As the world watches the Taliban take control of Afghanistan days after the United States ended its 20-year war, a River Forest couple whose diplomat daughter was killed there has been watching and hoping that the work she did was not for nothing.
Tom and Mary Beth Smedinghoff spoke to Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune about their feelings about the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan, site of the nation’s longest-running conflict.
Their daughter, Anne Smedinghoff, 25, was killed along with three U.S. soldiers and an interpreter on April 6, 2013 when a suicide bomber’s car exploded outside the walls of a U.S. military base in Zabul province in southern Afghanistan.
Anne Smedinghoff, a 2005 graduate of Fenwick High School in Oak Park, worked in the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service and was on a U.S. mission to deliver books to a school in Afghanistan.
Now, more than eight years since her death, her parents said they have been watching events unfold in Afghanistan. While they say they are not sure what the right answer is, they are both hopeful that the work of their daughter and other diplomats will live on.
“It’s sometimes hard to watch but we’ve been watching . . . There’s a lot of different viewpoints on whether withdrawing was the right thing to do or whether it was the right thing to do now or whether it was done properly,” Tom Smedinghoff, who works as of counsel at Chicago law firm Locke Lord and is a trustee on the River Forest library board, said.
“There’s also a lot of thoughts that after 20 years of all this aid and training and everything else, if that didn’t work, maybe nothing was going to. I don’t really know,” he said.
He added that his main concern at the moment is the legacy of the work his daughter and others did there.
“When things first started going south, I know in my own mind I was concerned that everything she did would kind of go up in smoke and was it really worth it. But I’m now coming to the realization that she touched a lot of people in a lot of very good ways and those people are still there . . . She did so much while she was there and a large, large part of it was working with the Afghan people, working directly with women and female-owned businesses.
:The government will be different and may not be as friendly, but [the citizens] still have that knowledge and that experience that they received through some of the work that Anne did and I certainly hope that it lives on in some way,” Tom Smedinghoff said.
After his daughter’s death, an Army report came out that criticized the mission Anne was on, saying it was plagued by poor planning that “failed at all levels.” However, a state department spokesman, in an emailed response to Chicago Tribune questions in 2014, said full blame for the incident rests with the attackers. The statement also noted that security for its personnel at war zone military bases is the responsibility of the military.
“The only people responsible for this tragedy were the extremists opposed to the mission,” then-State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said.
On Tuesday, Tom Smedinghoff said the circumstances of his daughter’s death are difficult to talk about.
“That’s difficult. We were able to get a copy of a partially redacted Army report and we met with the Army people and the State Department people. We have not seen the State Department report; we were told that it was classified. We were also told that the FBI was doing an investigation, and I don’t know what happened to that either. The Army report does suggest that some things were not done properly, but from our perspective, it’s like nothing is going to bring her back,” he said.
Since Anne’s death, Tom and Mary Beth Smedinghoff said they’ve developed relationships with many of Anne’s former colleagues and have received several emails over the last few days showing concern.
Asked about the members of Taliban last week who pledged assurances of safe passage to people evacuating Afghanistan and the fact that they also offered vague reassurances to women, both Tom and Mary Beth expressed mild hope.
“I think it’s hard to know. We just know what their past has been,” Mary Beth Smedinghoff said. “We’ll have to see.”
Tom said the fact the Taliban is addressing the issue may be a sign of hope.
“I suppose it’s good that they are a little sensitive to public relations and are willing to say those things,” he said.
Both Tom and Mary Beth said they take comfort in the fact that Anne loved her work, and Tom shared passages from Anne’s request to be sent to Afghanistan.
“After she was killed, and all of her papers were sent back to us, we found a copy of the application that she had to fill out to request to be hosted there. In it, she wrote ‘I take seriously the word service in our job title,’ because she was a foreign service.'”
He continued reading from her letter: ”I want to be sent where I am needed most, where my work has the potential to do the most good.” And then she said, ‘I am especially excited to work in Afghanistan because the challenges of the job require innovative and creative thinking’ and then finally, ‘A post in Kabul would require great sacrifice. This is the reason I joined the Foreign Service — to serve my country the best way I can.'”
Tom and Mary Beth believe their daughter did serve her country with honor and say they are clinging to the belief that her impact will remain with the Afghans that she and other diplomats worked with, even if the overall effort of the U.S. failed.
“We tried to remake the country, I suppose, and at some level it didn’t work, but I cling to the belief that we did a lot of good there,” Tom Smedinghoff said.
Speaking of the hundreds of thousands who received an education because of U.S.-led efforts over the last two decades, Tom added that “I would like to think that people are going to be less inclined to believe things that they’re told now that they have a better understanding of what’s going on.
“I would like to think that Anne’s work was not in vain, that the good she did will last.”
“And the good work that so many others did,” Mary Beth added.
