Segregated brotherhood: the military masculinities of Afghan interpreters and other locally employed civilians

Brokers betrayed: The afterlife of Afghan interpreters employed by western armies

“…Most started in early adulthood, motivated by a mixture of desire for financial independence, male breadwinner responsibility, curiosity about western culture, adventurism, youthful ambition and patriotic pride. In contrast to the military linguists that some western armies brought to Afghanistan, locally recruited civilian interpreters were generally unarmed (De Jong, 2022b). However, there are documented exceptions, especially among interpreters who worked with US Special Forces who ‘largely ignored those regulations’, with at least one interpreter found to be complicit in US war crimes (Aikins, 2013).…”

“…As one interpreter told me: ‘If an American or a British soldier was killed, you will see the next day that the whole camp displays a different kind of behaviour towards the interpreters […] as if it was not the Taliban who killed the soldier, but any Afghan’. Local interpreters were subject to stringent security checks, and on some military bases, certain areas remained off‐bounds, as I have discussed elsewhere (De Jong, 2022b). Similar dynamics have been found in relation to local interpreters in other regions, such as former Yugoslavia, where Baker found a ‘procedural mistrust that underlay day‐to‐day camaraderie’ (Baker, 2012, p. 139).…”