CBS's new series The United States of Al tackled the Afghan conflict this week by introducing an American-hating leftist who blames the United States for everything from the creation of the Taliban to the existence of Osama Bin Laden.
âUnited States of Alâ based on Tampa Palms veteran, interpreter who saved his life
The new CBS sitcom debuted this month on Hulu.
Â
Â
Afghan interpreter Hakimi Quadratullah (left) and then-Marine Lt. Col. Ty Edwards in Afghanistan. [ Courtesy of Ty Edwards ]
.
âMarine veteran Riley (Parker Young), home at last after serving in Afghanistan, is happily reunited with his friend Awalmir (Adhir Kaylan), who goes by Al, the interpreter with his unit, after a long struggle to get him a visa to travel to the United States from Afghanistan,â the CBS showâs description synopsis reads.
Edwards, 51, is a combat-wounded Marine veteran whose life was saved by Hakimi, 33, during a fierce battle in Afghanistanâs Kunar province in 2008. After a five-year bureaucratic struggle to get Hakimi a visa, the interpreter finally made it to America, and for a short period in 2013, lived with Edwards and his family in Tampa Palms.
SHARE
Qismat Amin’s adjustment to life in America wasn’t easy but, by his own account, it could have been much worse. For the Afghan former combat interpreter, 29, the truly hellish part was what came in the years before he arrived in San Francisco in 2017.
Amin was laid off by his employer, the US military, in 2013, when the Obama administration sought to wind down American forces in Afghanistan. He had served alongside US soldiers for three years, starting at the age of 19, but then spent much of his twenties inside his house in the southern Afghan city of Jalalabad, with the door locked. Fighters from the terrorist group ISIS, which at that time was only just emerging in Afghanistan, had his name on a list of targets. They wanted him to confess to his “crime” of collaborating with the US military.