Recognizing and supporting the service of U.S. allies

A Q&A with Khalil Arab, Combined Arms, a Welcome Fund grantee

Designated as National Military Appreciation Month, May includes many military-related observances that celebrate, honor, and remember the service and sacrifices of our military personnel. A meaningful way to express appreciation to those who served our country is to support a veteran or military cause. Welcome.US spoke with Khalil Arab, SIVs & Allies Program Manager at Combined Arms—a two-time Welcome Fund grantee—about their expanding work with Afghan allies in Texas and how you can help.

As a former interpreter for the U.S. Armed Services in Afghanistan, can you share more about the mission of Combined Arms and why this work is important to you?

Combined Arms is a veteran service organization, and it's been proven after the fall of Kabul that veterans have a lot of empathy toward the Afghan cause. They were the biggest group that stepped up and did the heavy lifting when the federal government failed to do that on time. The organization was doing amazing stuff even before the fall of Kabul.

As soon as I arrived in the country in December of 2019, I was going through [the resettlement process with] one of the resettlement agencies, I spoke to one of the senior managers. I just told her a little bit about my background… After Afghanistan, I lived in Europe for 10 years, and I've done some volunteer work with nonprofits in Europe. I say, you know, I just got here, I have plenty of time. Any organization that you could recommend that I can volunteer with? And she said, you know what, I got a really nice group for you.

She put me in touch with a marine veteran who served in Afghanistan—he was running a group called SIV and Allies Group with Combined Arms. I thought, this is an amazing opportunity because, once I got in touch with the group leader, he explained what they're doing, and I realized, holy moly, there is a group, veterans who are serving SIVs from Iraq and Afghanistan, people like myself. This is a great opportunity for me to connect and give back to the community.

Fast forward a year-and-a-half later, when Kabul fell, with arrival status of almost 13,000 [Afghans] in a matter of four months, the group was not enough to meet the demand. So, the organization decided to ramp up their efforts and turned the group into the full time program, and they hired me to manage the program. I started as a full-time employee of Combined Arms in November of 2021.

Throughout the month of May, our nation recognizes and honors military service. What would you like others to know about the specialized work of our Afghan allies and what their service means to the U.S.?

I think it's a role that was pretty much overshadowed by so many other things. And I think a lot of people don't realize how big the sacrifices they've made, how big the sacrifice was. I’ll tell you my own story, and the challenges of stories like mine.

I decided to work for the U.S. forces when I was 17. I hardly knew anything about life, but for me, American intervention in Afghanistan was the only opportunity I had to serve my country and my people. So I stepped up and started doing it. And the only way I could do it was through the language I had mastered. My generation decided to do this under the sheer concern for the people, for the country. But the byproduct was that we were serving American interests overseas, as well. Now, at that time, I didn't know what a great cost that decision would come with. I did not know that that decision was going to change the course of my life forever.

Five years after that day, I received a threatening message from the Taliban where I had to flee the country, and that set in motion a series of actions that, until today, is just haunting me. My mom had a heart attack three weeks after I left, because she knew that I would not be able to go back under such circumstances. And she never fully recovered from that heart attack because she had a series of heart attacks, one after another, and eventually, six weeks after the fall of Kabul, when again, she realized that she lost two of her children, two of her sons, me and my brother, who lived in Houston, that she will not see them again for God knows how long. She had a stroke and she had a heart attack again, and she never pulled out of that. She passed away and we were not even able to mourn her passing away, as we were not able to go back to Afghanistan.

My heart breaks, and from time to time I feel like I'm the cause of her death. But then I look at the bright side. I've been serving my country. I've been serving my people. I was just an instrument of change. And Heaven knows what would have happened to me and my family even if I did not make that decision.

The work of Combined Arms is based in Houston, Texas—the top U.S. city where Afghan evacuees have resettled since the fall of Kabul—and is expanding. Where are you focused on growing, and why?

The group started out of Houston, and when I took over, it was primarily in Houston… When I took over as a program manager, one of the things I was tasked with was to figure out how we can expand the program outside the city of Houston… I was actually working toward launching the program in North Texas.

I had a trip to Austin, and I was meeting with some community leaders in Austin, and I realized Austin had only one resettlement agency that was struggling to keep up. We had these community leaders who were willing to help, but they didn't really know how. I came back and I reported to the leadership, and I said my goal was to launch the program in North Texas, but I'm going to leave that for now. I'm going to start with Austin because there's a huge demand. There are community leaders who are willing to help, and that will provide the volunteer base for my work. And there's a huge community that needs to be served. So we started serving the community in Austin [in] April of 2022. And we've been serving Austin ever since.

It was in October of last year when we launched the program in North Texas, Dallas, and Fort Worth, officially. Now, we're in four major cities in the state of Texas, and I'm looking forward to launching the program in San Antonio, which is another major city with a huge SIV and allies community living there, and that will pretty much cover the entire state of Texas.

It’s been nearly three years since the fall of Kabul and the arrival of more than 80,000 Afghan newcomers in the United States. What are the greatest challenges or needs of our Afghan allies right now?

It's really a wide range of different things that they need. Obviously it depends on where they come from and what are the circumstances that they're coming from. For example, before the fall of Kabul, most of the people coming through the Special Immigrant Visa program were interpreters or some other key positions or key roles that were working for Americans or working alongside Americans, and they were exposed to American culture. They all spoke some English. Some of them were fluent because they were interpreters, but even those with other supporting roles, they still spoke some level of English, and they were exposed to American culture to a certain extent.

After the fall of Kabul, that changed. And the shift is that now we're talking about people who were working within the Afghan security forces, that were working alongside the U.S. military, but not very exposed to Americans. So they didn't really know much about the American culture. They didn't speak the language. They didn't have to speak the language because they always had an interpreter that was facilitating that communication. Having them coming over was a different set of challenges compared to having interpreters coming over before the fall of Kabul. Now the needs are changing… All other needs will lead to one thing—do they speak English or not? If we are to find them an opportunity to work, the first question is, can they speak English or not? They need to get a driver's license, and again, the question is, do they speak English?

I can go even further and say some of them are not even able to read and write in their own language, because they're coming from rural areas. They probably don't have as much formal education… So it's a very big challenge to work with them and to make sure that they feel comfortable finding their way, navigating the system in the United States without being able to understand the language. We have to think of English as a Second Language (ESL), for instance, as a priority, so that themselves and their spouses can reach at least some level of proficiency so that they can communicate at work or when they're interacting with other part of the society.

How can Welcomers support the work of the Combined Arms SIVs and Allies group?

The biggest way they can support our work is by donating to the program. We do all this work, with no support from any level of government whatsoever, whether it's local, state, or federal government. We're not a resettlement agency. We're not getting any funding from any agency, but we're doing pretty much all the work that resettlement agencies do to some extent. So money is a challenge… We talked about an expansion into two major cities last fall, and that requires more funding. What I'm asking is that if they can support our work by donating to us, they can easily go to the Combined Arms webpage, and they can donate whatever amount they can. They can do a recurring donation monthly, or they can do a one time donation, and that donation will be the source for what we do.

The other thing they can do is volunteering. I would say we have been blessed to be [contacted] by a number of corporations, community groups, and other entities who wanted to support our work. However, we want to diversify that pool of volunteers. If the readers think that they can save up some hours of their time and do something good in the community, they can reach out to me. They can email us at [email protected], or directly to me at [email protected], and I will be more than happy to find a meaningful, engaging opportunity for them to volunteer with us.

The last thing they can do is advocate and raise awareness. They know my story. And my story is not unique. My story is that of thousands of other interpreters or allies who risked their lives and risked their family's lives to do what they did. And the one thing we can do is that we can raise awareness among the U.S. society about how important our role was. If it wasn't for interpreters and people who supported backstage, Americans would not be able to do their job overseas. It's very important that American people know how crucial the role of the Afghan allies were, and the readers can support me by advocating and raising awareness among the other people.

There's a number of bills that are in Congress right now. The major one is the Afghan Adjustment Act that will provide a pathway to permanent residency and eventually citizenship for those Afghans who arrived after the fall of Kabul. One thing that the readers can do, they can reach out to their elected officials, member of Congress, making sure that they are co-signing, co-sponsoring, and supporting not just the Afghan Adjustment Acts, but any other policy that is in the capitol concerning Afghan allies. That’s another way they can support my work.

Is there anything else you'd like to highlight?

Combined Arms was the only organization that has such a comprehensive SIV and Allies program way before the crisis started. For me, it was almost like they could predict what was going to happen. The group started in 2019, and it was way before what was happening in Afghanistan. Being able to find an organization that cared so much about the allies and supported them, and the background of the team, was very inspirational for me. When I got to meet the team at Combined Arms, I was really pumped up, and that was the reason I started volunteering, and it lasted for over a year-and-a-half. When I got the chance to be part of that team, I did not think for a second, and I took that job and that challenge immediately.

Being part of this amazing organization was one of the honors of my life. I can't tell you how proud I am to be part of this organization and being part of what we do. Then, last thing is that Welcome.US was a huge supporter of our work. Kari [McDonough, Welcome Fund Senior Advisor at Welcome.US] was an amazing supporter. She's been throwing many opportunities at us every step of the way. I can't tell you how much we appreciate their collaboration and their support—officially and unofficially. I want to make sure that that's also being recognized, as well.