Description
This paper analyses the making and unmaking of injured Afghan interpreters’ masculinities who were employed by Western armies, based on in-depth interviews with wounded former interpreters in Afghanistan, Turkey and the UK. It traces the immediate impact and Western armies’ responses to injured Afghan interpreters a well as the medium- and longer-term impact, including on their resettlement prospects.
This paper makes three interrelated arguments: first, it demonstrates that when locally employed civilian interpreters get injured, it fragments the military brotherhood in which they were already only precariously integrated. The differential treatment of injured locally employed civilian interpreters highlights the categorical and spatial separation implicit in the segregated brotherhood between Western military soldiers and their local interpreters. Secondly, we argue that injuries unmake the masculine role of provider for severely wounded interpreters. Still, injured young Afghan men who worked as interpreter seek to continue their role as masculine protector by hiding their injuries for their family members, who they do not want to burden with their pain and vulnerability. Finally, we suggest that while migration becomes an even more important alternative pathway to livelihood for injured interpreters, their injuries in fact compromise their resettlement chances.
Attending to the voices of injured Afghan civilian interpreters employed by Western armies challenges the silence around their bodies and afterlives, which stands in sharp contrast to the increased recognition of the physical and psychological wounds of Western veterans. This omission is politically problematic, but also limits academic understanding of the differential gendered impact of injuries on a wider range of actors in conflict, who must navigate different as well as unequal social, cultural, political and legal arenas in the aftermath of their injuries.
