Guam or Bust

We must act soon to save our Afghan interpreters

An Afghan interpreter named Janis Shinwari saved Capt. Matt Zeller’s life in combat with the Taliban. After his return, Zeller fought to save the lives of his interpreter, his interpreter’s family, and hundreds more just like him has drawn the attention of CNN, The Atlantic, and PBS. Now he’s trying to save the rest of them before the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan later this year, and he’s hit upon an unusual idea about where the interpreters should be relocated.

by Matt Zeller

As America’s war in Afghanistan comes to an end, many see the inevitable parallels to Vietnam - a long aimless war, a determined enemy ready to out bleed us, and now with word that the Department of Defense has begun planning, perhaps an evacuation reminiscent of the chaos of Saigon’s final hours. 

As North Vietnamese forces bore down in a final assault on the dying nation of South Vietnam, American diplomats, spies, and the small remaining cadre of military advisors desperately mounted a last minute rescue. None of it was planned ahead of time. The fact that we were able to evacuate 130,000 of our Vietnamese wartime allies in such circumstances is a miracle. Most escaped via ships - the remnants of the South Vietnamese Navy and merchant fleet - sailed to Guam. 

Afghanistan is a landlocked country - we do not have the luxury of an ocean and boats to aid us in the evacuation of the over 70,000 Afghan wartime allies estimated in need of rescue from certain Taliban death. We are not the Soviet Union - we cannot load everyone into trucks and drive north into Tajikistan now that our war is over. Should we choose to save our Afghan wartime allies, we are going to need the largest air lift since Berlin. 

The White House has finally agreed the Afghans must be evacuated. 

But where should they go? 

Some suggest asking our friends in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, or Bahrain to house these allies while we figure out what to do with them. I disagree. Asking a third party to shoulder this American burden would require far more diplomatic effort than we have time and could strain intercountry relationships. It could also pose a danger to any Afghans who have problems with their paperwork or applications. For example, according to Human Rights First, “Afghans sent to countries that are not signatories of the Refugee Convention or do not have functioning asylum systems, like the UAE, Kuwait, or Bahrain would be at risk of being returned to danger.” 

Guam, on the other hand, solves all of our needs at once. It is US terrority, so any Afghans housed there will allow for our immigration system to efficiently and appropriately vet them, while also significantly reducing the overall cost. Guam is also a single flight from Afghanistan - thus we would not have to stop anywhere to refuel along the way. Finally, the cost is eminently affordable - $700,000,000, or around $10,000 per person to move them from Afghanistan, house them on Guam, process their visa, and then move them permanently to the US. To put that cost in perspective, $700 million is the equivalent of an additional 8.3 hours in this year’s Department of Defense budget - an easy to make downpayment to keep Americans alive in future wars. 

Most importantly, the people of Guam stand ready to support this mission and welcome the evacuation. The Guam economy depends on tourism, which COVID wiped out. Unemployment on Guam currently sits around 20 percent - their hotels sit empty due to COVID. Housing our Afghan allies in these hotels could serve a dual purpose of providing refuge to our friends while also giving a boost to the economy of Guam when they most need it.

We will not reinvade Afghanistan to save these people. Either we put our Afghan wartime allies on planes, get them to Guam, and then process their visas in safety, or stand back and watch the Taliban murder them. 

If we are to prevent this Never Again moment in the making we are rapidly running out of time. The chart above shows the devil’s arithmetic of a proposed evacuation to Guam if we started Sunday 25 JUN 2021.

Press reporting makes it clear the American military will likely leave Afghanistan around the 4th of July. Turkey has suggested it too may pull its military from protecting the airport in Kabul. Australia closed its Afghan embassy due to what they fear comes next - a resurgent Taliban, already hunting and murdering our allies, soon with the ability to shell Kabul with artillery and rocket barrages. The United Kingdom, Italy, France, Australia, and Norway, citing the growing Taliban threat, all announced they will evacuate their Afghan wartime allies and their families as they withdraw. 

Any lives we save now will prove to allies later that Americans keep their word and will not abandon our friends to our enemies. Our allies are in danger because of their service to the United States mission in Afghanistan. America must meet our commitment to them. A bipartisan coalition in Congress, the Department of Defense, veterans, Human Rights, and faith organizations all agree - we must get them to Guam. A plan exists to make it happen. Only President Biden can give the order. It's Guam or bust.

Matt Zeller, who used to write Presidential Daily Briefings for Barack Obama, is the Co-Founder of No One Left Behind, a Truman National Security Fellow and an adjunct fellow at the American Security Project. He authored Watches Without Time (Just World Books, 2012), which chronicles his experience serving as an embedded combat adviser with the Afghan security forces in Ghazni, Afghanistan, in 2008. He was the Democratic nominee for Congress in 2010 in NY’s 29th Congressional District, which was a crappy year to run as a Democrat. He earned a BA in Government from Hamilton College and a MPA and a MA-IR from The Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Zeller’s previous contributions to The Experiment include Presidential Daily Briefing, Fascism, Flight Risk and Trumpism, an American Cancer. Follow him on Twitter at @mattczeller.

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