Local Afghanistan veteran fears for those trapped in the country
By CHRISTINE HAINES
chaines@yourmvi.com
Each news story coming out of Afghanistan stirs up old memories and new concerns for Mark Smith, who spent nearly four years there as an engineer advisor to a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) with the Army Corps of Engineers.
“What the Taliban is saying on the news, please don’t believe a word of what they are saying. Once we are gone, the atrocities will be awful,” Smith said. “The Taliban won’t just go after our translators. They will go after our translators’ families. They won’t just go after our contractors, they will go after our contractors’ families.”
Smith, a Mon Valley native from the Brownsville area, worked in Afghanistan from January 2009 through November 2012. What is happening in the nation is very personal to him.
“They’ve been flashing pictures on the news. I’ve been to these places; I’ve walked on that street. It brings back a lot of memories,” he said.
During his nearly four years in Afghanistan, Smith worked to build schools, hospitals and roads. He was touched by the children of Afghanistan.
“When you saw how little they had, it was heart-breaking,” Smith said. “They had nothing, so I started having people send me school supplies, tablets, crayons, toys.”
He worked with countless Afghan contractors, some of whom showed up one day and never again, and others who risked their lives rebuilding roads.
“Lately I’ve sponsored three or four of the contractors who worked for us. The Taliban would blow up a road with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and 24 hours later they’d have it fixed.
“Some of the contractors that I really worked closely with and trusted, they have big old bullseyes on them because they have a little bit of money,” Smith said.
He heard from two of them this week, confirming that they’ve received case numbers from the U.S. State Department, one of the many steps in acquiring a special immigrant visa.
Smith holds little hope that the process will be completed before the Taliban takes over the airport in the Afghan capital of Kabul. He has been through the process before.
“First they need proof that they worked for us for at least two years,” he said. “I write a letter of recommendation, they submit it to the embassy and almost immediately (the embassy) gets back to me to verify it. Then it goes in a file and they wait. For years and years.”
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