In counterinsurgency, the most important thing is winning over the local population. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander in charge of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, was right to warn that a "crisis of confidence among Afghans" imperils the effort to rebuild the country. For most American troops, however, the only connection they have to the locals - whether soldiers in the Afghan army or villagers they're trying to secure - is through their interpreters.
United States Army doctrine describes interpreters as "vital," which is fairly obvious given the bevy of languages spoken in Afghanistan: Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Uzbek and others. Yet the way the military uses translators is too often haphazard and sometimes dangerously negligent. Many units consider interpreters to be necessary evils, and even those who are Americans of Afghan descent are often scorned or mistreated for being too obviously "different."
Mission Essential Personnel, the primary contractor providing interpreters in Afghanistan, has basic guidelines: interpreters need to be given a place to sleep, for example, and fed. But beyond that, how they are treated is often left up to the individual unit. Many times, they are treated the way they should be: as vital members of a team. Sometimes, however, they are shockingly disrespected...
More at The New York Times.
Comments
Schedlap and Foust both have it correct from their perspectives. I was on a MiTT for my last deployment and me and the rest of the team had to trust our terps with our lives. Except for a couple of people on the team we all tried to ensure our terps could go anywhere we could. Some people on the medium to large size FOBs made this difficult. We worked hard to help our deserving terps obtain their US VISAs, and toward the end of my tour the process was changed requiring the terps to prove that they were deserving of the VISAs, by making them do most of the process on their own. My team still made sure our terps mad it to their interviews. My best terp should be recieviing his VISA soon. My last tour ended in July of 2008.
Our terps risked their lives just like we did. They were probably in even more danger, because if people from their neighborhood found out they were terps for us they would have probably been killed. As a rule terps do not work in the same region they are from if they are native to the host nation.
My main problem I had with the way terps were treated had do do with the supply system. it took forever to get body armor and other field gear for them through the Army. On my team we finally fixed it so we were authorized three more sets of TA-50 for our terps. Still one of my terps (with very small feet) was never provided with the correct size boots.
Unfortunately for my teams terps, we were not replaced by another MiTT. It was assessed that the IA unit we were assigned to no longer needed a MiTT. So our terps, despite our efforts to assist them in finding another position were without a job when we left. The contractor responsible for them told them that they were responsible for going to different units and interviewing for a new job instead of helping place them in units that needed good interpreters.
I believe that Terps as a rule were treated well by the units they were assigned to. It was Fobbits that never went out of the wire and never had to rely on terps that treated them badly. Hence the bad treatment on larger FOBS.
Joshua/Schmedlap,
I think y'all are on the same page. I will offer another narrative that muddies the situation. When employing indigenous interpreters in a divided area, the local infighting will spill over into Terp world. Jealousy, accusations, and disputes can taint the culture muddling and confusing the US's view on whom to trust.
As with everything else in war, trust and truth are often elusive. I observed this in Diyala Province back in 2006/2007. Mustafa, my terp, a Sunni, constantly had conflict with the other Shia terps on the "Big" FOB. He earned my trust having saved my life on 3 seperate occasions. Plus, he provided the best intelligence on AQ in the DRV from an single source.
Towards the end of the deployment, the Shia terps had convinced the BDE S2 he was an AQ spy, and they placed him in jail. I almost resigned my command over that action. It took a year to get him released, and we're still working to find him employment.
On the FOBs, I experienced the same BS. Mustafa never left my side, but he was not allowed to eat with me at the dining facility. Terps had to eat in seperate but equal areas. That was the most demeaning experience that I had to observe.
v/r
Mike
<I>"The Major I quoted in that article had more stories of how his terps, whom he trusted with his life, were treated like dirt even at the medium sized bases."</I>
<U><I>Even</I></u> at medium sized bases - now I see where you are going with this (and the link provided clarifies). Yeah, the FOB mentality is ass backwards about everything. I did notice a different attitude towards terps there. At the small unit level and in small patrol bases, we regarded them as part of the unit - and very important parts, at that. On the mercifully rare occasions when we had to go to a FOB and had a terp with us, we had to shield him from BS that the link only scratches the surface of - largely because, I suspect, folks who never leave the FOB don't grasp the value of the terps or the degree of danger that terps face on our behalf.
Thanks for clarifying - right on.
Schmedlap,
I obviously can't speak for the whole country, but I think it's important to note that I did not deliberately research this story. I visited four provinces earlier this year, and in each people complained about how their interpreters (or themselves, if they were interpreters) were treated.
I'm also <a href="http://afghanquest.com/?p=345">not the only one</a> complaining about the treatment of interpreters. The Major I quoted in that article had more stories of how his terps, whom he trusted with his life, were treated like dirt even at the medium sized bases. A word count prevented me from telling those stories.
Similarly, I've had contact with other interpreter companies who complain about local interpreters being jerked around.
So while I'm not even pretending to present a systematic study, I do think the problems of how we treat interpreters is both serious and widespread enough to warrant concern.
Cheers,
Josh
Has anyone else had an experience similar to Foust's?
He seems to have encountered a one nitwit and found a few odd cases of poor administration and assumed that this is representative of rest of the military. On 4 deployments in two countries, units that I was in treated our interpreters like privileged members of the unit. We were also very prompt about initiating paperwork for visas - no small feat, considering that you need a GO signature. This op-ed seems to be out of the left field upper deck.