What future for the Afghan interpreters who have worked for France? – LCI

The exfiltrations of foreigners are organized from Kabul airport, as the country is plunged into chaos following the takeover of the Taliban. If the evacuation of French nationals to the United Arab Emirates is considered a “top priority” by the Elysee, the fate of the former Afghan auxiliaries of the French army was not specified until Monday evening by Emmanuel Macron, during his televised address. “It is our duty and our dignity to protect those who help us: interpreters, drivers, cooks and many others. Nearly 800 people are already on French soil. Several dozen people are still there. (…) For which we remain fully mobilized “, declared the head of state.

Two military planes thus landed Monday evening at the airport of the Afghan capital to proceed with their evacuation. One of them left this Tuesday, August 17 with 45 people on board and other rotations are planned in the hours and days to come, according to the Ministry of the Armed Forces. For LCI, Brice Andlauer, independent journalist and author with Quentin Müller of “Tarjuman, a French betrayal”, looks back on the fate of these hundreds of interpreters, many abandoned by the French administration recently, and on the issues of Emmanuel Macron’s statement.

LCI: Today, how many former translators of the French army are still stranded in Kabul? Why have they not benefited from visas so far to reach France?

Brice Andlauer: There are around sixty left today, according to the census of the association of former interpreters of the French army and a collective of volunteer lawyers. As we speak, this collective of lawyers has already sent all the contact details of the interpreters to the embassy. Until last night, all the evacuation plans that had been initiated, in particular those which intended to repatriate more than 600 people working for the French embassy or high school in Kabul, did not include the former interpreters of the French army. . This is mainly for legal, administrative and political reasons.

There is a deliberate desire on the part of the Defense Ministry to repatriate as few as possible since they have a panicked fear of creating a legal precedent, which would oblige them to protect all the personnel working for them in future theaters of conflict. Just last month, the administrative court refused a visa application for a former auxiliary. They do everything they can not to create case law but in 24 hours, by decision of a president, all this argument falls apart.

This is what you say in your 2019 survey: France has not always been up to the task of providing relocation solutions to these former army employees …

In all, nearly 800 people worked for the French army during its intervention in Afghanistan (from 2001 to 2012, editor’s note). Of these 800 people, just over 270 were repatriated in three successive waves. The Ministry of Defense and the Elysee have been talking for a few weeks about 800 people instead of 270. They play on the figures since it is about the interpreters and their families. Whenever an interpreter is repatriated, he is repatriated with his family.

About sixty are now asking to be evacuated in view of the situation. What about the others?

They may have already fled for a long time. In reality, they did not wait for the Taliban to retake Kabul to be threatened and many have taken shelter for several years, without any connection to the embassy. We have found traces of some of them in border countries, such as Pakistan, India, the Emirates, or even Indonesia. But there is a variety of individual situations: for example, an interpreter contacted us from Russia.

There are also several interpreters stuck today in refugee camps in Turkey and Greece, which find themselves in chaotic administrative situations. And then there are plenty of others that we have lost track of. Some of them are probably still in Afghanistan, hidden or under a new identity. We should be able to extract them from this hell. This will surely be the next step that the collective of lawyers will look into, once the last repatriations have been made.

Exactly, what is the life in Kabul of an Afghan who worked with the French army?

I can talk about the interpreters with whom I was in contact for my investigation and who have now left the country. It was a life of hiding, of constant fear, of anonymity… They moved every six months, they couldn’t work in the same place for very long. Some have divorced or had to break up with their families because of the danger. And above all, it was a life of daily threats with many assassination attempts: bombs planted on houses, a stab in the street, a burst of Kalashnikovs before returning home… To our knowledge, he there were two deaths of former French army interpreters. Qader Daoudzai, who died in 2017 in an attack in a polling station that did not target him personally, and then Basir Jan, last June.

If we come back to Emmanuel Macron’s words, can we consider that the situation of these interpreters is in the process of being resolved?

I wouldn’t be so categorical. This declaration goes in the right direction but remains to be seen how it will be applied on the spot. We have learned to be suspicious, even with such clear statements. It should be noted that Emmanuel Macron spoke about it during his campaign in 2017. Following a sentence pronounced in a video on Facebook, a third wave of relocation had been opened, supposedly in a desire to repatriate former performers. And it had been done in absolutely chaotic conditions. This had not been coordinated by the embassy in Kabul for reasons still unclear today and the interpreters then had to go to Pakistan to submit their file, without the certainty that they would be accepted. Everything had been done in the most total opacity.