The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

56 MARCH 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Look inside the evacuation through the eyes of an Afghan ally who worked for the United States for more than a decade but still hasn't received his Special Immigrant Visa. BY AHMAD KHAL I D S I DD I Q I An Afghan Interpreter’s Journey to the U.S. Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi, who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan for more than a decade, arrived in Philadelphia with his family on Sept. 5, 2021, as an evacuee. He currently lives in Colorado. He told his story to Editor Shawn Dorman in a lengthy inter- view on Jan. 10, 2022. Here is an excerpted version of his responses. FOCUS ON AFGHANISTAN EVACUATION I ’m very pleased and honored to share my story. It’s not only a story about me; it’s the story of thousands of men and women who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan, in many different fields, supporting the mis- sion in Afghanistan. My full name is Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi, and I started working with the U.S. government in 2003. My first job was as a cashier for the Army Air Force Exchange Service, which was the PX in Bagram. I was very young, just out of high school. It was an opportunity to see what it was like to work with internationals and with the military. That’s where I decided, “This is where I would like to work.” The same year, I was hired as an interpreter for the U.S. armed forces. Since I was able to speak Farsi and Pashto, I was sent to Khost province where I worked with interrogation departments. I was also in Bagram [Parwan province], back and forth working with ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/GRYNOLD intelligence. Then I worked as an interpreter in Paktika province. It was a very remote place on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and we were patrolling the border. It was not an easy place to work, but we were helping communities with medical cam- paigns, providing jobs and opportunities to work and keeping people away from joining the insurgency. At a very young age, that gave me a lot of hope that we were on the right path. We were ambushed, we were attacked, we were doing a lot of overnight missions. It was not easy. It strengthened my resolve to work with my American colleagues to help the Afghan people. In 2005, I started working with the civil affairs unit in Zabul province. We would go out, help communities with humani- tarian assistance, provide themwith clean water, support for education, women’s empowerment, girls to be allowed to go to school. In 2008, I joined the United Nations where I worked on the political process of elections as a political assistant, helping women’s empowerment, community empowerment, strength- ening local governance. At the end of 2008, I became the political assistant for the U.S. provincial reconstruction team in Panjshir province. We had one mission: the people of Afghanistan, and empowering them, making a system for Afghans to be able to independently run their country.