In October 2013, I commanded Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, on a route-clearance mission in Zabul Province, Afghanistan. The route ran 60 miles. It took nearly 10 days because the Taliban had seeded the road with hundreds of victim-operated bombs and laid ambushes along its length.
We found and destroyed nearly 50 of those bombs, largely because of an Afghan Explosive Ordnance Disposal team embedded with my company. They had no robots or next-generation technology. They used grappling hooks to unearth charges and triggers, then destroyed the bombs by placing explosives directly, by hand. On one horrible day, three of them were hit doing this work. Their platoon leader did not die instantly. I called in his medical evacuation flight, but I couldn’t save him.
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He saved my soldiers and me, and I couldn’t save him.
This August 15 marks five years since Kabul fell. Most Americans remember the images from the airport, but few know what has happened since to the Afghans who served alongside our troops, the men and women the Special Immigrant Visa programs were built to protect. Congress created the Afghan program through the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, so that allies who face death at the Taliban hands for their service have a lawful path to safety. For years, through administrations of both parties, the United States kept that promise. I’ve met the people it saved. One is a logistician: the Taliban shot and left him paraplegic because he would not stop working for American forces. Another is an interpreter who served alongside Navy SEAL teams, was captured, and was beaten for days before he escaped. They are alive because this program did what it was built to do. The allies still waiting served with the same fidelity and faced the same enemy.
That support has now stopped. Visa issuance has been suspended since Jan. 1. As of Jan. 31, the State Department counted 23,431 allies whose qualifying service has already been verified but whom are now stalled in processing — and that counts only principal applicants, not the spouses and children waiting alongside them. In February, a federal judge ruled that the government has “no authority — statutory or otherwise — allowing them to unilaterally suspend processes that Congress has required them to expedite,” and ordered processing to resume. But even if paperwork moves again, the people do not. An ally can complete every background check, every biometric screening, every interview, and still be denied entry.
I understand why some Americans hesitate. Last November, an Afghan national fatally shot Army National Guard Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and wounded Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe blocks from the White House. That crime was evil, and no measure of justice can make up for the loss of our sister in arms. Fulsome vetting and a concerted effort to root out anyone who would harm the public or our troops is exactly what we owe her. But that is an argument for rigorous vetting, not for abandoning the allies still waiting. The man accused of this crime entered the 2021 evacuation under a temporary parole authority and was later granted asylum. The SIV program was not the door he used, and its vetting, with years of interviews and background checks, is not the weakness. A State Department inspector general review in 2021 found the department followed its screening procedures in every case sampled. Stranding tens of thousands of verified allies mid-process answers nothing. It does, however, cost something.
Every future conflict the U.S. fights will depend on local partners: the interpreters who hear what we cannot, the pilots who fly resupply under fire, the soldiers who clear the roads our convoys travel, the EOD teams that save our soldiers’ lives. Those partners watch how this story ends. So do our enemies, who do not need to invent the propaganda, because we are writing it for them. The debt I owe is personal, but the case for keeping this promise was never sentimental. Wartime allies are a national security asset, and a nation that abandons them will recruit fewer of them the next time American lives are on the line.
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Five years is long enough to know what we got wrong in the withdrawal. It is also long enough to fix what we still can. The administration can resume SIV issuance to vetted allies tomorrow; nothing in law prevents it. Congress can demand a public plan for restoring the program, as more than 30 House members have already requested in the fiscal 2027 budget. Neither step requires new wars or new money, only deciding that the promise still stands.
I think about that EOD platoon leader more than I can say. I could not save him. His teammates, and tens of thousands of Afghans similar to them, are still within reach. I want the next generation of U.S. troops, and the next company commander on a road like that one, to know their country keeps its word to the people who keep them alive. We have five years of evidence about what it costs when we don’t. Finish the mission.
Andrew Sullivan is the executive director of No One Left Behind, the leading nonprofit serving Afghan and Iraqi wartime allies. He served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army for over nine years, deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Latvia, among other locations. It was during his Afghan deployment that he became familiar with the SIV program after becoming close friends with his Afghan linguist.
