[Vision2020] Idaho Family Fights to Help Afghan Immigrate

[lfalen]

Thanks for posting
The American Legion Magazine had an article on several cases like this month.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Tom Hansen" thansen at moscow.com
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:01:17 -0700
To: "Moscow Vision 2020" vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Idaho Family Fights to Help Afghan Immigrate

> Courtesy of the Army Times.
> 
> -------------------------------------
> 
> Idaho family fights to help Afghan immigrate
> 
> COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — The sweltering sun sets on another Thursday in
> Kabul, Afghanistan, and Doug Welch takes his usual seat at the safehouse
> computer in the Green Zone military base.
> 
> The screen fizzles, and his wife’s beaming face appears through the Web
> cam, their Coeur d’Alene home in the background.
> 
> “So how was your day?” Marilyn greets.
> 
> “Fine,” Doug replies, and recounts a book store he visited.
> 
> “What?” she bristles. “You’re telling me you were out off the base, where
> you’re not supposed to be? It’s not worth the risk!” And then: “Was
> Baktash with you?”
> 
> “Yes, yes,” he assures.
> 
> “Oh,” she sighs. “Well, OK.”
> 
> Doug knows why his daily chats with the family have focused less and less
> on fears of bombs and kidnappings since his contract work swept him
> overseas last year.
> 
> Baktash is there.
> 
> “I was absolutely terrified until I got to know who Baktash was, and that
> he was with Doug,” Marilyn says of Doug’s assigned translator, a native
> Afghani. “I know if someone were to try to get my husband, he would fight
> them off.”
> 
> In the beleaguered, war-torn country that hasn’t seen peaceful days in 40
> years, the turf would seem barren for friendship, least of all between an
> American contractor and a quiet native.
> 
> Yet after Doug’s 13 months training native troops amidst a growing Taliban
> influence in Kabul, the 55-year-old has forged the most unlikely victory.
> 
> Side-by-side every day for 12-hour stints, the Coeur d’Alene man and his
> soft-spoken translator Baktash Afshar have fought more than the ostensible
> battle of artillery and suicide bombs that still crater the countryside.
> 
> Bonding as dads, as husbands, as lovers of hard work, they’ve helped one
> another fight to salvage a semblance of daily life amidst a war zone.
> 
> As Doug has learned how so many things are in Afghanistan, the bond is
> intense.
> 
> “Once when we were standing on the street and I heard sirens, I joked,
> ‘Baktash, don’t let them get me!’ ” Doug remembers, speaking over the
> Internet service Skype. “He turned to me and said, ‘I would stand in front
> of you and protect you to my death.’ I sincerely believed him.’ ”
> 
> Now they face the hardest battle yet: Getting Baktash out of the country.
> 
> Marilyn recently held a rummage and bake sale out of their home to fund
> plane tickets, but it remains to be seen if Baktash will be able to land
> visas for himself and his family.
> 
> “I know he just wants to take his wife and children to a place where
> they’ll be safe,” Doug says. “He would make a great contribution to this
> country. I would welcome them as my neighbors.”
> 
> Doug hadn’t known just what to expect when he accepted the contract job as
> an operations trainer for the Afghan military a year ago.
> 
> Addressing classrooms of camouflage-clad troops at the Ministry of
> Defense, the former lieutenant colonel found the language barrier was the
> least of his worries.
> 
> “They have a very different sense of time, a different way of looking at
> things,” he sighs. “We put everything on a timeline — three months, six
> months. They’re not used to doing that. They look at this afternoon.”
> 
> Always at his side, helping unravel lectures and cross cultural chasms,
> was Baktash.
> 
> The lanky and polite 27-year-old wasn’t like the other translators who
> often proved unreliable, spotty at showing up and prone to lie.
> 
> Instead, Baktash was a quick and efficient translator, never objecting to
> lengthy shifts.
> 
> “We [the contractors] think in terms that if we stay late, we can just hop
> in a car and drive home,” Doug says. “When they [translators] stay late,
> they may have a 4-hour walk home, and through some dangerous
> neighborhoods.”
> 
> Their reliance on one another grew as they swapped histories, finding the
> duties of father and husband universal.
> 
> If Doug ventured into crowded marketplaces, Baktash walked beside him, his
> status as a Kung Fu master enough to protect against kidnappings that are
> common for Americans.
> 
> When Doug wanted to meet his wife in India, the young man stood in line
> for hours at the Indian embassy to ensure Doug obtained a visa, even
> interceding when a Taliban member tried to cut in line.
> 
> “I wouldn’t have made it without him,” Doug admits.
> 
> Back in Coeur d’Alene, Marilyn became a regular at the post office to ship
> over beans and rice — sometimes 30 pounds of it — when Baktash’s family
> couldn’t afford the staples.
> 
> “Thank heaven for the post office flat rate box,” she chuckles.
> 
> She hastened to ship prenatal vitamins in January, when Baktash’s newborn
> proved too weak to nurse.
> 
> “Doug told me the statistics, that one in four children in Afghanistan die
> before 5 years old,” she says, shaking her head. “I thought, ‘If I can
> save one child and one little family, it’s a start.’ ”
> 
> Now healthy at 6 months, Baktash’s baby carries the name Maryam, which
> translates to Marilyn.
> 
> “She’s like a grandmother to her,” Baktash said over a staticky phone
> connection recently, the baby wailing at 5 a.m. “We want to remember her
> all the time, whenever we are calling to Maryam. I don’t want to forget
> her.”
> 
> Baktash knows too well his job could be his undoing — as well as his
> family’s.
> 
> Outside Doug’s gated and guarded green zone, Baktash lives with his wife
> and two young daughters across the city, in the more bomb-strewn chaos
> consuming his home country.
> 
> “Every day, I don’t know if I will be coming home safely or not,” he says.
> “When people find out about you working with Americans, your life is in
> danger.”
> 
> In mosques, Taliban threats are painted across the walls that anyone
> working for the U.S. military will meet a grisly end.
> 
> “They will kill not only you, but your family, your children,” Baktash
> said. “I am not so worried about myself, but my family, day by day.”
> 
> For the past seven years he has ducked below the radar, telling friends he
> works as a shopkeeper and commuting over two bus rides and an hour walk.
> 
> It seemed to work, until recently.
> 
> A few weeks ago his brother — almost identical to Baktash — was shot in
> the arm outside Baktash’s home, the marksman unseen.
> 
> Baktash has no doubt the bullet was meant for him.
> 
> “I report to the police, to the government, and they do nothing for us,”
> he says. “Corruption is a common thing here. The Taliban just gives money
> to the security organizations, and they do nothing to help honest people
> losing their lives.”
> 
> He speaks of fleeing to America, where he dreams of working for the U.S.
> military.
> 
> His daughters, the oldest still a toddler, could go to school and have
> jobs, he says. His wife could finish high school without fear of
> harassment.
> 
> “My family’s concept is different — we want to live freely, I want my wife
> to be a free woman,” Baktash said. “I want my daughters to live freely,
> equally with men.”
> 
> He admits he keeps his mouth shut when other Afghanis talk about such
> things, though. Rumors travel swiftly of locals with Western allegiances.
> 
> “In front of a pistol, you can’t use your Kung Fu,” he admits. “This is
> why I’m always worried and nervous.”
> 
> For now, Baktash’s application has been tossed into the swirling bingo
> tumbler that is Afghanistan’s visa application process.
> 
> He has a chance at landing a visa set aside for military translators, Doug
> says, but visas are only dispensed to those with thousands of dollars in
> the bank for airfare.
> 
> “I think Baktash just lives paycheck to paycheck,” Doug says.
> 
> But just like the bond between Baktash and Doug, great things can bud from
> unlikely ideas.
> 
> “All I can do is pray for them,” says Doug, who returned home June 23.
> “He’s been the most enjoyable part of being here. He’s a good kid.”
> 
> Perhaps one day, Doug will show Baktash a sunset in America.
> 
> And both will know, at last, that their battles are over.
> 
> ----
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/MarilynWelch
> 
> Marilyn Welch, left, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, prepares items for a rummage
> and bake sale June 18 with the help of her 14-year-old granddaughter,
> Taylor Patrick. Welch, whose husband, Doug, is a contractor in
> Afghanistan, is hoping to raise enough money to help Doug's Afghan
> translator, Baktash, get out of the country. He has a chance at landing a
> visa set aside for military translators, Doug Welch says, but visas are
> only dispensed to those with thousands of dollars in the bank for airfare.
> 
> -------------------------------------
> 
> "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
> heaven."
> 
> Thanks to people like Doug and Marilyn Welch.
> 
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
> 
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> "The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
> and the Realist adjusts his sails."
> 
> - Unknown
> 
> 
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet, 
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
>                http://www.fsr.net                       
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>