Welcoming Foreign Allies

By Tyler Harrison

As many now know, the United States has officially withdrawn our forces from Afghanistan. During the time that American forces occupied that country, there were many Afghanis who opposed the Taliban just as we have. Upon our exit we did our best to arrange safe passage for the individuals who assisted us in our war effort. I was not in Afghanistan to help escort the refugees to US soil, but I was there when they arrived here.

There were many steps that needed to be taken to ensure these people received the proper care necessary to facilitate a smooth and healthy transition. Not all of us who were tasked to help in this operation did so by performing tasks related to our career field, I was asked to serve with security forces. The role I played in helping to acclimate the refugees to life in America allowed me to interact closely with them. To my surprise, many of them spoke English fairly well, so most of us were able to communicate somewhat easily. I worked the night shift while I was there, and while we had down time, it gave me an opportunity to be in a quieter environment alone with my thoughts. Many things were put into a new perspective for me due to the situations we were put in and the hardships that some of the people I met faced. Most of the refugees had cell phones, which they used to call their friends and families who were still overseas; unfortunately, some of them had lost people close to them in ways most of us could not imagine due to their affiliation with America. This further reinforced my belief of how lucky I am to have grown up in a country like the United States. Most of the friends I currently have are still in college and have yet to gain the experience that would allow them to see that a lot of the problems the average person faces stateside often do not warrant such melodramatic responses.

This also gave me a great opportunity to connect with different people as multiple organizations had their hands in the situation. All of us were very busy and we worked from dusk to dawn, but on many occasions, we had slower nights with less complications to respond to, and on those nights we would all just exchange stories about our jobs and lives which made the time go by faster. When we didn’t have time to sit and chat, we were responding to calls or other emergencies of all varieties within the villages. There were thousands of people in the villages we created and keeping that many people in such close proximity came with issues and challenges, which we then dealt with and tried to offset by playing music, soccer, or otherwise interacting with our foreign guests in a positive way. We also set aside time to train in case there was a larger scale riot, and many of us earned our OC certifications, but our efforts in making the Afghani people feel welcome did more to prevent that than anything else. When my shift ended, most of my time was spent at the gym. I would work out for about 2 hours a day, and then I would sleep until I had to get up and be ready for my next shift. It was a lot of work but, in my opinion, a long and strict schedule like that is at times more relaxing than having a ton of free time.