One of the Marines helping to bring the Afghan interpreter Sami Kazikhani to the United States was himself a refugee from Bosnia.
Gunnery Sgt. Emir Hadzic escaped persecution in the Balkans in 1995, fleeing a war zone that left tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims dead at the hands of genocidal Serbs. He was 17 years old when he arrived at his aunt’s California home.
"The Americans welcomed us into the community," he says. "They gave us jobs. Not glamorous jobs, but jobs that gave us self worth—babysitting, house cleaning, grocery bagging, all the standard stuff that great immigration stories start with," he said.
He wanted to do something more to repay the country that saved his life. He headed to the local recruiting office when he turned 18.
"U.S. forces were deploying to Bosnia for peacekeeping. I thought that would be the way to pay my debt to America," he said. "I only wanted to do a short term [in the Marines] but I fell in love with the United States and after 9/11 it was go time."
Now he is trying to pay a debt to a former comrade that is caught in Europe’s refugee crisis. Hadzic served a seven-month deployment during one of the deadliest stretches of the 14-year Afghan war with the interpreter Sami Kazikhani. The infantryman said Kazikhani was one of the best interpreters he had ever worked with over the course of three deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Sami was over-delivering. He was planning operations, going out of foot patrols. He wasn’t afraid to approach anybody even though he was unarmed. He would lean forward to try to do as much as he could," Hadzic said.
Hadzic and his fellow Marine Aaron Fleming, who retired in March as a result of combat wounds, are lobbying lawmakers and raising money to help care for Kazikhani, his wife, Yasmiin, and his infant daughter, Roxanna, and eventually to bring them to the United States. A crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $20,000 to cover his expenses as he prepares to apply for an American visa.
"The long term goal is to get him to America. Aaron’s going to put a roof over his head. He’s not going to leech off the government. He’s going to get straight to work. The endgame is to assimilate him into our culture," Hadzic said.
It’s the culture that Hadzic embraced upon his arrival from Bosnia. He learned to speak English by watching Sylvester Stallone movies in the 1980s.
"I was a huge consumer of U.S. culture growing up and Hollywood was broadcasting good American values that attracted me: We do the right thing, it’s the good guy against the bad guy and the good guy wins," he said.
Kazikhani arrived in Germany on Sunday just as the host country was sealing its borders to the influx of tens of thousands of refugees from war torn Syria. He no longer has to sleep on the streets of Athens or in trash-strewn shantytowns assembled in other European countries. He is happy with his treatment thus far.
"They’re very kind and respectful treated us with the respect and dignity," Kazikhani said in a Facebook message.
Hadzic said that Kazikhani’s situation is just as dire as the Bosnian refugee crisis of the ’90s.
"Their trip is longer and more treacherous. He almost drowned in a rickety boat trying to get to Greece," he said.
The next step will be applying for a special immigration visa reserved for interpreters. Fleming and Hadzic both endorsed his 2012 application for such a visa when their unit left Afghanistan, but Kazikhani never heard back from the Department of State, which said that it does not comment on specific cases.
The visa program is controversial as some interpreters have been killed while waiting for approval. Kazikhani said that he will be beheaded by his in-laws or the Taliban if he is sent back to Afghanistan.
"I can never return home. They would kill me, slit my throat," he said.
Hadzic is working overtime to make sure that does not happen. He has two friends living in Germany providing assistance to Kazikhani. But he wants to go one step further and make sure that the United States government "repays its debt" to the interpreter.
"We’re trying to find somebody with some pull to pluck our translator, our fellow warrior, to the safety of the United States," Hadzic said.