Afghanistan's security forces are more vulnerable to the Taliban than translators based in Kabul, but they will carry on regardless
When I met Rahmatullah two years ago he was laid up in bed in Kabul's towering national military hospital. Gruesome rods protruded from the smashed leg of the 21-year-old soldier who had been serving in Helmand at the time with the 215 "Maiwand" Corps. His bone had been broken by a Taliban bullet fired not on the battlefield, but inside his own home while he was on leave in Paktia, a province on the Pakistani border where the Taliban is particularly active. He became embroiled in a shootout in his own bedroom where he had been asleep when local insurgents sneaked into his house, apparently intent on kidnap.
This is exactly the sort of scenario that has driven fears about the future of Afghan interpreters who have worked with the British military. This week media pressure over the risk of Taliban reprisals finally succeeded in forcing a government U-turn on the issue, meaning 600 former translators will soon be entitled to move to Britain with their families.
But no such escape route is on offer to the 325,000 members of Afghanistan's combined security forces, who are at vastly more risk. Most of Britain's interpreters don't live in places like Paktia. The Ministry of Defence says the majority are recruited in Kabul. Many of the contractors who hire translators for the US military also have a policy of only hiring in Kabul.
Although the capital is affected by sporadic terrorist attacks, the Taliban have almost no influence in the city where 20% of Afghans are thought to live. There is no "shadow government" or the famous parallel justice system run by rebel mullahs in godforsaken parts of the rural, Pashtun, south.
In most cases it would be a truly impressive act of initiative for insurgents in the mud villages of Helmand to correctly identify one of the anonymous Afghans trailing around with British soldiers and then track them back to Kabul. It is worth noting that in spite of intense media interest, journalists have been unable to find a single named example of an Isaf interpreter who has been killed or harmed by the Taliban while at home, away from the battlefield because of his job.
At any rate, the government's new policy does not address the issue of possible retribution by militants who have declared anyone who has "collaborated" with foreign forces to be fair game. Instead, it appears to be a reward of people who did a dangerous job: it will only be available to interpreters who joined after December 2012 and served for at least a year on the frontline. And while these men were paid by the British, they were working towards exactly the same goal as Rahmatullah: attempting to bring security to their own country.
It is a fact that the young men who lived and worked alongside foreign troops are among those Afghans who have done most well out of the 9/11 decade. Paid about $700 a month, they are among the very highest earners in a country where gross national income per head is just $40 a month. They are also resourceful and relatively highly educated. David Cameron and Hamid Karzai had a point when they said Afghanistan can ill-afford to lose such skilled young people.
I don't know where Rahmatullah is now, but I would love to ask him if he would leave the country given the chance. I don't think he would. As with the many other horrendously injured soldiers and policemen I met that day in the hospital, he was strikingly patriotic.
Some of the men had concerns about the extra burdens that would come on them with the end of the Nato combat mission in 2014, but they strongly believed Afghans should take responsibility for defending their own country. Several patients said all young men should be obliged to spend a few years in the army. Rahmatullah had only contempt for the Taliban, not fear. "I'm proud of myself and I'm proud I served my country," he said to me at the time. "I would do it again."