Nasir Sabiry wishes he never became an interpreter.
For four years between 2009 and 2013, he worked for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) as a translator in Kabul, part of a team of locally engaged employees whose help was crucial to the coalition military campaign in Afghanistan.
Sabiry was young, the money was good, and the work felt important and exhilarating. But by the time Australian combat troops withdrew late in 2013, he realised he had a target on his back. For the Taliban, anyone who worked for Western forces was a traitor. And traitors, and their families, deserved to be killed.
The Taliban has just put translators on a kill list as it surges through the war-torn country, emboldened by the coming Western withdrawal. And for Afghan interpreters here in Australia, there’s a sense of frustration and anguish that a government that helped them is abandoning their friends and family back home.
“When we started working, we didn’t know it would come to this. It was like walking into a trap,” Sabiry said on the phone from his home in Newcastle, NSW. “I never had plans to come here to Australia, but it got too dangerous. If I knew this would happen, I never would have done this in my life.”
By 2014 Sabiry was resettled in Australia. He’s one of about 600 Afghan interpreters who received locally engaged employee (LEE) visas over the last eight years. But now, with the Australian embassy in Kabul closed, and the last troops set to leave by September, there are hundreds more like Sabiry who face a terrifying, uncertain future.
At a press conference this morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison provided little clarity about the government’s attempts to resettle translators:
“We are very aware of it, and we are working urgently, steadfastly and patiently to assure that we do this in the appropriate way,” he said.
The long wait for safety
Sabiry was one of the lucky ones. Within months of applying for a visa, he’d been resettled in Australia. But the process, which involves a complicated bureaucratic triangulation between Defence, Home Affairs and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has seen many fall through the cracks.
Ahmad Shah spent seven years working for the ADF as a translator. He then spent another seven waiting to get his visa approved. Even now, he can’t say why it took so long.
“For me, it was very difficult,” he said. “They just said, ‘we’d received lots of applications’.”
There are up to 1000 Afghan support staff — translators, security guards, fixers — who assisted the ADF and are trying to get out of Afghanistan. Interpreters say spending years vetting visa applicants makes little sense given the intense security screening they already went through back home.
According to Sabiry, interpreters would be interrogated by intelligence personnel and hooked up with lie detectors every six months. They’d be questioned about their family six generations back as security forces tried to work out any potential Taliban link, however fleeting.
Many of these people are well known to the ADF. But back in Australia, there seems to be no real urgency to follow the example of our coalition partners like the US and UK and fast-track the resettlement of translators. At Senate estimates last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne suggested Australia would continue its current process of resettling translators under the locally engaged employee visa. She wouldn’t commit to a target number of applicants, or a new, expedited process to bring interpreters to Australia.
“Afghanistan is not somewhere people can wait as long as they want,” Sabiry said.
“In Afghanistan, time is very important.”
Left to die
Interpreters’ work was always dangerous. Shah told Crikey they’d regularly face the risk of death threats, targeted attacks, kidnappings and beheadings by Taliban fighters. But things are far more uncertain and dangerous ahead of the Western withdrawal.
“Everybody is always in danger. But before, when we were in danger, at least there was some protection. Now, we have nobody.”
Translators here say their friends back home have been abandoned by an indifferent government. Sabiry says he knows of two friends, also translators, who were killed while waiting for their visas to be approved by Australian authorities.
“The Taliban knocked on the door, and when [my friend] walked out they emptied the whole magazine into him. Another was killed while he was sleeping,” he said.
They’re also fearful about the safety of their families back home. The LEE visa allows Afghans to bring their immediate families — spouses and children. That excludes other relations, like parents and siblings, who might also be at risk by association.
Sulaiman Shojaie, a former interpreter resettled in 2014, worries about his father back in Kabul, who worked with American forces.
“He’s always saying, son, if the Taliban come back, you won’t talk to your dad any more.”
Sabiry has family who have fled to Iran and Pakistan that he wants to bring over but can’t. There’s the family of his cousin, killed alongside Australian troops on the frontline.
“If the Taliban get their hands on my family, and anyone is left behind, they’re not going to take a second before finishing them off,” he said.
But Canberra seems to be twiddling its thumbs. Unless the government dramatically escalates its process by September, translators, guards and their whole families — thousands of people all up — will be left at the mercy of the Taliban, who have vowed to kill them for working for “infidel enemies”.
“The army said we’ll never leave anyone behind,” Sabiry said.
“[But] they’ve left so many people to die.”
Does Australia have a moral obligation to help Afghan translators? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
This government shames Australian values with every action/decision it takes. I wouldn’t piss on the current Federal Cabinet if they were on fire.
Agreed Tamil family, other asylum seekers and those abandoned in Afghanistan. What evil this government does. Not in my name!
Morrison continues to blather on about ‘Australian values’ but does not know what they are – perhaps graft and corruption and looking after your mates might be a reminder?
He may actually know them very well, at least insofar as our political culture goes. The Australian state has long held no strong sense of responsibility to Australians overseas, the current treatment of them is closer to the usual rule, not an outlier event. Both sides of politics are deeply suspicious, if not hostile, to any civil rights and human rights that might impinge on the rights of the state. Australians are basically more subjects than citizens of the state. Moreover, the Coalition has been winning elections based on poor treatment of non Australians this entire century. They will care about those at risk of their lives in Afghanistan only if it becomes a big enough domestic issue here that it might cost them votes. And even then would expect them to do the minimum. As for this being shameful, not to them and apparently not to most who vote for them.
What makes you think this Cabinet will ever get hot enough to catch fire?
Well they should be comfortable when hell proves to be exothermic (freezing cold).
What are these Australian values you speak of? If you mean the values of “ordinary, straight-thinking Australians”, then isn’t that all of us? How do we separate “the government” from all of us? And don’t say “but I didn’t vote for them!” If you participate, you endorse the outcome. As much as people like to say otherwise, Morrison et al do govern in our name. It’s the Australian electorate that has to prove it’s values aren’t those of the LNP by voting them out. If they don’t, then LNP values are clearly as one with the people, and Morrison can legitimately go on saying so.
Agree.
The electorate spoke… or mumbled or yawned, and made its choice.
Those who don’t like it have several options, all of which require effort, tenacity and some discomfort.
So… crickets.
The Coalition continues trying to make “Australian values” out of “Coalition values” : when history tells us that that’s a remake of “silk purses from sow’s ears”.
“It’s unAustralian not to think like the Coalition.”
The preferred axiom would be “It’s unAustralian to think“.
We owe these people safe haven in Australia. What kind of heartless bastards leave these good people .to face the Taliban and execution! Come on you disgusting people DO THE RIGHT THING for a change!! Not in my name Mr Morrison, not in my name.
Ah, from the smirk on his face and the condescending “I’m the smartest person in the room tilt of head”, the sudden acknowledgement of the plight of the Biloela family of Tamil origin, to the announcement of a sting on international organized crime, to the pacification of concerns being raised regarding Afghanistan’s translators and fixers, I sense an urgency to call an election.
And so, the decks need to be cleared in order for Smirko to show just how well he has spent our money buying another election. The government which stands for nothing. No morals, no decency, no loyalty and certainly no accountability.
This election needs to be done and dusted before the current “Bonfire of the Vanities” defamation case is decided, before the Federal court has finished with Sports Australia and Bridget Mackenzie and most certainly before our special prosecutor really gets rolling on the War Crimes trials.
Smirko clearly demonstrated his intestinal fortitude when he suddenly needed to go to Japan rather than stand beside the Head of the Armed Services Angus Campbell, announcing his decision.
The LNP need to move before Labor really starts really talking about what this federal government , hell bent on getting rid of Medicare, destroying the NDIS is cutting so that the pollies can have a tax cut.
What a craven bunch this cabinet of ours is with its decision to close our embassy in Kabul in the wake of its previous decision to leave Afghanistan militarily. The women and children of Afghanistan will be the ones to suffer (as they have before) at the hands of the murderous Taliban and rather than have a presence on the ground that might influence them to some restraint (they have already stated that they will respect the presence of diplomats) the Australian government says “right, let’s get the hell out of the place”.
Given that it has been reported that the US and Afghan governments have expressed strong concern at Australia’s decision which they believe will “spark panic among other allied countries and further undermine security” would it be too cynical to surmise that perhaps this measure is seen as one of the ways that the alleged war crimes of Australian soldiers will be much more difficult to pursue without the physical presence in Kabul of an embassy?
That’s been taken care of, they are testifying by secure video link from Law Offices.
It probably is part of the threat “Testify and we lose your application.”
What did you expect good church people do this all the time
Why are we “working ….. patiently”? As usual, more Morribabble – it is of no concern to him that these translators are in real danger – I would go as far as to suggest that Promo believes his supporters don’t want them and their families resettled in Australia, so he is, as usual, not doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – he is massaging his political brand – and the majority who are asked still believe Promo is an effective leader and good PM. This is despite that his goal is to take Australia back to a Menzies-esque torpor, all with a view to him cementing his power. There’s undoubtedly an argument that with “leaders” like Mr OrangeFace, Bobo Johnson and Promo Morrison, it was not a matter of if we would elect these buffoons as leaders, but when. But how have we as a society sunk so low as to elect Promo in the first place and having done that, how can’t the majority of voters see Promo for the blundering, inept, corrupt fool that he is?
Menzies was a whole lot better than Morrison, but then the bar is very low.