Afghanistan

Veterans of Afghanistan War React to Withdrawal

Approximately 800,000 American service members were deployed to Afghanistan in the twenty years the United States was involved there.

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Many veterans of the Afghanistan war are struggling with the pictures of a Taliban takeover as the United States pulls out its troops from the country.

"I feel like I have a lot more invested because I have family in that country and I came from that country, however, there's so many more emotions involved in that because all my military friends that have served there and the people that I've seen lose their lives over there, you just don't want it all to be in vain," said Ahmad Nalan, who was born in Afghanistan and later went on to serve in the United States Army. He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003.

Many veterans say they worry about the Taliban reversing much of the progress they feel was made while the United States was there.

"The Taliban is a terribly repressive regime, which is not at all popular with the average Afghan and it just breaks your heart to think that the undeniable good of the last 20 years might be slipping away," said James Seddon, a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan in 2009.

Both Seddon and Nalan say their number one concern is for the thousands of interpreters and other Afghans who worked alongside them while they served.

"The other thing that we have to get right, right now and moving forward is helping the translators and their families and not just translators, but people who worked on our bases, anybody who enabled us, their lives and the lives of their family are in grave danger right now," Seddon said.

"Right now, their future is up in the air, they don't know what is going to happen next. It's people like that, that I really worry about," Nalan said.

Approximately 2,500 American service members have lost their lives in Afghanistan.

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