From thousands of miles away, an Army veteran and ‘big brother’ fights to keep a promise in aftermath of war
The pleading text messages would come at all hours of the day and night from Kabul, Afghanistan.
I have been forgotten, they often read.
I was lied to.
America is not going to keep its word.
More than 6,000 miles away near Chicago, U.S. Army veteran Chris McClanathan would open each message and wonder how much longer his friend could hold out. Romal, an interpreter for the U.S. military and government contractors for most of his adult life, was among the tens of thousands of Afghan allies left behind when the United States hastily withdrew from the country in August 2021 and the Taliban seized control.
When U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the government promised safe harbor to Afghan allies in exchange for their services. In Romal’s case, he believed there would be a Special Immigration Visa for him and his family as repayment for his services at Camp Mike Spann, a northern military base where the locals knew he worked alongside American soldiers.
Romal, whose surname is being withheld for his family’s safety in Afghanistan, submitted his SIV application more than three months before the U.S. withdrawal, but the request was swallowed by a system already overwhelmed with similar petitions. When the Taliban took over Kabul, Romal went into hiding with his wife and spent the next 16 months moving from place to place to avoid detection by the Taliban.
The couple was largely alone in their plight, until McClanathan — who had been stationed at Camp Spann with Romal about a decade earlier — reached out after the fall of Kabul to check on his
