GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Meet Aron Obrecht of Green Bay. This local veteran spent five years active duty in the infantry.
During his service, he spent time in Washington D.C. as a Presidential honor guard before being deployed overseas.
He was stationed in Afghanistan for about a year and in Iraq for 10 months.
Obrecht explains he was boots on the ground in Afghanistan shortly after the capture of Osama Bin Laden in May of 2011.
“We just hit the ground running because between Bin Laden being captured and fighting season it ended up being the deadliest year of the war,” Obrecht said. “Our first day we lost three guys.”
Obrecht said at that time they were focused on the hearts and minds of the local people in order to not destroy the country they were hoping to rebuild. However, with fighting season and everything that happened with Bin Laden, their minds were focused on defending themselves and the people.
“They [Taliban] were stepping up their game, so we had to step up right back with them. It was less of a focus on building and more of a focus on just trying to get hold of the security again,” Obrecht said.
He shares that he spent most of his time in Afghanistan in rural communities.
“A lot of what they were having us do, we were training the local forces a lot that was kind of our big focus, actually taking them out on patrols, going on patrols with them, kind of critiquing what they were doing. When it was quieter we were helping install water pumps, we were helping in villages,” Obrecht said.
This April, President Joe Biden announced his decision to pull out U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
"I'm now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan, two Democrats, two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth,” President Biden said on April 14. "It's time for American troops to come home."
With Americans set to leave at the end of this month and troops departing, the Taliban rapidly gained control of Afghanistan, causing chaos in that country.
Obrecht shares what he has been hearing from other vets from the Green Bay community.
“There has been a lot more varied opinions from anger that we are leaving to ‘yeah, well about time’. I’ve been seeing a lot of hard feelings and anger and I don’t want to see that,” Obrecht said. “I don’t want to see that taint what you did.”
He said he really hopes those veterans don’t feel that their work and sacrifice was done in vain.
“You’re on the line, you’ve put it on the line, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, you go where the Army tells you to, where the military tells you to, there’s nothing you can really do other than that, you just make the best of it. If you make the best of it, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be mad of,” Obrecht said.
And while American troops were hoping to install a citizen-led government over the last 20 years, he shares how it was sometimes frustrating for some local people in Afghanistan who might have not fully understood or agree with what was happening.
“We were somewhere between a minor inconvenience to a severe annoyance. And at that point when you’re there and you’re 19, 20, 21 and you come in with a mindset that you’re going to help these people and you’re going to do a good job, you’re going to kill the Taliban and everything is going to be great in the world and then you get there and it’s like yeah it’s not that simple. It can be kind of demoralizing,” Obrecht said.
He said it is a very difficult task for young soldiers to make a change in government when all they’ve been trained with is how to fight.
“My mindset at that time was even if we wanted to do the things we say we do, we’re not doing it right. Do I know what it is? No. I’m not the Secretary of State and I’m not any number of people who have spent their lives trying to make countries better with means other than guns,” Obrecht said. “You don’t go to Habitat for Humanity with a rifle trying to build a house. Same thing there. When you’re given a hammer and that’s all you’ve got, every problem is a nail. We were given guns, you can’t shoot poverty, you can’t shoot ignorance, you can’t shoot fear.”
He said more should have been done from a nation rebuilding perspective by the American government.
“Hopefully people are asking these questions: what worked in history, what’s successful, what’s not, what do we try, what do we not try, what is our timeline. These are all questions that come with how do you build a country,” Obrecht said. “What I’m seeing right now is a lot of blame going around for who happened to be holding the football right now."
"I have no love for the current administration," said Obrecht. "But I’ve been hearing complaints of ‘why are we sending more troops back if we’re pulling out, why are we pulling out now and leaving these families and leaving all these interpreters. These are valid things, these interpreters put their lives on the line to help us. Sometimes it was for money and sometimes it was because they wanted a better Afghanistan for themselves, but they did and it came with promises that we will get them out of there and we would set them up with a life here.”
Obrecht emphasizes that as Americans our country needs to do what is possible to help those Afghanistan interpreters and others who have assisted out of there as fast and safely as they can.
“As far as our values on the ground go, if we ever need to do something like this again at the very least, the world needs to know we need to hold our promises. If we tell interpreters we’re going to get them out, we got to do that. Otherwise, when we go somewhere else, they’re going to go ‘yeah, but we’re not going to help you. You left those other guys to die. It’s like okay.’ On a personal level, we make friends with these interpreters. Some of them fight with us. I pick up a gun and they’ll fight alongside us and we tell them how to maneuver. They put themselves in pretty precarious situations helping us search for people,” Obrecht said.
He explains how he has a couple of friends trying to help their interpreters in Afghanistan out but say they’re not hearing much.
“Oh, fill out the forms and we’ll get you out in six months. These people don’t have six months,” Obrecht said. “It’s small towns out there and they’ll find out real quick who the interpreters were. It could be in a matter of weeks, it can be a matter of days, it could be happening now, it probably is, they’re finding the collaborators if you will and they’re taking them out.”
He said as more troops are being sent into Afghanistan to help with evacuations, he hopes those soldiers are equipped to leave and fight at the same time.
“Some of the bigger headquarters, and some of the supplies, support personal are not set up to leave and fight at the same time. I whole-heatedly agree that we need to send the 82nd or the 10th round or whoever is going over there to pull them out and provide security as we’re leaving,” Obrecht said.
Another concern he has is for the women in Afghanistan. He explains how it was becoming more progressive during his time, but fears that progress will only decline.
“I think the biggest problem you’re going to see for women is in Kabul. Kabul is getting pretty progressive even when I was there. When we were walking around with just scarves on but they were wearing jeans, they were wearing t-shirts. I imagine it has only continued in the last 8-10 years and I think that’s where we are going to see most of the shock. As far as some of the outline provinces, I think wherever they were at least for the time being at least until Taliban gets to spreads out and exert their power more you’re not going to see too much of a change,” Obrecht. “It’s definitely not going to get better.”
