He often envisioned himself in a cage surrounded by sneering Taliban fighters, clubs in hand. When they approached him, he’d jolt awake, teeth clenched, suppressed screams quivering through his chest.

Satary’s mortal fear of capture never became a reality during his nearly two decades of service for the American mission in Afghanistan, first as a combat interpreter and then as a security coordinator for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

He, his three young sons, and his wife, then eight months pregnant, managed to slip out of the Afghan capital on an American military plane on Aug. 17, 2021, two days after the Taliban seized the city.

Despite escaping to the U.S., along with roughly 80,000 other Afghans that summer, Satary has found the wounds of the war difficult to leave behind.

For many Afghan veterans like him, the stresses of refugee life continue to suppress and exacerbate the traumas of combat two years after arriving stateside. Thousands with expiring immigration statuses are stuck in legal limbo. Many live paycheck to paycheck, if they can hold down a job.

Deep cultural stigmas surrounding psychological struggles and inadequate treatment options allow mental wounds to fester. Untreated, experts warn, they could carry over generations and derail the future of a community striving to break free from its past.

Satary himself has found a level of personal and professional stability that many evacuees would envy. Yet his story, in many ways, epitomizes the slow, precarious journey to recovery endured by many of his compatriots.

Satary began working as an interpreter for the Department of Defense in June 2003, two years after the U.S. military ousted the Taliban from power. He was born without a birth certificate, but he estimates he was around 17 at the time.

His family needed cash, and his English skills set him apart in an otherwise bleak job market.

“I had my camouflage uniform. I was thinking I was so cool,” he recalled. “I was thinking everything is like Hollywood movies.”

About a year later he was in Kandahar, unzipping the body bags of Afghan soldiers killed in an IED blast. He knew most of the dead — they’d traveled from Kabul together — so his commander tasked him with identifying the bodies.

He unsheathed the first corpse, the face a jumble of bone and cartilage, mutilated beyond recognition.

“I cannot do it,” Satary recalled telling his commander.

“They are our friends,” the officer replied.

So, the teenager went body by body, pointing out features that connected name to flesh.

“This was the worst feeling I ever had,” he said. “I’d never touched a body, and I didn’t know how hard the body can be after someone dies.”

After naming the last corpse, he left the morgue and vomited. He didn’t sleep for days.

A 2018 European Union survey found that 85% of Afghans witnessed or experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes. The average Afghan saw or suffered an average of four. As a result, experts estimate, at least one in every two Afghans suffers from psychological distress.

But this abundance of struggles is met with a scarcity of services. Before the Taliban ascended to power, the Afghan government spent only $0.26 per person annually on mental health services — well below the ~$4.00 standard deemed appropriate for low income countries by the World Health Organization.

Fewer than 10% of Afghans accessed the paltry services that were available, in large part because of the stigma mental illnesses carry, according to Human Rights Watch, a non-profit.

Over time, through some fusion of willpower and circumstance, Satary hardened, insulating himself from the routine horrors of the war. The crackle of gunshots, the deafening blasts, the dust and the blood, the spikes in adrenaline, the impatient lulls in between — violence became habitual and familiar.

“Dying was very simple,” he said. “A blast or a bullet will have you, you will be gone. No problem.”

There were moments, however, that pried open this shell, forcing him to reckon with how the war had changed him.

One August morning in 2009, Satary weaved through the clogged arteries of central Kabul en route to the U.S. embassy.

Soon after arriving, as guards finished inspecting his vehicle, he heard a faint bang. A burst of energy whooshed by, bending branches like storm winds. His ears rang and felt like they’d burst.

Satary threw open the car door and ran for a nearby bunker. Sirens and shrieks soon filled the silence. First responders raced by and he joined them.

He’d scrambled fewer than 50 yards before the corpse-strewn street reared into view. The car bomb had shredded the tree-lined boulevard outside NATO headquarters, now spattered with leaves, flesh, and twisted metal.

Without pause he started picking up bloodied bodies — mostly kids, he remembered — and carrying them into ambulances.

With the dead collected and the debris cleared, he returned to the embassy and rushed for the showers. Thirty minutes later he showered again — and then again, and again.

Satary couldn’t sleep for the next few nights, he recalls. He suffered terrible headaches. Visions of the children — their squeals, gashed skin and pretzeled limbs — haunted him.

Witnessing his American colleagues process the same horrors put his own psychological struggles into starker relief. A few years after the August attack, an embassy colleague was reassigned stateside because doctors and family worried about the toll the war had taken on his mind.

“I looked at the mirror and I said, ‘If [he] is going through that, I’m definitely worse than him,’” he remembered.

Still, he worried his American supervisors would deem him unfit for service if they learned of his torments. Seeking help was also burdened by shame, a sense of unbecoming weakness that came with being an Afghan man — a fighter, a father, an only son — venting about his feelings and bad dreams.

So, he continued.

Satary, now 38, cuts a graceful figure. Tall and slender, with well-coifed hair reminiscent of the Hollywood actors he once emulated as a young soldier, he projects gentleness and endears himself to others with little effort, often punctuating his sentences with a smile.

His nightmares began to subside last year, but slammed doors and other sudden loud noises still trigger a survival instinct when he’s awake.

For a time, Satary experienced a visceral intolerance for crying. Sometimes he’d leave the room to escape his kids’ blubbering. On other occasions, he yelled at them.

“For the past 14-15 years, I was dealing with high pressure, sensitive situations,” he said. “That’s probably where I put all of my patience. I don’t have much left.”

His elderly parents and his three sisters, meanwhile, remain stuck in Kabul.

Days before he fled, aware he might have to leave them behind, Satary installed a router in his parents’ home and taught his mother how to accept incoming FaceTime calls on an iPad. He’s called every day since.

“I talk to them for, like, half an hour, giving them hope that they can still see me, that I will be able to see them one day.”

When the family was together, Satary was their primary caregiver. He’d take his ailing father to appointments, change his diapers and bathe him. Now, with 7,400 miles and a vengeful regime separating them, care takes the form of a few longing “I love yous” through a lagging screen.

Supporting the family he has within reach was long a burden of its own. His wife gave birth to their fourth son a few weeks after they landed in the U.S., on Sept. 11. She suffered through postpartum depression for months.

Life’s more mundane complications piled on. Satary went months without a car. He didn’t receive work authorization until March 2022, half a year after his arrival. He kept his family fed through donations and food stamps.

“For the first nine months, I didn’t go for a medical checkup because I was afraid that they would come and tell me, you have some kind of disease,” he said. “I didn’t want to have another thing to be worried about.”

It was his responsibility to shepherd his family through the transition, to provide reassurance and stability when the world spared them so little.

“We are in the best place in the world. We have nothing to be worried about,” he’d encourage them.

“I was trying to do that to myself, thinking ‘I am fine, nothing is wrong with me.’”

A State Department colleague connected Satary with Sarah Cady a week after he landed at Dulles International Airport. The longtime social worker had worked in refugee advocacy on and off since 2003 before helping resettle the first planeloads of Afghan evacuees.

Cady, now head of the Virginia-based resettlement support agency REACT DC, has worked with thousands of Afghans since August 2021. Mental health symptoms like Satary’s, she said, are alarmingly common.

“Every refugee group comes with trauma,” she said. “The rates of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder are much higher in [the Afghan] population than many of the previous [refugee] populations because of the chaotic nature of the evacuation.”

Reliable data on the scope and severity of mental health struggles in the Afghan community are hard to come by.

A survey of 1,815 evacuees conducted this spring by the Department of Health and Human Services found that more than half of respondents experienced mental health challenges. Three in four respondents said they have yet to receive professional help.

More than a dozen resettlement advocates and clinicians interviewed by Military Times spoke to the gravity of the problem.

Many evacuees had to leave behind close family, exacerbating the pain of being forced to abandon home. The agony of separating from loved ones is particularly acute for veterans and contractors, who fear their past affiliation with the U.S. government makes their relatives targets of Taliban vengeance.

“I’m physically here, but mentally I’m thinking about my family back home,” a former interpreter turned resettlement advocate — who wished to remain anonymous to protect their family — told Military Times. “I’m ready for any phone call, like, ‘Hey, your brother is no longer alive. We killed your father.’”

Yet many evacuees are too consumed by day-to-day pressures to lament.

Financial insecurity among Afghan refugees is chronic and widespread. Almost 20% of resettled Afghans surveyed by Health and Human Services this year are unemployed. Around 50% of respondents reported needing housing assistance.

Legal concerns also loom. Most of the nearly 80,000 Afghans airlifted to the U.S. in the late summer and early fall of 2021 were granted “humanitarian parole,” a tenuous, temporary license to reside in the country. Parolee status, which allows Afghans to apply for employment authorization and other government benefits, expires after two years for most evacuees.

Extending parole can be a tedious and convoluted process. Thousands who have managed to file their paperwork have yet to hear back. Losing parole can mean losing work — or, at worst, deportation. Onerous documentation requirements and months-long backlogs have stymied the hopes of those trying to secure more stable forms of residence, such as asylum or special immigrant visas. (Satary, once a parolee, now has a green card.)

“Sometimes daily problems or issues will lead to anxiety or depression that probably will increase other problems,” said Yousuf Jabarkhil, a project manager at the Afghan Medical Professionals Association of America. “They relate to each other.”

Pathways to adequate treatment for newly arrived Afghans, meanwhile, remain riddled with structural and cultural obstacles, experts say.

Many difficulties are symptomatic of broader problems plaguing the American mental health ecosystem. Parolees and special visa holders qualify for Medicaid, which can cover mental health treatment. Still, counselors and therapists are in high demand and short supply.

An even smaller sliver of qualified therapists understands Afghan cultural sensitivities. Fewer still speak Dari, Pashto, or another Afghan tongue.

Experts doubt many Afghans would seek out treatment if quality care were readily available.

“Whenever you talk about mental health, it means [you] are totally crazy,” another former Afghan interpreter, also anonymized to protect his family, said of the stigma.

High numbers of evacuees struggle to even conceptualize psychological health as being worthy of treatment.

“More than providing these services, there is a bigger need of educating the community on the importance of mental health,” said Naheed Bahram, the U.S. operations director for Women for Afghan Women, a community organization.

A loose network of government agencies and resettlement groups, conscious of these gaps, is attempting to assemble and advertise a patchwork of affordable and accessible care options.

Jabarkhil’s organization received a grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in January to pilot its own mental health service. The program’s eight case workers, fluent in Dari and Pashto, share 250 patients between them, running therapy sessions of their own or connecting clients with other providers and translating sessions when needed.

The following month, the Office of Refugee Resettlement began doling out grants for “Services to Afghan Survivors Impacted by Combat,” a medley of mental health resources tailored to “Afghans who experienced combat-related trauma.”

In August, Lutheran Social Services National Capital Area, or LSSNCA, one of the country’s most active resettlement agencies, debuted a mental health program — dubbed a “wellness program” to destigmatize seeking treatment. Its two new clinicians expect to work with around 20-30 clients each.

This incremental progress is meaningful yet insufficient, advocates say. Thousands, not hundreds, need care. Time and improved circumstances can have their own healing properties, but proper treatment has few substitutes.

“We know that the mental health piece, unless it is addressed, can actually be [an] obstacle to long term refugee integration,” Mamadou Sy, LSSNCA’s chief operating officer, said. “It can delay employment; it can lead people to losing employment; or not being able to secure housing or maintain a roof over their head.”

“That August tore me down. That August marked a failure, a failure that I was not expecting,” Satary said.

The café’s piano jazz playlist offered a melodramatic soundtrack for his ruminations. He twisted a coffee cup in one hand, the other rested on his legs.

He bowed his head and gazed at the table.

“I remember those last very last seconds when I was leaving my house, and my mom was kissing [the] feet of my sons. My dad—”

His free hand clasped his face. A few tears streamed through his fingers as he stifled sobs.

A few months ago, he was on the cusp of booking a flight to Kabul. The thought of his parents living out their final years alone, searing on a regular day, had become unbearable.

“I wanted to go show myself to my parents and tell them, like, I’m not out of this world,” he explained. “It will give them a hope.”

He’d tuned out the self-evident dangers of certain arrest — probable death — until he received word that the Taliban detained his nephew and demanded information about his whereabouts. He shelved the plans.

He had much to lose. His young family had found peace after seemingly interminable war. They’d bought their first home this summer. His wife is fulfilling lifelong dreams, learning to drive and practicing English. His sons made friends and are doing well in school.

Satary himself had begun to find his way. He bought a car and plays pick-up soccer on weekends. He settled into a gratifying job at LSSNCA helping Afghan peers navigate the seismic adjustments he’d endured.

And yet, he says, the itch for justice, for redemption, for some realization of himself and the open, democratic Afghanistan he gave everything to uphold, feels irresistible.

“I have friends in the U.S. Army and Afghanistan army who lost their lives. I had my colleagues in the embassy who lost their lives fighting against the Taliban,” he said. “All those people, their lives matter to me if it doesn’t matter to politicians.”

Asked if he’d go back and fight should that need arise, his response was instantaneous and unwavering.

“Yes.”

A techy group of former soldiers fed up with the grotty conditions of military facilities have developed a Yelp-style app to rate them.

“Hots&Cots” allows service members to anonymously review the quality of barracks and dining services. Troops have already posted more than a dozen ratings — scathing, glowing, and mediocre — since the app’s launch on Wednesday.

Housing at Fort Stewart, Georgia? Two stars (broken air conditioning). The Smoke Bomb Hill barracks at Fort Liberty, North Carolina? Three stars (chronic mold and pest issues, but laundry machines are located on site).

An unclean cafeteria and uncooked chicken tenders earned a DFAC at Joint Base Lewis-McChord one star. Dinner service at Fort Bliss, meanwhile, received a perfect five.

“I think [the app] can help with soldiers knowing what they’re going into,” Rob Evans, Hots&Cots’ lead coder and a former Army reservist, told Army Times. “You can get a review on pretty much anything these days, but there’s nothing like that for housing or barracks, or dining facilities.”

The app’s development follows the release of a blistering government watchdog report documenting dirty and dangerous conditions in military barracks across the country. The report’s findings caught the attention of lawmakers, who grilled Defense Department higher-ups during public hearings and penned a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding reforms.

Evans hopes the feedback collected on Hots&Cots will help catalyze change.

“I have two young boys that may one day want to enlist in the military,” he said. “I want them to go into a military that is going to take care of them, and I personally don’t feel like that is what is happening now to our young enlisted.”

The Hots&Cots interface resembles a slimmed-down version of TripAdvisor tailored to military installations and the more spartan concerns of their inhabitants. Through a preset questionnaire, service members can provide detailed assessments of their living quarters — for example, are there pests? Is the HVAC system functional? Do the doors lock? — and their dining halls — How far is the DFAC from the barracks? Does the DFAC have healthy options? Is the food edible?

Evans and his team are tweaking the app to make it more accessible and user-friendly. It’s not yet available on Android, and users can only upload one photo per review. Evans also wants users to be able to sort and save rankings.

After all, enough pointed reviews can sink a bakery or bar. Maybe, just maybe, they can make one of the nation’s largest employers get its act together.

“I have a few moments of like, is this just going to be a little speed bump in the big world of the military?” he reflected. “But I’m hoping that this will make an impact on the quality of life for soldiers.”

In a complaint filed Sept. 29, federal attorneys claimed that JAG Management Company, over a span of approximately two years, attempted to extract thousands in lease termination fines from troops forced to move because of military orders. The Virginia-based firm settled the case the same day, agreeing to pay $41,581 to the service members and a $20,000 civil penalty to the government.

Justice Department officials argued that the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a 1940 law designed to stabilize the civilian lives of military personnel, grants members of the armed forces the right to “terminate a residential lease without penalty upon entering into military service or upon receiving qualifying military orders” — such as a deployment or permanent change of station.

Nine service members from four different branches living at a JAG property in New Jersey said the company demanded they repay thousands of dollars in rental concessions after terminating their contracts to deploy or PCS.

Some troops, fearful of stains on their credit scores, agreed to pay the fine, according to the complaint. One Coast Guard lieutenant who refused to cough up $2,120 in fees was allegedly hounded by debt collectors enlisted by the company.

“Service members should not have to pay any fees — much less exorbitant fees — to landlords when they are simply complying with their military orders and protecting our country,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a press release.

In addition to monetary compensation, JAG agreed to tweak its policies in accordance with the SCRA and retract the negative credit reports it had filed against the tenants.

Korean detectives announced Wednesday that they raided the homes of 17 troops based at Camp Humphreys and Camp Casey. The soldiers and five civilian accomplices were brought in for questioning, but all the soldiers have since returned to their respective bases.

The probe is the latest high-profile run-in between American military personnel and local police. Private 2nd Class Travis King, an Army soldier now being held in North Korea, had served two months in a South Korean prison for assault. King was slated to be sent home after his release on July 10, but he escaped his escorts and slipped across the border.

In this latest incident, Korean authorities have accused the 22-person cohort of smuggling synthetic marijuana — an illegal substance in South Korea — into the country through the military mail system and plotting to distribute it to military personnel. Officials confiscated 2.7 ounces of the drug, $12,850 in cash, 145.4 ounces of mixing liquid, and 27 electronic cigarettes during their search, according to police reports.

Korean police said in a press release that they’re collaborating with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division on the case. U.S. Forces Korea, the command overseeing U.S. military assets in the country, acknowledged the investigation, saying in a statement that it “does not condone any behaviors among its personnel that violate South Korean laws, rules or directives and supports this investigation.”

“We expect all service members, family members, civilians, contractors, sponsored guests, and other affiliated individuals to conduct themselves appropriately, both on and off duty, and hold a deep respect for the Korean people, their culture, laws, and regulations,” it added. CNN was the first international news outlet to report the story.

Camps Humphreys and Casey house tens of thousands of soldiers and support staff between them. Camp Humphreys is the Army’s largest garrison in Asia. Its 8,100-foot airfield is the branch’s busiest on the continent.

South Korean authorities have long suspected American military installations of serving as gateways for illicit substances entering the country, the New York Times reported.

The Pentagon unveiled new efforts Wednesday to reevaluate discharges of thousands of LGBTQ+ veterans who were forced out of service because of their sexuality under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Department officials will soon begin a “proactive review” of LGBTQ+ veterans who were handed less than honorable discharges because of their sexual preference, and possibly look to upgrade their discharge status.

The initiative arrives on the 12-year anniversary of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The policy, enacted in 1994, prohibited LGBTQ+ service members from disclosing or openly embracing their sexual orientation while in uniform.

The Pentagon estimates that thousands of LGBTQ+ troops received less than honorable discharges for “homosexual conduct” during the policy’s lifetime. Advocates believe that at least 35,000 service members were released from duty because of their sexual orientation between 1980 and 2011.

A less than honorable discharge can spell poor job prospects after military service and limit access to a range of veterans benefits, including loans, healthcare, and funerary expenses.

A group of veterans impacted by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” sued the Defense Department in early August to upgrade their discharges and strike any mention of their sexuality from their military records — designations they claim violate their privacy. One of the plaintiffs for, Marine Corps veteran Julianne ‘Jules’ Sohn, was one of thousands to be involuntarily discharged under the DADT policy.

“Over 29,000 of those veterans did not receive an honorable discharge and should have their discharges upgraded,” Sohn wrote in Military Times of why they are bringing the case. “Fewer than 1,500 eligible veterans have been able to upgrade their discharges.”

While Sohn’s group, “Justice for LGBTQ+ Veterans” welcomed Wednesday’s announcement, they declined to say if they’d drop their complaint.

“While we appreciate DOD’s statement, much work lies ahead,” they wrote in a statement to Military Times. “Until every veteran discharged under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ and its predecessor policies receives the long-delayed justice they deserve, we remain committed to advocating for the rights and dignity of LGBTQ veterans who have been affected by this historical injustice.”

Veterans can apply to have their discharge status reviewed, but Sohn’s attorneys have described the process as “burdensome, opaque, expensive, and, for many veterans, virtually inaccessible.”

Pentagon leaders hope the new review process will cut some of that red tape.

“Over the past decade, we’ve tried to make it easier for service members discharged based on their sexual orientation to obtain corrective relief,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “While this process can be difficult to navigate, we are working to make it more accessible and efficient.”

U.S. defense officials speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning did not specify when the “proactive review” would begin. They also noted that many evaluations could drag on, citing the large caseload and ambiguity surrounding some dismissals.

Officials added that the discharge review will not include the nearly 20,000 LGBTQ+ veterans expelled from the military before the implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The 118-page Government Accountability Office report, published Tuesday, documented widespread housing issues, many of which are already familiar to many lower-ranking service members across the armed forces — mold, dysfunctional plumbing, no heating in the winter, no air conditioning in the summer. Investigators warned that these conditions risk undermining the military’s readiness and morale.

GAO officials visited barracks at ten different military installations and analyzed service member housing satisfaction data dating back to 2019. They found that “some military barracks do not meet DOD minimum standards for assignment or occupancy.”

“We observed and military service members and officials told us that living conditions in some barracks pose potentially serious risks to health and safety and that not all barracks meet minimum privacy and configuration standards,” they note in their report.

Service members at five of the ten installations reported regular water issues; four installations reported broken or malfunctioning fire safety infrastructure. All ten reported mold infestations and “broken, malfunctioning, or non-existent heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.”

Investigators also documented broken door locks and first-floor windows at three installations. They observed “insufficient lighting, vacant units occupied by unauthorized personnel, or no existing or working security cameras” at seven installations.

Maintenance teams tend to be slow or unresponsive. GAO officials found that some installations require residents to take care of quality-of-life issues themselves. According to the report, officials at one installation said service members are responsible for cleaning up the “biological waste” that might stain a room after a suicide.

“It takes longer than a month, sometimes three months, for maintenance to come and check out an issue,” one resident told investigators.

Some barracks are faulty by design, according to the report. DOD housing standards mandate that troops living in units without a living room should each have a private bedroom and share a bathroom with no more than one other person. Room layouts at six installations violate these guidelines.

Service members told GAO officials that the condition of these living spaces worsen the mental and physical health of their residents. Officials and troops also stressed that poor living standards disincentivize reenlistment and scare away prospective enlistees.

“Service members consider leaving the military because they are miserable [in barracks],” one senior enlisted member told investigators. “They want to control how they live.”

Despite an abundance of complaints and billions of dollars allocated toward “facility sustainment,” the Pentagon has struggled to bring barracks up to par.

Investigators note that DOD has deferred $137 billion in installation maintenance costs as of 2020. Much of the money that has trickled through is pipelined towards “mission-critical facilities,” leaving barracks by the wayside. When pressed by GAO officials to detail how much sustainment funding would be dedicated to barracks renovations, DOD officials struggled to provide specific estimates, investigators added.

The report also faults the defense department’s “unreliable” system for assessing the quality of life on installations.

The military assigns facilities a “condition score” from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). Investigators discovered that a number of barracks with condition scores above 80 needed “significant improvement.” Officials at one installation described the barracks as “uninhabitable,” even though its condition score passed 90.

The GAO recommended that the DOD conduct more thorough and frequent assessments of its barracks to keep tabs on conditions. It also suggested that the branches tidy their budgets to streamline renovation funds to where they’re needed most.

The Defense Department has concurred or partially concurred with all of the GAO’s 31 recommendations, according to the report.

Staff Sgt. Justin Smith commemorated his indefinite reenlistment with the Army earlier this month by reciting the oath atop the glass-paneled desk of his division sergeant major at Fort Bliss, Texas.

“I wanted to do something special and fun,” Smith told Army Times. “I figured reenlisting on the senior DIV NCOs desk would be really memorable. You can’t do much to top that.”

Soldiers have long used reenlistment ceremonies to buck the branch’s formalities — within reason. In the military, these moments present rare opportunities to bend boundaries and loosen up in a job that often demands unflinching discipline.

Senior officials aren’t always fond of lighthearted twists on the ritual. A master sergeant in the Air National Guard caught flak from the service’s top officer in 2018 when she reenlisted wearing a dinosaur puppet on her right hand.

Fortunately for Smith, no such drama followed his reenlistment.

He insists his command sergeant major was “very receptive and good-natured” about his choice of venue, and the unconventional use of office decor. Even so, a well-timed photo of the event seems to show the command sergeant major eyeing a bayonet hanging from the wall as Smith repeated his oath — a moment that some observers on the popular Army subreddit quickly zeroed in on.

“I thought the comments were hilarious, especially the ones trying to narrate what was going on in CSM Light’s head and how they noticed he seemed to be staring at his bayonet with malicious intent,” Smith said.

“I definitely believe he found it just as humorous as the rest of us there,” he added. “And no, I didn’t have to clean his desk afterward.”

Smith boasts a storied legacy of service. His relatives partook in major American conflicts dating back to the Civil War. Smith himself served two tours in Afghanistan after first enlisting in the Army Reserve in 2008 before transferring to active duty in 2012.

The 40-year-old Ohio native moved to the 1st Armored Division in 2021. He now works for the public affairs team at division headquarters out of Fort Bliss.

“I wasn’t expecting this much attention from what I did,” Smith reflected. “But at the very least, I hope it shows that the Army is what you make of it.”

Army Times Editor James Clark contributed reporting to this story.

The report asserts that the agency failed to appropriately assess whether claimants met the requirements for receiving compensation before issuing the payments. Investigators estimate that the Veterans Benefits Administration “prematurely” approved around a quarter of the 13,800 Gulf War Syndrome claims filed between Oct. 1, 2021, and Mar. 31, 2022. The report’s authors note, however, that the under-examined applicants may have been eligible for the benefits they received, even if their claims were mistakenly approved.

The errors could complicate treatment for an illness already clouded in ambiguity. Gulf War Syndrome encompasses a medley of unexplained chronic afflictions found in tens of thousands of veterans who served in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Common symptoms include diarrhea, fatigue, rashes, joint pain and cognitive issues, though experts have struggled to pinpoint an exact cause for any of them. The VA announced in April that it would conduct a five-year study into the illness’ origins and impacts.

The VA first authorized disability checks for victims of Gulf War Syndrome in 1995. Gradual regulatory tweaks over the ensuing decades attempted to refine definitions for “unexplained illnesses” and the pathways to receive benefits for them. A 2003 rule change established the working definition of a “medically unexplained illness” as a diagnosed ailment lacking a clear cause and “characterized by overlapping symptoms and signs,” including fatigue, pain, and other disabilities.

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, signed into law in 2022, expanded welfare provisions for maladies connected to toxin exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, and nuclear testing sites.

Investigators say the questionnaires used by agency adjudicators to evaluate claims for Gulf War Syndrome and other mysterious ailments don’t collect enough information to reliably determine who deserves benefits.

“(Veterans Benefits Administration) lacked evidence needed to decide the claims because its examination requests and disability benefits questionnaires do not elicit the information needed by claims processors to determine whether a veteran is eligible for benefits under the regulation,” they wrote.

The inspector general report also faulted “confusing and inconsistent” guidelines on how and when claims processors should seek out more information to fill those gaps. These oversights, it warned, could result in around $25.6 million in undue payments between fiscal year 2022 and September 2024.

Simple fixes, such as updating questionnaires and instructions for examiners with the full, latest definitions for medically unexplained illnesses, could save millions, investigators stressed.

The VA accepted the inspector general’s recommendations and is expected to implement the suggested reforms by the end of September.

Lawmakers and veterans groups plan a major push on the issue this fall, but prospects for meaningful progress on the issue remain dim.

“We have to get something done, because our allies in Afghanistan, our partners there are relying on us,” said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. and an Army veteran who has been leading the issue for the last few years. “It hasn’t panned out so far, but we’re gonna keep pushing.”

In the days before the last U.S. troops departed Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, more than 80,000 Afghan refugees were rushed out of the country aboard American aircraft in an effort to protect them from advancing Taliban forces.

But some advocacy groups estimate as many as 150,000 Afghans that assisted the U.S. mission were left behind, including individuals who worked closely with U.S. military forces as interpreters and combat assistants. Thousands have State Department visa applications that have been pending for years.

And individuals who managed to escape still live with chronic uncertainty about their legal status and looming fears of deportation, because procedures for resolving their lingering immigration applications still have not been finalized.

Most Afghans airlifted to the U.S. during the late summer and early fall of 2021 were granted “humanitarian parole,” a tenuous, temporary authorization to reside in the country.

Parolee status, which enables Afghans to apply for employment authorization and other government benefits, expires after two years for most evacuees. Those attempting to reauthorize their parole or secure lawful permanent residence through the SIV or asylum process must navigate a labyrinth of paperwork and bureaucratic backlogs.

Without clarity on their future, advocates worry, some individuals could lose their jobs or, at worst, face deportation to foreign countries in coming months.

“There’s a constant fear that they’ll have to face the Taliban again,” said Safi Rauf, an Afghan citizen and U.S. Navy reservist who founded the Human First Coalition, which works to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. “There’s not a day that goes by that these [refugees] don’t think about it.”

In a letter to congressional leaders last week, 24 veterans groups — including With Honor Action, No One Left Behind and Operation Pineapple Express Relief — urged lawmakers to find solutions before the end of the year.

“For two years, thousands of Afghans have been ruthlessly pursued by the Taliban and left in American bureaucratic limbo,” the groups wrote. “The moral imperative is clear and the time to act is now.

“We served and shed blood alongside many of these brave Afghans, whose only sin was to pursue a better democratic future for their country. Please do not allow them to be ignored and unprotected for another legislative calendar year. Their lives could well depend on whether America keeps her promise.”

Legislative fight

Over the last 24 months, advocates have held recurring rallies outside the Capitol begging for action and chastising lawmakers who have blocked potential fixes.

Most of the debate has focused on two bills: the Afghan Allies Protection Act (AAPA) and the Afghan Adjustment Act (AAA). The former, introduced in early June by Crow and a bipartisan group of House lawmakers, would authorize 20,000 new special immigrant visas (above the 38,500 already approved since 2014) for Afghans that worked for the American government and extend the visa program by five years, until December 2029.

Crow acknowledged the plan isn’t a full fix to the Afghan refugee problem but said it would provide ways to more quickly bring some individuals safely to American soil.

The Afghan Adjustment Act has stalled in Congress for more than two years now. The more comprehensive measure would clear up pathways to legal residency for evacuees and enhance vetting of those who seek it.

It would also extend special immigrant visa eligibility to Afghans that fought alongside U.S. armed forces but never formally signed contracts with U.S. government entities, including Afghan special operations troops and female members of the Afghan National Security Forces.

The measure was reintroduced earlier this summer by another bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers, including Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, also an Army veteran. She said the changes are needed to speed up the current immigration processes, which have left too many allies floundering in confusing government protocols.

“The State Department is trying to follow its codes and regulations, and we understand that,” she said. “But we don’t see the urgency that has been needed over the last two years. And these people are in peril.”

But the Afghan Adjustment Act has been blocked multiple times by a group of Senate Republicans who have objected to what they see as insufficient background checks for would-be immigrants from Afghanistan.

Last fall, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, publicly blasted White House officials for too-lax vetting policies for incoming Afghan allies and said he could not support the pending measures. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., earlier this year blocked attempts to add the Afghan Adjustment Act to the annual defense authorization bill.

Miller-Meeks said given the opposition thus far, “a more narrow bill focused on just our Afghan interpreters and allies may be more realistic this year.” She and Crow are both hopeful that they can convince more colleagues to drop their objections in coming months.

“We need to do more to help individuals who are already here,” she said. “Where are they going to return to? Afghanistan?”

Uncertain futures

Despite promises from congressional leadership to address the issue, advocates aren’t optimistic about the prospects for any legislative success this year.

“Passing any bill related to immigration is incredibly hard,” Rauf said. “We’re not even seeing a chance to bring the bills to the floor.”

Rauf has led dozens and rallies across America to rally support for the Afghan Adjustment Act and related bills over the last two years, and has been disappointed by both Republican opposition and a lack of Democratic emphasis on the issue. Support for helping Afghan allies crosses party lines, he insisted, so leaders from both sides should be pushing the issue.

Advocacy groups estimate that about 152,000 applicants for the special immigrant visas are currently stuck in Afghanistan awaiting State Department approval.

Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of refugees already in the U.S. are safe for now but unable to settle without clarity on their long-term immigration status.

Around 20,000 evacuees have applied for asylum since arriving in the U.S.; only 5,000 have received approval, according to Safiullah Delawar, the legal director of REACT DC, a Virginia-based resettlement organization created in the wake of the evacuation. Thousands more Afghans have yet to receive updates on their re-parole applications.

Delawar said he is “hoping that [lawmakers] will forget their politics for a while and not sacrifice this humanitarian act” amid short-term partisan fights.

Meanwhile, the families caught in the debate are left with an uncertain future.

“It’s difficult to continue living your life when you don’t know what the next year is going to look like,” said Peter Lucier, a resettlement advocate and Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan. “There are just a whole host of bad things that start happening when parole starts to expire.”

Lucier said companies are less likely to invest in training and certifications for workers who may be forced to leave the country in the next few years. That limits opportunities, which in turn leads to more stress, contributing to a growing number of mental health issues among the refugee community.

“They’re running out of time, and it feels like there’s not a lot of hope for the future,” Rauf said. “The goal is not just to have a job here. It’s to have a life, to have a home here.”

The Air Force has confirmed that a Mississippi man arrested Monday for taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is a reservist.

Federal prosecutors allege that David Scott Stapp was part of the mob that stormed the Capitol after President Donald Trump’s election loss. Stapp joins an ever-growing list of at least 131 current and former service members to be implicated in crimes connected to the attempted insurrection, according to figures compiled by the George Washington University Program on Extremism.

Stapp joined the Air Force’s reserve component in September 1997, ascending to the rank of major over the course of a 25-year military career, according to personnel files shared with Military Times. Stapp began serving as a pilot and technician in the reserve’s 403rd Wing stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, in September 2010.

Stapp spent most of his time at Keesler piloting and maintaining C-130J transport planes for the unit’s 815th Airlift Squadron, according to Lt. Col. Marnee Losurdo, chief of the 403rd Wing’s public affairs office. He had a brief stint with the unit’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (dubbed the “Hurricane Hunters”) before ending his service with the wing’s Operational Support Squadron.

Stapp last performed military duties in May and is currently “pending separation from the U.S. Air Force Reserve,” Losurdo told the Military Times. Why and under what conditions Stapp is leaving the reserves remains unclear.

Among the 23 awards the 44-year-old major received during his service were an Afghanistan Campaign Medal and an Iraq Campaign Medal, accorded to personnel that served in those war zones.

Federal investigators, relying on a mixture of open-source photographs, social media posts, and cell service records, allege the decorated airman marched through the Capitol on Jan. 6 sporting a black hoodie, tactical gloves, and a beanie stitched with the words “Legalize Freedom.” His arrest was first reported by The Daily Beast.

“It was one of the best things I have ever gotten to do. That was history,” Stapp posted on Facebook the night following the riot, according to his criminal complaint. “We took over the fucking capital (sic). Shows them what a small percentage of unarmed Americans can do. Just think of all the patriots came and cane (sic) armed[.]”