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After picking up food at Houston’s 'Chopan Kabob House', Lidia visits Khalil Arab at his home with his wife and their 9-10-week-old baby.
After picking up food at Houston’s 'Chopan Kabob House', Lidia visits Khalil Arab at his home with his wife and their 9-10-week-old baby.

This Afghan Immigrant Risked His Life as an interpreter for the U.S. Military

May 30, 2023

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Story Lidia Bastianich lidia celebrates america

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In Houston, TX, Lidia visits Khalil Arab. Once an interpreter with the U.S. military, Khalil works with wartime allies as they start new lives in the United States. Khalil Arab was 10 when the Taliban took over, and he was forced to drop out of school. He focused on learning English and years later became a plumber working on US military projects. He eventually became an interpreter with the U.S. military.

He remembers the day in 2010 he arrived to his home in Herat, Afghanistan, to hear from a neighbor that Taliban agents had shown up on motorcycles looking for his house. The 24-year-old realized he was being targeted for his work as an interpreter with the United States military.

A Traditional Afghan Meal with Lidia

It took nine exhausting years but Arab was finally able to get to Houston, where he lives now, on a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), designed specifically for Afghan citizens employed by the U.S. government. That his application was processed at all, however, makes him one of the lucky ones. Others can drag on even longer, lost in a bureaucratic morass with potentially deadly consequences.

Now in Houston, Khalil Arab is responsible for formalizing, refining, and scaling Combined Arms’ longtime volunteer-led SIV & Allies Program in order to meet the immediate and evolving needs of our wartime allies as they embark upon their new lives in the United States. Founded in 2019 and led by longtime volunteer and USMC veteran Cress Clippard until late 2021, Combined Arms’ SIVs & Allies programming engages veterans and other volunteers to work closely with local resettlement agencies to fill resource gaps and provide resource navigation support for recently-arrived Special Immigrant Visa holders (SIVs) and other wartime allies.

See photos of Lidia's visit with Khalil Arab, his wife and new baby.

  • After picking up food at “Chopan Kabob House”, Lidia visits Khalil at his home with his wife, Ferra, and 9-10-week-old baby.

  • Lidia helps plate the food in the kitchen.

  • Khalil and Lidia survey the traditional Afghan spread. His wife Ferra has prepared a typical Afghan salad to add to the mix.

  • A plate of traditional Afghan food.

  • Lidia, Khalil and Ferra sit down to eat.

  • Khalil takes Lidia around with him as he goes to check on Afghani families of Special Immigrant Visa recipients who worked for the US military in some capacity and were relocated to the US.

"It is impossible for me to imagine my integration in the USA without Combined Arms. The Combined Arms’ SIV & Allies Group and its volunteer community leaders made me feel welcomed and did everything they could to make my transition smoother. I’m excited to extend the same impactful support that I received from Combined Arms to more recently-arrived Afghans and other allies in Houston and beyond in the coming months," says Khalil.

Since 2007, 11,790 Afghans have settled in Houston, with more than 90 percent of them being Special Immigrant Visa recipients, according to the South Texas Office of Refugees.

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