Writing only yesterday, I predicted we would learn that the Americans left behind in Afghanistan were largely ethnic Afghans who had achieved American citizenship or a green card but had gone home to try to rescue relatives and loved ones. Facts concerning this are emerging much more quickly than I predicted, however.
Today comes a Washington Post story, repeated at the msn.com website, on this very subject. It is entitled:
Americans refuse to leave Afghanistan without their families as evacuation flights resume
The article is a basically human interest story telling of two former interpreters who went back to Kabul to extract extended family members and couldn't get out. The author does draw some generalities about those left behind.
“When the Americans say, ‘immediate family,’ that’s your spouse and your children. From an Afghan point of view, immediate family means spouse, children, sister, cousin, brothers; it’s a much larger definition,” said James Miervaldis, chairman of No One Left Behind, another group working to evacuate and resettle Afghan refugees. “This just shows you that 20 years later, we’re still talking past each other.”When the Roman Empire "consolidated" by pulling out of Britain around 410 ce, you know legionaries and civil servants who'd developed local ties felt similarly tugged in two directions. Notoriously unsentimental, the evacuating Romans probably left locals who'd worked for them on the beach when the galleys sailed.
Postscript: The U.S. has never been especially adept at playing "empire;" our success stories in this realm are few.
