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Amanpour
Interview with Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam; The Plight of War Translators; Imagine a World
Aired February 20, 2015 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN HOST (voice-over): Hello, everyone. Tonight: on the weekend edition of AMANPOUR, the Muslim dark (ph) mayor who says if you
don't like our values of freedom and democracy it's simple -- leave.
Also ahead, the veteran fighting to make sure the vital work of local translators in conflict zones is not forgotten.
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HOLMES: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the special weekend edition of our program, where we look back at two of the most engaging
interviews of the week. I'm Michael Holmes, been sitting in this week for Christiane.
Well, the fight against ISIS not only a physical war and it is not only taking place on the front lines of Syria and Iraq. It is also very
much in the West, a war of ideology on the streets of sedate European cities like Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
In the wake of the attack on the "Charlie Hebdo" headquarters in Paris, the mayor of Rotterdam made headlines around the world when he said
this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AHMED ABOUTALEB, MAYOR OF ROTTERDAM (from captions): All the Muslims, all those well-intentioned Muslims, who may be looked at with suspicion, we
want to keep all those people together in what I call the "We Society." And if you don't like it here because you don't like the humorists who make
a little newspaper, yes, if I can say it like this, get (INAUDIBLE).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: But Ahmed Aboutaleb is not part of the Far Right that has taken hold in many parts of Europe. He is a Muslim himself, born in
Morocco. This week he was in Washington this week for a White House summit on combating extremism. I spoke to him about what his experience and that
of his city has to teach the world.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Mr. Mayor, your speech was a powerful one, coming from a Moroccan immigrant in particular and a practicing Muslim.
How was it received in Rotterdam and also the Netherlands?
ABOUTALEB: Well, my speech after the attack of Paris has been well received by, really I think, 160 million people in the Netherlands.
I received really thousands of emails from all over the world from people supporting the speech and the content of it.
HOLMES: It's fine to say let's share these values. It's much harder, isn't it, to impose them on others? I mean, even things like gay marriage,
which, of course, is legal in the Netherlands, would not be acceptable to most Muslims traditionally.
What do you say to those who say, well, you can't put all of the Netherlands' liberal traditions onto immigrants?
ABOUTALEB: You know, the Dutch constitution but also the Dutch society is constructed in very, very interesting basic value and that is
tolerance and acceptance. So the moment you come to the Netherlands, wherever from all over the world and you get a citizenship then you have to
at least underline and embrace the constitution and the values of the country.
We are a diverse country; my city is 154 nationalities. And that means that the rule of law is above everyone. Whatever your conviction is,
whatever your religion is, whatever your sexual behavior, the acceptance and tolerance is really a very important thing.
HOLMES: If you don't like it here, leave, which was the real line that stuck out, of course. It resonates with many people. But could it be
seen as a little superficial and unrealistic?
If you don't like it, just go.
ABOUTALEB: Well, what I say to people is there are two things: when you become a member of our society and I said when I give passport to new
citizens, that is not only a travel document. That is an identity. Then we request you and there is also a duty upon you to accept society as a
whole.
And there are -- there is also a lot of variety in it.
But if you reject the society, you don't want to be member of what I call the we community and you reject the constitution and you reject the
equality between people and you reject the freedoms, then it's up to you to examine whether you want to be with us.
There is also another choice and that is not to be with us and to leave -- to leave our society. You are not forced to be with us. It's a
choice. And that's what I said to people. I'm not forcing anyone to get out of the we society. It's a free choice. Be with us; work with us
together to construct a we society.
But if you want to send out of the we community, you threaten us, you go to Yemen to learn how to use a Kalashnikov and to come back to threaten
the society, well, you are not part of my we society; you'd better leave.
HOLMES: I understand, of course, why your message stands out so much is because you are Muslim. You are Moroccan. You didn't even go to the
Netherlands until you were 15.
How did your family integrate, move to accept that liberal nature of life in the Netherlands?
ABOUTALEB: Mr. Holmes, I'm one of the people who knows how it is to live in poverty. I spent 15 years in Morocco of my life on one meal a day,
walking without shoes. Go to the Netherlands without a coat to protect myself. So I know how it is to be a product of poverty.
And I cannot accept that poverty leads to terrorism. Poverty must lead to a seek to knowledge, to sciences, to be better, to climb on the
social ladder.
So I know how it is. It's about investing in yourself, first of all, and by doing that, you invest in society. And that's the message I try to
give to these people, yes, indeed. I'm not only a mayor of a city, but I'm also Muslim and that gives me maybe the additional authority to say these
things that maybe other colleagues of mine in Europe and maybe in the U.S. are not maybe authorized to say.
HOLMES: Is there room for maintaining different cultures in your mind, having parallel Muslim and traditional Dutch values?
Or is it all or nothing?
ABOUTALEB: No, there is a lot of space to combine a lot of things. My city comprises 174 nationalities. We have all religions in the
Netherlands, in my city, too. There are mosques and synagogues and churches from all denominations. There's nothing wrong with that.
It's even OK if you have radical opinions as long as you act within the borders of the law, there is nothing wrong with that.
You may have also the reason to believe that you have the truth of the ultimate truth in religion between your ears, nothing wrong with that. But
as long as you go to the outside world, then there is the rule of law and then you may accept the constitution and the rule of law.
And those things, if you bring that together, there must be a balance that is possible. And my case, it shows that it is possible.
HOLMES: The Netherlands has had its own problems with extremism and you've got to mention Geert Wilders, the far right politician in the
Netherlands who used the phrase "Moroccan scum" and actually asked the crowd in this city and in the Netherlands, do you want more or fewer
Moroccans, and they chanted back, "Fewer, fewer, fewer," and he said, "Then we'll arrange that."
What do you do about someone like him and his sentiments?
ABOUTALEB: Well, when I was in the government, in the central government as a secretary for social affairs, he was also against me as a
politician in the national government. So I would not use this air time to comment on Mr. Wilders. He has another intention and he has another
opinion. That's not my opinion. That's not my intention.
My intention is to bring all these people together to form what I call the we community. And that's really a different approach to what Mr.
Wilders is standing for with his political party.
HOLMES: And you do a lot of outreach in Rotterdam and the Netherlands in general. But I wanted to finish by asking you this very quickly. It
seems like there are surprisingly few examples of people like you, immigrants in positions of power in Europe. You know, considering their
sizable population, I'm thinking of places like the United States, where there are many immigrants in positions of power.
Why do you think that is?
ABOUTALEB: Well, I would like first of all to congratulate the U.S. government in bringing us together, those days in Washington, to think and
rethink what is going on in the world and how to deal with that. And indeed, the U.S. has a big advantage to have a lot of scholars and public
leaders within a lot of religious communities, but also public officials. We don't have that.
But the migration to the Netherlands is a very young migration of 40 years. And I'm so far the only mayor with a Muslim background in Europe.
So I have a lot of work to do, also to have a representation from all minorities in European government. So we have a -- miles to go and we just
have to leave this behind us.
HOLMES: The mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, thanks to you.
ABOUTALEB: Thank you for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: A resounding message there from the mayor of Rotterdam.
And when we come back on the program, they risked their lives to help the U.S. military. But as combat troops pulled out of Iraq and
Afghanistan, many local translators were left behind with empty promises. America's forgotten allies -- after this.
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HOLMES: Welcome back to the program.
America's combat mission in Iraq and Afghanistan may officially be over. But thousands of the military's local interpreters have been left
behind and many say their lives are at risk.
In a moment, one veteran fighting to bring them to America but first the story of one translator, a teenager I met in Iraq nine years ago.
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HOLMES (voice-over): There are no shortage of war stories in Iraq nor close calls. Take this one.
SARAH: My other guys went around, they started shooting them while they were shooting mortars at us. I got injured from mortars. I got
scars.
You want to see the scars?
HOLMES (voice-over): She's on patrol with the U.S. military, except Sarah is no soldier. In a country full of dangerous jobs, one of the
riskiest is hers, being an Iraqi, translating for American soldiers.
SARAH: I learned this life fears. This has become my life. I can't just leave it.
HOLMES (voice-over): The diminutive Sarah might be short on height, but she is long on courage, say her U.S. friends, who asked us to hide her
face, even if she won't.
SARAH: I'm serving my country, I'm serving the U.S. Army. It's fun, but dangerous at the same time. But I like it.
SGT. FRANK FORTNER, U.S. ARMY: For lack of a better way to put it, she's got more guts than a lot of the men interpreters we've got.
HOLMES (voice-over): Sarah stands out for all kinds of reasons. Just 19 years old, she's been doing this three years already and has braved too
many encounters with insurgents to count.
1ST LT. WILLIAM PHILLIPS, U.S. ARMY: I admire her courage. It's kind of hard to say you're scared of something when you have a 19-year-old girl
sitting there beside you who is half your size who's unafraid of anything that's going on.
HOLMES: It is a crucial job because these people are not just dealing in words, they are dealing in people's lives, American and Iraqi. For
example, Iraqis have died because they have not understood orders shouted to them in English or because their actions have been misunderstood.
SARAH: I feel like I'm responsible, because one word from me, a guy can live or can get shot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Comanche 36, Comanche 36, this is Blue 1 Bravo.
HOLMES (voice-over): On this patrol, one of hundreds Sarah has been on, house searches. Sarah, explaining to locals why and what to do.
SPEC. GERARD CALLOWAY, U.S. ARMY: She's the best there is. She does good on questioning people and she knows when the dirty man's around. So,
she's a big help and a big asset to this team. That's what she is, she's a part of our team.
HOLMES: Sarah says her unit, her military base is her home now. She says she can't go back to her old life, but that life isn't important now.
SARAH: I'm not scared. Only God can take my soul.
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HOLMES: She was so brave she did not want her face blurred. We did it for her safety.
I have some good news, though. I'm pleased, very pleased to say that Sarah -- still not her real name -- lives in America now. The U.S.
government gave her a visa. But thousands of others, many thousands, not so lucky.
Veteran Matt Zeller helps Iraqi and Afghan translators get visas and resettle in America. He joins us now from Washington.
And Matt, it's great to see you again. This, as we've discussed before, is very personal for you. When you were a captain in Afghanistan,
your life literally saved by Janus (ph), your translator. He picked up a weapon and killed two Taliban who were coming up behind you; you didn't
know about, right?
MATT ZELLER, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Absolutely, yes. It was my 14th day in country. And I -- you described it perfectly. I would not be sitting
here talking to you right now if my translator had not literally saved my life.
HOLMES: Do we even know how many others are still in Afghanistan and Iraq who are waiting to get out of -- Janus (ph), of course, did get out,
thanks to you. But so many others did not and are still waiting.
Do you know how many?
ZELLER: The estimate is in the tens of thousands. The last official figure I saw released was only in pertaining to Afghanistan and it was that
there was a 12,000-person waiting list for one of the 4,000 available visas over the next two years.
So there's already an 8,000-person deficiency. That was as of December.
Sadly, in Iraq, the visa program has been on hold since last summer due to the fact that ISIS got so close to Baghdad that most of the embassy
staff were actually evacuated and it's unfortunately the staff that processed a lot of these visas.
HOLMES: The problem was it wasn't moving very fast before that. We've had more introduced, visas made available. Quite simply though, not
enough and importantly they weren't being processed with any level of priority.
Were they?
ZELLER: No, not at all. In fact, the State Department -- just to give you some numbers, if you look at Afghanistan, from 2009-2013, they
were roughly supposed to be handing out around 1,500 visas a year. Well, they handed out approximately 1,000 for those four years cumulatively.
Or to put it in real perspective, in 2011, they handed out three for the entire country.
HOLMES: You and I have worked with these guys. And when I hear things like that, it makes my blood boil, given the contribution they made.
The other thing that makes my blood boil is the process itself is so incredibly complex, especially for someone who is in Iraq or Afghanistan,
has communication problems; they've got to navigate an often ridiculous bureaucracy and unreasonable demands.
ZELLER: Yes, no, the average time it takes for someone to get through is about 3-3.5 years. There's many different hurdles that they have to
clear. It's actually quite expensive as well. They've got to pay for themselves for medical examinations that can cost hundreds of dollars per
family member. These examinations are often only good for a couple of months and the tragedy is that by the time their visas are actually cleared
through the system, their medical clearances have expired, they then have to go back and get another very costly expensive medical procedure in terms
of an examination. It's just insult to injury. When you think about at the end of Vietnam, we were able to get 177,000 people out in about a month
as Saigon fell. I don't understand how we could do that in the '70s, now we're in the 21st century and we still can't seem to figure out an
efficient way to get these people -- who I consider to be veterans -- to safety.
HOLMES: Absolutely. You know, I was last in Iraq last year and I met a guy called Omar Hamid (ph). And we've got video of him; we'll show it --
a former Iraqi police officer, worked closely with U.S. intelligence, credited on paper by U.S. commanders with saving American lives.
He was then targeted by insurgents who put a sticky bomb on his car, loses both his legs and when I saw him last January, he was still battling
bureaucracy and getting nowhere, having to move between houses to keep ahead of those who still wanted to kill him.
I checked in on him just before the program; he's still waiting.
What do you think of that?
ZELLER: I think that is absolutely unreal and it's a tragedy. And unfortunately, it's also the norm. A lot of people would recall on the
movie that came out a couple of years ago about the lone survivor. And the man, the Afghan man who came to save the Navy SEAL's life in that film --
it's a true story -- that Afghan man still doesn't have a visa to the United States and is actively targeted by the Taliban daily for his very
survival because of the assistance he rendered to somebody almost a decade ago.
I mean, the reality is we made promises to these people. And if we don't uphold these promises, the consequences of the next conflict are
going to be profound because our word is going to become to be deemed as meaningless, without value. And I'm a veteran and I will not stand for my
country to not honor its commitments to these people.
HOLMES: And to that point, give those who do not understand, who think that these are just local hires who walk around with U.S. troops,
give people a sense of what they are putting on the line.
ZELLER: Everything. First off, you can't just walk up to a base and say, hey, I speak English. Would you hire me? They have to go through a
month-long application process. They're polygraphed every six months. They have no privacy. Their communications are monitored; their movements
are highly controlled. And they do this because they're patriots to their country.
Every single translator I ever met said I'm here because I want to make my country better. They never said, oh, I'm just trying to get a U.S.
visa. And as a result of that, they're taking on a tremendous burden. They're putting themselves on the front line. They're the people that the
Taliban, that ISIS in Iraq remember first because they're the people who they could speak with most easily and readily.
And they were the ones who are going to be most likely left behind once my unit and others went home. So who do you think you're going to get
revenge on first, the American who's thousands of miles away or the local guy who is assisting them because he believed in the idea of a better
future for his country?
They also afterwards are basically blacklisted. They've now been come to -- especially in Afghanistan -- seen as friends of the occupiers, from
this point, a very indiscriminate Afghan population who's not welcome quite much of the American presence.
And as a result, these guys tell me they can't get jobs, that they can't get basic government services, that the police don't want to protect
them because they say, well you were just actually American informants. We created this problem and the old saying, if you break it, you buy it, well,
I say we own this and it's the right thing to do. I have yet to meet a single person who says, no, to hell with these people. Let's just let them
languish and be killed by our enemies.
HOLMES: Couldn't agree more.
Two seconds: you've got a website. Just say it.
ZELLER: It's nooneleft.org. We need all the help you can send.
HOLMES: It's a terrific website. Matt, I admire you and I respect what you're doing and thank you. Keep doing it.
ZELLER: Thank you so much, my friend, it's a pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: I should add this is a personal issue for many of us here at CNN, who spent much time in Iraq. Our own local staff risking their lives
to work with us; two of whom died doing so. By my count, at seven of them still await visas to leave, their lives still in danger, their
contributions not forgotten.
Well, after a break, moving towards a new future can often be quite puzzling. That's certainly the case with the Chinese New Year where,
despite monumental celebrations, nobody seems to know quite what year it is. We're going to take a look at the confusion surrounding the country's
most important holiday -- after this.
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HOLMES: And finally tonight, imagine a world where you welcome in the New Year only to be unsure exactly what that year is. As China celebrates
a new year of the zodiac, people across the country and indeed the world wondering whether it is the Year of the Sheep or the Goat, perhaps the Ram.
The confusion coming from the Mandarin symbol, yang, which actually encompasses all three creatures as horned animals, if only they had added
one more character and told us which one.
It is a fitting animal analogy regardless for China right now as millions are herded through the country's road and railway stations and
airports. The Lunar New Year sees billions of journeys being made to catch China's biggest holiday in the world's largest human migration, even though
this year is being seen as a bit of a black sheep in some ways.
Classic sheep characteristics of naivete and perhaps weakness caused birth rates to drop as the superstitious parents wait the year out before
procreating. But the sheep does have a vocal defender in the Hong Kong chief executive, CY Leung, who says protesters should act more like that
easily-led animal, unnerving activists who often describe Leung himself as the sheep's natural predator, the wolf.
But hopefully the new year will bring the positive virtues of its kindhearted namesake, whatever horned animal it may actually be.
That's it for our program tonight. Do remember you can always see the whole program online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Twitter, @HolmesCNN.
Thanks for watching and goodbye for now from Atlanta. And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and
Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
END
