiences and your perspectives, and really on the work that you’re doing right now to get people out of Afghanistan, to safety, wherever that may end up being whether it’s the US or other places, but we really, really wish wish you the best of luck.

Abdul Saboor Sakhizada:

Well, I appreciate you having me on the program. Thank you so much. And thanks for what you do, because it’s important for people to know the facts, the realities, and also the inside stories of some of these families.

Denzil Mohammed:

Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about the contributions of immigrants and refugees produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center of Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this final of this two-part special of Jobmakers. We return to regular Jobmakers next week with Spanish-born life science entrepreneur, Bernat Olle, founder of Vedanta Biosciences, who is revolutionizing the world of the microbiome. I am Denzel Mohammed. Join us next Thursday afternoon for another Jobmakers.