Afghanistan: The US Is Dragging Its Feet When It Comes to Helping Afghan Translators --- As the U.S. prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan, Ibrahim Khan is just one of thousands of Afghan interpreters who helped U.S. forces, often under fire, and are still waiting for visas. -- As the United States brings tens of thousands of troops home from Afghanistan this year and attention shifts from the battlefield to care for the wounded, there is another group of veterans the country must not forget. -- Thousands of Afghan interpreters who have risked their lives alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan now face death threats from the Taliban and other insurgent groups—and so qualify for U.S. visas. But the U.S. government has proved disappointingly slow in granting those visas. -- For the past three years, my husband and I have worked to try to secure U.S. visas for three courageous Afghan interpreters who worked with the U.S. military for much of the past decade, Ibrahim “Abe” Khan and his younger brothers, Ismail (“Ish”) and Imran. -- We’ve written letters, completed paperwork, and spent hours on the phone with visa offices to push through bureaucratic obstacles. When the process stalled, we appealed for help from State Department officials, to no avail. So we contacted Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose staff’s inquiries at the State Department were more fruitful. McCain’s interest helped put Ish and Imran on a fast track. But Abe’s more complicated case went nowhere. -- The bottom line: it appears that in many cases the visa applications languish in a labyrinthine security review process—and nothing short of the glare of media publicity and high-level intervention can pry them loose. The irony is that the Afghans have already proven their reliability and trustworthiness in the heat of battle. -- Abe, for example, is one of the bravest men I know. He risked his life alongside U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2012, including a firefight that earned one of his U.S. comrades the Medal of Honor.