In 2010, Afghan interpreter Khan was on foot patrol in the violent Marjah district of Helmand province. An improvised explosive device detonated. The U.S. Marine walking in front of Khan lost both legs in the blast. “It was the first time I [saw] human blood,” Khan told the Washington Examiner.
After several weeks in Marjah, Khan began working with 1st Lt. Ryan Engle of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. Engle would call Khan his “voice and ears” as his Marines engaged in hundreds of firefights during their eight-month deployment. Khan received just 20 days of leave after supporting two Marine battalions in the war zone. Though Marjah was “like a nightmare,” Khan never entertained thoughts of quitting. The Marines had come to help his country, and Khan decided he would stay with them “until [he had] been shot or killed.”
In late 2010, Khan took part in Marjah’s worst fighting with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment. “The entire four, three months was in a firefight … even in the winter season,” Khan said. On Nov. 21, a Taliban fighter lobbed a grenade toward Patrol Base Dakota. The grenade flew past Khan’s face before landing on a rooftop post manned by two Marines. Khan watched as Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter lept atop the grenade to absorb its blast.
In 2012, while serving with Marines in Kajaki, Khan was told that multiple high-ranking military officials were looking to speak with him. They needed first-hand witnesses to Carpenter’s act of heroism. With Khan’s testimony and that of a number of Marines, Carpenter would be awarded the Medal of Honor.
Later that same year, a suicide bomber at a Kajaki bazaar blew himself up as he passed Khan. Khan suffered debilitating injuries to his eyes, brain, and legs. With prescription lenses, his vision returned after two months. Four months later, he started walking again. That explosion exposed the true nature of Khan’s work with the Marines. Khan previously explained his absence from his home province by telling relatives and friends he was studying in Kabul. With his cover blown, Khan’s family soon began receiving Taliban death threats.
The threats did not deter Khan from returning to work as a linguist. After eight months of recuperation, he began assisting National Guard units and the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Kabul. There, Khan experienced another side effect of the explosion: He was apprehensive of his environment and struggled mentally while assisting survivors of other explosive attacks.
In 2013, Engle helped Khan apply for the Special Immigrant Visa program so he would have the chance to earn U.S. citizenship. Having “seen [Khan] under fire [and] seen his courage,” Engle told the Washington Examiner he felt that his former linguist had done “more for the American cause and American interests by age 20 than most Americans do in a lifetime.”
In August 2015, Khan left for the United States. Although he has not seen his family since departing Afghanistan, they are never far from his mind — particularly over the last six months. In mid-August 2021, four high-ranking current and retired Marines who served beside Khan urgently requested the immediate evacuation of Khan’s parents and siblings. Khan’s father, a respected colonel in the Afghan National Directorate of Security, was at particular risk. He had already survived multiple Taliban attempts on his life, including in 2017, when he shot two of three Taliban suicide bombers trying to enter his workplace.
On Aug. 26, Khan’s family waited near the Abbey Gate for word from Marines inside Hamid Karzai International Airport. Because the crowds were too thick, Marines told the family to return in an hour. Around 15 minutes later, a suicide bombing at the gate killed 13 U.S. personnel and around 170 Afghans. The family’s evacuation never took place.
Khan’s family remains in Afghanistan with no indication of when, or whether, they may reach safety. Khan’s family members have humanitarian parole visa applications, and some have Priority 1 and Priority 2 referrals to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Khan’s father is reticent to enter Pakistan to process his referral. “A lot of his friends who went to Quetta or Peshawar city disappeared,” Khan said.
Khan’s father cannot go out in public during daytime hours, as Taliban checkpoints are too rigorous. The family switches between different apartments based on intelligence about locations of nightly Taliban searches.
To pay for the multiple apartment buildings and support his own wife and four children, Khan has worked every day for the past six months. He works 80-90 hours per week, filling 18- or 20-hour shifts as a security officer and spending empty hours driving for Uber. Though he was also going to school prior to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Khan has taken the last two semesters off because he cannot focus on studying. “We are physically here, but we are not mentally here,” he explained.
Luckily, Khan is not fighting alone. Engle and an assortment of other current and retired service members have assisted Khan’s family by raising funds, hiring a lawyer, filing humanitarian parole visas, and liaising with Congress. “If we get his family here — when, hopefully — it will be one of the greatest accomplishments of my life,” Engle said.
In the midst of his family’s struggles, Khan became a U.S. citizen. Being an American is “a dream become true,” Khan said. In the U.S., “you [do] not worry about your kids [being] blown up, shot, [or] starving.”
Safety for Khan’s family relies on evacuation. Approval of their humanitarian parole visas could take more than five years. Meanwhile, the State Department is providing no evacuation assistance for Priority 1 and Priority 2 candidates. If his family does not find a way out of Afghanistan, Khan says he is “100% sure they will be killed.”
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
