Emir Hadzic has a list of 22 names.
They are nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, parents and cousins of the two men who helped keep him alive on his two tours in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. Those men, Afghan interpreters, put their lives on the line, like thousands of their countrymen, to help translate for and guide U.S. Marines like Hadzic, and soldiers from the U.S. and elsewhere during America’s 20-year “forever†war in their country.
That war came to a chaotic end this month, with President Joe Biden fulfilling his campaign promise — and the commitment of the previous president — to withdraw American troops. But that withdrawal came with a price, the swift takeover of the country by the Taliban before America could evacuate its citizens and those people from Afghanistan who had helped the military for the past 20 years.
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22 names.
This has been Hadzic’s focus for the past few days. His interpreters made it out of the country years ago; one is in Colorado, another in Chicago. But they’ve tried and failed for years to get their family members to join them in the states. On Wednesday, many of the folks on Hadzic’s list were at the airport in Kabul, trying to escape the Taliban’s reach. American soldiers told them to go home and await a call.
“It’s preposterous,†Hadzic told me. “Their cellphones are dying. They can’t go back home. We have to get these people out of there.â€
Hadzic, who lives in Wildwood and is a police officer, served in the Marines for 20 years after he came to the U.S. as a Bosnian immigrant at age 17 in 1995. His second tour in Afghanistan was with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regimen, in the Nimruz Province in 2012. A gunnery sergeant, Hadzic and his fellow Marines were tasked with securing about 100 kilometers of the Ring Road, a major highway through the region. While overseas, Hadzic learned a phrase that applied to some of the missions he and his fellow Marines faced: “Building an airplane in mid-flight.â€
He thought of the concept again this week, as he saw Afghans clinging to a C-17 transport plane trying to leave the Kabul airport with hundreds of American and Afghan evacuees. Some of those clinging to the plane fell to their deaths.
“No wonder they are clinging to these airplanes,†Hadzic says. “They are desperate.â€
22 names.
Hadzic wants to bring them all home. That’s his new mission. As hard as the last few days have been, it comes at a good time. Hadzic lost a good friend, a fellow Marine, to suicide recently. The American failure to evacuate its Afghan allies has given him a focus. He texts the 22 names to U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner’s office. As we talk, he gets a text from the office of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley. He texts the names to them, too. He’s given the best advice he can to his dear friends, his Afghan interpreters, who communicate with their families back in Kabul. There is safety in numbers, Hadzic says. Stay close to the airport and away from Taliban checkpoints.
Hadzic is angry with Biden for his missteps on the withdrawal. He’s also angry with the previous two presidents, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, for not doing more to make the Special Immigrant Visa program work more quickly to get Afghans into the country. There is hope now, that the crisis has brought Republicans and Democrats together, urging the administration to cut through red tape and bring Afghan refugees to America.
He sees the C-17s starting their steady evacuation and hopes the Biden administration can speed things up. The way Hadzic sees it, the U.S. ought to be able to evacuate at least 3,000 people a day from Kabul. Two nonpartisan veterans’ organizations he works with — and  — estimate that there are about 80,000 people in Afghanistan, including Americans, interpreters and their families, who want to escape the country.
That’s about 26 days of nonstop evacuation. “We need to make Kabul airport a carousel of C-17s,†Hadzic says. “We can get this done in less than a month. Are we not the most powerful nation in the world? What good is that power if we’re not going to use it for good?â€
22 names. They are Hadzic’s singular focus.
“It’s started to go in the right direction,†he says. “Maybe we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.â€