Local veterans who served in Afghanistan are disappointed in the United States’ last-minute attempt to evacuate Americans and Afghan partners from the embattled nation before American troops are gone.
Jimmy Lewis, an Abraham Lincoln High School alumnus and Air Force veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan twice, believes the U.S. needed to leave Afghanistan but called its exit a “multi-factor failure.”
“There are a lot of Afghans that helped us out and have helped the United States to do what we could, and I think the United States should do everything we can to get them out of there,” he said.
According to news reports by the Associated Press and NBC, since Aug. 14 the U.S. has evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of more than 48,000 people. But the AP reported Tuesday that it’s unclear if the U.S. can get all American citizens, former translators and other at-risk Afghans out by a Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline President Joe Biden has said the country will stick with.
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Lewis said after several U.S. presidents said they would pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and decided not to, many people in Afghanistan and the military thought Biden would do the same.
“I think some of the military leaders thought he was going to change his mind and didn’t prepare for departure,” he said. “There are people who still believe we can fix things over there, and I don’t hold that view.”
While some people are saying U.S. efforts to secure Afghanistan were now all for nothing, Lewis said any additional efforts might have been just as fruitless.
“I don’t know if there was ever going to be an undisputed way to leave Afghanistan,” he said. “I don’t think any improvement was going to happen. I think we should have been gone a long time ago.”
Afghanistan is “very tribal,” Lewis said, and some Afghanis are loyal to their tribe instead of their nation.
“Their culture is not just a single culture,” he said. “You can go over a mountain, and people are speaking a different language. Much of the country is rural, and they don’t really care who’s in power because they don’t think it affects them. And some people over there still thought we were Soviets, because they were so out of the loop.”
Lewis said if the situation in Afghanistan is going to turn around, it will have to be because of the Afghan people.
“We trained them for years, and at the slightest bit of resistance, they put down their weapons and gave up,” he said. “I don’t think we can fix this. I think they need to make adjustments on their own.”
Lewis described the exit as a “multi-factor failure.”
“Ideally, the U.S. should have started working on passports and ways to get people out of there a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t think people believed we were going to leave when we did. On the other hand, I don’t think people thought Afghanistan would fall as fast as it did.”
Lewis served 10 years in the Air Force and National Guard and was trained as a signal operator and on the Afghan dialect of Dari. During his first deployment to Afghanistan, he worked as a communications specialist, supporting special operations and intelligence. During his second tour, he worked as a signal operator.
He now lives in the Atlanta area with his wife, Nisha, and their two sons and works in cybersecurity in the private sector.
Miles Randolph, who was deployed to Afghanistan with the Iowa Army National Guard, 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry, from 2004-05, said “we couldn’t stay there forever” but expressed consternation about how the pullout was done.
“For me personally, none of it was handled correctly,” he said. “You don’t tell the enemy what your plan is.”
Publicizing the date of the withdrawal just told the Taliban when they could walk in and take over, Randolph said.
“We should have just slowly snuck out the back door,” he said.
Afghanistan was too fragmented to unite against the enemy, he said. That’s because of the tribalism but also the corruption, he said.
“There’s so many different self-interests, it’s difficult to unite everybody,” he said. “The tribal people only cared about their little corner.”
Like Lewis, Randolph said tribal members who joined Afghan forces were too quick to turn and run.
Randolph’s unit’s mission was mainly to provide security and pay local contractors so they could dig wells and complete other infrastructure jobs, he said. The arrangement helped with rebuilding efforts while also providing jobs for Afghans and strengthening the local economy.
“There’s good people over there,” he said.
The unit worked closely with members of the Afghan National Army, who stayed on the same compound as they did, Randolph said.
“They were what we considered ‘true Afghans,’” he said. “They would all look out for each other. We had meals together, we hung out together. Those were our friends. It hurts not knowing where those people are at and whether they’re alive.”
Randolph lives in Glenwood with his wife and three daughters.
Jesse Shea, a member of the Pottawattamie County Veteran Affairs Commission, served 16 years on active duty with the Iowa National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan twice — as a medic from 2004-05 and as a battle captain from 2010-11. He lives in Council Bluffs with his wife, Katie, and two children, ages 11 and 6.
“I knew eventually we’d try to pull out of there,” he said. “I just feel like it could have been done differently. Our mission there wasn’t just to fight the Taliban.”
It was also a humanitarian mission, Shea said. U.S. forces dug wells and built schools and infrastructure.
“When you’re doing that, you’re in amongst the people — kids, parents, elders who have to walk or drive to get water,” he said. “You’ve built relationships, you’ve built a connection with the people who want you there — and some of them did want us there.”
Seeing Afghans being left behind while U.S. forces are leaving has been difficult, Shea said.
“It was really tough to see, and I feel for those people,” he said.
The U.S. betrayed more than the Afghans with its hasty exit, Shea said.
“I think we betrayed veterans that served there, Gold Star families that lost a family member there and the people of Afghanistan — and anyone we promised we were going to leave it better than it was when we got there, and we didn’t,” he said.
Now, the country is badly destabilized, Shea said.
The AP reported Monday that al-Qaida remains a presence in the country, though its ranks have “significantly diminished” after 20 years of war. But the group and the Taliban present only two of the potential threats in the country. The Islamic State has been blamed for recent attacks in Afghanistan, the AP reported.
“I think it’s more ripe for terrorist activities now than it was before we went,” Shea said. “The people we built the schools for, they’re military-age men now, and they have two choices: They can either fight the Taliban or they can join the Taliban — and it’s going to be a lot easier to join the Taliban.”