FORT HOOD, TX – Following the end of the US military mission in Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power, the Biden Administration has run into a new obstacle in its efforts to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters who worked with US forces over the years: the Qatari Embassy in Washington D.C. has received a flurry of requests for asylum and relocation back to Afghanistan shortly after word leaked that the DoD was considering a program to send some interpreters to Fort Hood, Texas.
“We thought we’d move them to a place that reminded them of home,” said Lt. Col. Leonard Trask, a Pentagon spokesman. “While many interpreters were going to places like Fort Lee, Virginia, the unexpectedly rapid collapse of Afghanistan forced us to come up with some other alternatives. Someone mentioned that Texas would be the perfect environment for them, what with everyone carrying guns and the place being practically a desert. But after we told some of the Afghan interpreters that they were going to Fort Hood, well, I’ve never seen so many people so scared, and I’ve been to Iraq and Fort Polk.”
The interpreters listed multiple reasons in their requests for asylum that drove them to try and return to a country under the brutal rule of a fundamentalist Islamist regime: rampant crime, corrupt local officials, and a robust black market in the Fort Hood area were most convincing.
