Description
In this paper I analyse the advocacy efforts by Afghanistan veterans on behalf of Afghan interpreters and other locally employed staff, who supported them in their missions. With local staff’s association with Western forces exposing them to targeted threats, they have sought protection through evacuation and resettlement. Afghan veterans have become what some would see as unlikely advocates for refugees' rights, with their investment in rescuing their former local colleagues offering a route to ‘redemption’ in the context of a 'failed war'.
The main source for the analysis offered here are semi-structured interviews (2017-2022) with veterans from the UK, Canada, US, Germany and the Netherlands, who engaged in lobbying efforts and founded advocacy organisations for Afghan interpreters. This paper brings together literature around ‘moral injury’ (e.g. Molendijk 2021) with scholarship on veteran activism (e.g. Schrader 2019) to develop the argument that veteran activism on this issue is firstly fuelled by moral injury and secondly a strategy to cope with their broader sense of moral injury generated by the failed war in Afghanistan. However, it also concludes that veterans’ activism simultaneously deepens their moral injury as it increases awareness of the structural injustices around the treatment of local staff.
Keywords: Afghanistan; veterans; activism; Afghan refugees; moral injury
