Before coming to the U.S., Abdul Saboor Sakhizada worked for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan as an instructor, manager and translator, winning an award for his service in the process. Now he’s struggling to ensure that people like him have the opportunity to reach safety in the United States and contribute to their new home. Tune in to hear his remarkable story and his insights into how the current wave of Afghan refugees will fare in the United States.
Part one of two.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed. And this is a special episode of JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Afghan refugees who’ve helped U.S. and coalition forces have begun their resettlement here. The U.S. has long given refuge to those forced to flee. That’s how the United States of America began, and in so doing it has enriched itself through the fighting spirit of those determined to survive, but for how long will America’s embrace last? The public’s support for resettling Afghans here hold. And furthermore, what does the American public really know about these refugees from Afghanistan? For Abdul Saboor Sakhizada, who worked as an instructor, manager and translator for the U.S. army in Kabul, it is not just crucial but necessary that the U.S. take in those who have helped our brave soldiers. In this two-part special of JobMakers we get to know Afghanistan and its people, examine the fallout of the government collapse and live how Abdul is actively working in the most difficult and chaotic of circumstances to get as many evacuated as possible. This week, we heard about the fascinating but tragic life in Afghanistan from Abdul, a self-described child of war. And we discover what those 50,000 interpreters had to endure every day, fueled by patriotism and targeted as traitors in this special episode of JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Abdul Saboor Sakhizada. Thank you for joining us on JobMakers. It’s such an honor to have you on. How are you?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: I’m doing okay. Thanks for having me on the program.
Denzil Mohammed: So obviously we’re going to talk about Afghanistan, but first of all, paint us a picture. What was life like in Afghanistan growing up?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: So, oftentimes I refer to myself as the child of war. I was born in the 1990s in Afghanistan. And for anyone who knows that history of that part of the world, it’s nothing but destruction, violence and injustice taking place. And obviously right around 1990s you had the civil war and you had the dictatorship of Taliban. So I grew up right around that time. I was born around that time. I went to school right around that time and then up until 2001. So, yes, I guess I could officially say that I was a child who didn’t get to play with toys. We got to play with sitting at home and counting the bullets that were crossing over our heads, and rockets, and the airplanes, the jets that fly around. So it was, looking back, I guess we’re blessed in a way, or I am blessed in a way that to survive that sort of destruction that took place in that part of the region, but consider myself from that regards to having survived it lucky. But I wish that life for no one because it’s a state of hopelessness and it’s quite, quite challenging.
Denzil Mohammed: You reflect on your childhood and you’re amazed that you survived. Wow. That’s absolutely fascinating and really tragic. You know, you talk about counting bullets and jets. What exactly was happening around you?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: I mean the country was divided or the city, and at least the capital where I lived or where my parents lived, the city was divided into different sections and the civil war and these different groups, mostly divided by their own ethnicity, of different ethnics fighting for power created a whole chaos of the search for power. They struggle to see who was going to be the most dominant force in the society. And then what you had in the middle of all these fighters or these groups, you had people like us who were living in and getting hit from every corner. Sometimes you had to make this risky journey from one side of the city to another side by going through one group of people, pretending to be someone else while transitioning to another group of people, then to pretending to be someone else. So it was quite challenging. Obviously a famine, the economic instability, the difficulties of you making sure that you have enough food on the table or at home for the families was very, very difficult. Like every morning we would go buy a pound of sugar or something because that’s all we could afford. We didn’t have a savings stock of food that we could rely on at home. And so it was crazy. There were countless numbers of days that we slept without food because we didn’t have it. We had to be strategic about how we want to eat in different times of the day because we knew we couldn’t make it. We didn’t have a three-time meal. It was like I said, I started by saying I wished that for nobody. Quite challenging. And as a child being very active you always want food, you always want bread. And then you go to your parents for giving you bread. And there isn’t any, so it’s hard. It’s a hard life to live under. But that’s beyond, that’s past now. Again, quite lucky to have survived that and I know millions of people did not make it.
Denzil Mohammed: You talk about such insecurity and instability. What was education for you? Traditionally we think of education as the way out of poverty, the way out of difficult circumstances. Where did education lead you?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: Yeah I mean it’s an interesting question because reflecting back, because you could not forecast what the future would look like. A lot of folks would go. Nowadays we talk about, “Oh, I want to go to school because I want to be doctor. I want to be an engineer. I want to be this particular astronaut” or whatever. But when I went to school those ideas of what do I want to become, or what path do I want to take from early on in my education, it was not even a question mark in our heads. Honestly, a lot of days we went to school it was just to get away from home and have something to do other than just sitting at home and not being able to do anything. And the schools we went into. I mean, I remember our classrooms didn’t have windows. Our classroom didn’t have a roof. And sometimes the school was so boring because we didn’t have enough teachers and stuff. And because there was no roof, there was no windows, we were praying, there were days we would pray for the rain to come because when it rained the school was dismissed, everyone would go home. And so it was so funny. We didn’t have no chairs, no tables. And we would all sit on a floor. I remember to this day when I was in, like, fifth or sixth grade during the Taliban regime we used to wear turbans. We were forced to wear turbans and it was very difficult for me and my peers in my classroom. My classmates to manage the turban, because if it fell off you had to organize it back in your head and you have to learn the basics of how to put a turban back together. But there were other subjects. All of the subjects that we studied were all different fields of an intrafaith. An intrafaith, not interfaith, but intrafaith of diving deep into different books and different avenues of understanding the religious. It was almost like a religious school, except that it was considered to be a public school. The teachers were all sort of mullahs, those religious scholars or religious teachers who would come in and teach subjects. Our math teacher was a mullah.
Denzil Mohammed: At some point you started fighting in that country, didn’t you? Did you join the military?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: So, fast forward when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, I was still in school. I was still studying. My oldest brother was old enough to support U.S. operation or U.S. mission in Afghanistan. And so he joined with the special forces and he became an interpreter. And he offered support. And from an economic standpoint we needed that extra help at home. My parents needed it. And so he was another person to bring bread on the table. And so it made sense. And there was not much else to do. So my brother initially started this path of us joining and fighting the resistance or the insurgencies, and the better hopes. Because early on the U.S. mission was, after the interim government was formed, the ideas of constitutional democracy, girls going back into school and all of it. So this hope, this new new idea just emerged into our heads. And that was hope. You could be anything, you could do anything. And you could become an engineer. Or these new concepts began emerging. We had new ideas, TVs began coming back to life. And I did not know what TVs were like at that time or before during the Taliban. And music and all of these things. So fast-forward when I graduated high school, following my two oldest brothers, I followed the same path in my own capacity. I began serving and helping U.S. soldiers and coalition soldiers, coalition international community, to kind of fight back and establish just a new shining city that’s about to rise. You can see it above the horizon. Or these ideas that are coming up into existence. So you could kind of imagine what that feeling would be like, that you’re not like a soldier grabbing weapon to fight because the last thing you want as a child, as a young teenager, the last thing you want to be is that you want to be close to guns and weapons because you grew up right around it. So you had enough of that. And so my goal was to support the U.S. mission and yet simultaneously helping my own communities thrive. Establish a government. Build a system where everyone was my own sisters and everyone could go to school. And so that kind of opened up the path for my sense of patriotism of helping build that nation. So that’s where I not necessarily putting a soldier’s quote unquote soldier uniform on, but perhaps in my own capacity, in my own way build the communities, help the communities.
Denzil Mohammed: That’s absolutely astonishing that suddenly you had hope. And all these things that we take for granted; music, televisions, just cultures, knowing about all these different things. That you lived in such an integral world for your whole childhood.
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: Yeah I mean it’s crazy because sometimes I go to high schools and I present and I talk to senior high school students that are about to go to college. And I talk about these ideas that don’t take these things for granted; you got windows, you’ve got air conditioning in your school! Oh my God! These are unfamiliar concepts to a lot of people in different parts of the region. And I think that societies like the United States right now had to do what it had to do to get to where they are now. But the fact that you could appreciate what you have is a whole different dimension of realities that you have to deal with as you’re growing up. Because you know that you could be in a different part of the world at a struggle in life without all these things that you don’t have. Electricity, for example, computers. Imagine writing hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes without having a computer or the cell phone.
Denzil Mohammed: I saw an interview with you on Fox News and you spoke about your time in Afghanistan helping the forces. Including with Pete Hegseth, is it? Tell us what it was like working as an interpreter?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: So with Pete Hegseth and everyone we ran what’s referred to as the Counterinsurgency Training Center Afghanistan, and that was right around in 2007, 2008. U.S. mission began changing from hunting the insurgency to winning or nation-building to counterinsurgency. This idea of coin; winning the hearts and minds of the people. And I was one of the first. Pete Hegseth came later on, but when the inception of that academy took place, I was almost the only guy from the beginning of this program. And soldiers would always go back and forth and deploy, and they would complete their tours or complete their deployment, and return back to their homes. And Pete Hegseth came in and that was right around the time when I began slowly changing my role from doing interpretation to an administrative role, to more of teaching. Becoming an advisor. Teaching soldiers on culture, on language, on history, on politics. And then helping folks like Pete Hegseth understand what is it like to work with Afghans. And a lot of other soldiers who were getting deployed in Afghanistan. And so every soldier up until 2013 when the transition period began for that center that we were working on, because Afghan security forces began taking that doctrine of counterinsurgency and embedded it into their system. We were teaching them and every soldier that entered Afghanistan, they would have to go through our training center for five days before they would get deployed to their actual work zone or work area. And so that’s where Pete and I were instructors or advisors teaching them how to do this. Both in the capitol but also traveling outside the capitol, making trips to do it in the region.
Denzil Mohammed: Pete mentioned once this was not your job, but you were with him and other officers and you were pulling bodies out of vehicles, right?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: Yeah. We had to. As a young man, I had to experience some terrible, terrible sceneries. There was one thing of being in your home and seeing the bullets and rockets go above your head and you’re counting them. And then there’s another feeling of you’re actually in the mix of the war zone. You’re actually seeing bullets being shot at you. So it’s a different feeling early on in Afghanistan. When I started joining the military, because I was right there with the soldiers. So there were a couple of instances where the service members of the United States, but also coalition were attacked. And the second one that I was part of. The first one Pete wasn’t even in Afghanistan back then. But the second one Pete Hegseth and myself, we jumped in on the becoming the QRF team, the Quick Reaction Team that responded to that VB ID that took place that took a bunch of our students basically. They targeted a bunch of our students who were supposed to come and start a class. And so we responded to that. And then that was when Pete was talking about how we were pulling bodies of soldiers and civilians from vehicles that were destroyed or basically were burning. Quite a horrible moment to live through. But that was something we had to do what we had to do because that was what we signed up for. Not necessarily to pull dead bodies every single day, but that was part of the struggle. That was part of the battle. That was part of the mission is that you’re going to end up finding yourself in those moments and you have to be prepared to respond. And so that was what Pete was referring to in my interview. And he was exactly right.
Denzil Mohammed: This was your environment, right? I mean, this is where you live. This is what was happening. That’s really, really fascinating. So part of what I’m doing here with you right now, at least in this portion of the podcast is painting that picture and having the American public understand what this place was like, what you all were going through, what your childhood was like to really understand the very, very stark differences. I mean, it’s a world away. A lot of what you’re describing to me. What was the experience like for you personally working with the U.S. military? What did that feel like? And what was the public reaction to your working with the military?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: I mean, traditionally from a family standpoint, right? So my oldest brother began working, and then my second oldest and then followed up to me. It was all the sense of patriotism. You’re doing something for your country. You’re helping build the nation. You’re doing all of this work. And even reflecting on what we did in Afghanistan, and here we are on the state’s side and knowing where the mission of United States is right now, it will basically end and they would withdraw from Afghanistan. For me, or for us as a family, it always was a reflection of. We had seen enough destruction. We had seen enough violence. We had seen enough horrific scenery of people getting killed. Millions of people fleeing the country, taking refuge to the neighboring countries. Financially, it was not feasible for my family to do. I’m always stumped. I always think about this because had my father had the financial means to emigrate or take refuge to other country, we would have been probably somewhere else in the 1990s. But because we didn’t do it, we couldn’t, we didn’t have the financial means to out migrate or to leave the country we had to basically live and accept the realities that we lived. And so I have to say that even when I started working with the army from this idea of patriotism, the sense of patriotism, later on the conflict or this battle, this irregular war, became so complicated that, you know, the insurgents were very smart. They knew that a lot of these soldiers like Pete Hegseth would rely on Abduls, on the Sabbors, and their interpreters and their cultural advisers to help them understand the ins and outs of the community so they could better serve those communities. So they could better develop systems and policies that could help benefit the people. And the insurgents what they had to do was they started hunting folks like me, and folks like my brother and others of our peers. And because they knew what a critical role we played, because essentially we were the eyes and ears of the U.S. military of Afghanistan. We knew the language, we knew the body language, we knew the culture, we knew the dynamics that played into the different ethnicities and all of that. So they began hunting us. And a lot of thousands of interpreters have lost their lives and advisors have lost their lives because they were isolated and they were targeted. And it’s essentially that whole sense of patriotism of you being so proud of serving, building your nation, essentially flipped on its head. And the other side of the coin was quite evil, quite dark. And you have to go in hiding your identity. You have to disappear from society. You have to hide from your peers, from your friends. And so it is an overnight shift that sometimes psychologically very hard for you to process because here you are, you can’t go to soccer games anymore. Here you are. You can’t participate in wedding ceremonies, you can’t be away from home when the sun sets and all of those things. You can’t tell people what you’re doing. So essentially paints a very negative, dark picture in your mind. And you begin questioning every single thing you do from that point on. Not only for yourself, but also for your family, for your loved ones. Because no one wants to identify my parents, that his son is working because they could easily target him. I lost my uncle in host province. He initiated bringing a chapter of a TV station that was aired in Kabul at the capitol. He helped install their antennas into host, and one of the provinces and their districts that where he lived, and literally within three months he was dead. They dropped his body in a bag in front of their house. And so that was a lesson for hundreds of other villagers in that area, or people of that family. That this is what you get for doing this. If you go against us this is what you get.
Denzil Mohammed: You’re doing this work, and you’re talking about it within this frame of patriotism of doing things for your country. And at the same time, you’re seen as a traitor, someone betraying your country, and I guess your values and your history. And that’s absolutely fascinating. And how old were you when this is happening?
Abdul Saboor Sakhizada: So I started working with the U.S. armed forces when I was 17 years old, right after high school. It’s funny. Sometimes I talk about it and it hurts me because I played for the nationals of my country. I played soccer for the nationals of my country. And there was one point when I started working that I had to bring money to the family, that I had to decide between my soccer career versus working for the military. And I chose the latter as you could imagine. And I still think what we did was great, and I’m not trying to paint this negative picture, but seeing what my other brothers did and follow that path.
Denzil Mohammed: You mentioned being seen as a traitor, betraying your country. And come to the present day you also feel a sense of betrayal, but not from those people in Afghanistan, but from America and coalition forces. Thank you for joining us for the first of this two-part special of JobMakers. Next week, we come to terms with the pullout of security forces and the chaos and dread that’s resulted. Learn about the ad hoc and creative ways Abdul is getting family and friends out and find out how we can all be welcomers to those who helped us, those in need. We return to regular episodes of Jobmakers on October 14th. I’m Denzil Mohammed. Join us next Thursday at noon for the last of this two-part special of JobMakers.