Afghan interpreters plead for US visas

After a five-year wait, Mohamed Janis Shinwari is relieved to be in the United States, safe from the threats of the Taliban.

But as a former interpreter for US troops in Afghanistan, Shinwari fears for the lives of his colleagues back home, who are desperately trying to secure US visas.

“I am very worried for my friends. They have no protection,” Shinwari said.

“Now I want the US government to pay attention and work hard to get those other interpreters from Afghanistan to the United States,” he said.

“If they get caught by the Taliban, they are going to get killed.”

The 36-year-old Shinwari along with his wife and two children now live in the Washington suburbs. He might never have secured a visa without the relentless effort of a US soldier, Matt Zeller, who became his close friend.

Zeller is fiercely loyal to Shinwari because the Afghan came to his aid at a dire moment on the battlefield, gunning down two Taliban insurgents who were closing in for the kill.

“I was pinned down and I thought, this is it, I am going to die on this hillside, probably by a Taliban bullet,” Zeller said. “He saved my life.”

Zeller hardly knew Shinwari, but after that life-saving moment, he became fast friends with the Afghan.

At the end of Zeller’s tour in December 2008, he promised Shinwari, whom he calls his “brother,” that he would get him and his family a visa to live in the United States.

“I just didn’t think it would take five years,” said Zeller, sitting next to his former translator on a sofa in his apartment in northern Virginia.

When Shinwari’s visa application stalled, Zeller drummed up media coverage, contacted members of Congress and organised an online petition that attracted tens of thousands of signatures.

Shinwari had to submit to two lie detector tests, and lawmakers made phone calls to senior government officials to break the logjam over his case.

“I wasn’t going to resign him to getting beheaded in front of his family and tortured and killed,” said Zeller, now a captain in the Army reserves. “I couldn’t live with that.”

While the Army officer persuaded lawmakers and news media to focus on his interpreter’s plight, thousands of other interpreters who risked their lives for American troops are still in peril, Zeller said.

With US forces now withdrawing and conducting few patrols, Eshan’s translation work has dried up and his application for a visa seems to be moving in slow motion, despite reference letters from Americans he worked with.