Opinion: Numb From Afghanistan’s Losses

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Zalmai Yawar is a Ph.D. candidate in geology at Indiana University. He was Scott Simon’s translator during a reporting trip in Afghanistan in 2002.

Zalmai Yawar

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Zalmai Yawar

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We helped him to come the U.S. years ago, and Zalmai Yawar, now a Ph.D. candidate in geology at Indiana University, helps teach a course on the origin of the planets. He is still inspired by the sky.

I spoke with Zally this week about events in Kabul. He has some family with him in Bloomington. A sister who was once beaten by the Taliban for speaking in public is an interpreter for the U.S. Army, working now at Kabul’s airport. But they have two sisters in Kabul who are in hiding, and desperate to leave.

Zalmai told me, «I didn’t want America to stay forever. But I expected America to do the right thing. I am appalled and angry.

He says he is angry at the Trump administration for reaching a deal to withdraw directly with the Taliban, working around the Afghan government. He says Afghans saw it as a signal that America had given up on them.

Scott Simon Essay: My Afghan Translator

Scott Simon Essay: My Afghan Translator

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He is also appalled at the corruption of that Afghan government, which he says openly confiscated food and money before it could reach soldiers and villages, sapping their support and quite literally weakening them.

And Zalmai says he feels anger that President Biden blamed Afghans for not fighting for their country. 2,448 U.S. soldiers and 3,846 U.S. contractors have died in Afghanistan. But none since February 2020. The Costs of War Center at Brown University estimates that 66,000 Afghan soldiers, including some of Zalmai’s cousins, and more than 47,000 civilians have died in the nearly 20-year war against the Taliban.

«We are just numb from all the losses, says Zalmai Yawar. «All the people who died. All the girls in headscarves, who may never go to school. All the gains of women, artists, and freedom. It could all be smashed like those statues in Bamiyan. We’re just numb.