For the past year, Rahim Attar has been a Taliban fighter in America. Attar has traveled the country helping the U.S. military with various role-playing exercises designed to prepare soon-to-be-deployed troops for the realities of life on the ground in Afghanistan.

It’s a job the Afghanistan native, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, is proud to have done. Unfortunately, the work has also left a bad taste in his mouth after he said he was duped by a military contractor — Ephraim Logistics Services, based in North Carolina — who hired him and 23 other Afghan men to work as role-players for a training exercise at Dugway Proving Ground in April and May of this year.

“We were there for 35 days,” Attar said. “We lived inside the base and did everything they asked. Now they are denying paying us for the service.”

And Rahim isn’t the one only making his frustrations known. Since finishing work at Dugway on May 27, the Afghan contract employees — hailing from locales like New York City, San Francisco and Boise — kept in contact and are now joining together to tell their story in the hopes of making their voices stronger and ultimately resolving the situation.

“They told us that in one month we would get paid,” said Mohammad Tameemi, a Nashville, Tenn., resident who worked alongside Attar and others at Dugway. “I went to North Carolina last month and tried to visit [Ephraim’s] office, but they don’t have one. Just a P.O. box. I tried to contact the owner, but he never answers. He acts like he doesn’t care.”

Though this is the first time many of the Afghan men said they have worked for this particular contractor, they added they had no reason to believe early on that they would not be compensated for their work, which included spending the day hiding out in mock compounds in the west desert acting like Taliban while waiting to engage Army forces.

Sometimes the encounters produced an exchange of paint-filled rounds from RPGs and AK-47s. Other times the men would act as common Afghan folk lining up at a make-shift clinic set up by military forces to obtain medical treatment. Whatever the scenario, the work was a compilation of long days in the desert followed by nights spent sleeping on cots in a hangar.

One contracted worker was even injured during the exercise and has yet to be compensated for medical expenses incurred as well.

“There was an incident where one of our guys got roughed up,” Attar said. “He broke or fractured his ribs. He was taken to the hospital. [The contractor] said they would take care of the hospital charges. Nobody took care of that problem. He doesn’t speak English and got a large bill from the hospital, and it will ruin his credit. It’s hard to know what to do.”

Before traveling to Dugway for the training, the Afghan men — who learned about Ephraim through a mutual friend — signed an $8,000 contract that promised they would be paid within 30 days of completing their assignment, according to Attar. Attar said the terms were similar to those offered by other contractors he has worked for in the past.

“This has never happened with any other mission,” Attar said, adding that he and his comrades were reimbursed about $2,000 to cover airfare and other travel expenses, but have not been paid the remainder of the $8,000. “They are saying next month, next month, next month. It’s been six months now. It’s like we did this for free and now they are ignoring us.”

Attar said he has tried calling Ephraim multiple times, only to be hung up on or never have his calls returned.

“Initially they said that they hadn’t paid us because the military was refusing to pay them,” Attar said. “If that’s the case, they could send us a letter saying [Ephraim Logistics] screwed up on something. That would be understandable. If it’s a problem between the company and the military, then we should be told, but instead they are lagging and ignoring us. We have certificates of achievement for each person from the military saying we provided outstanding performances and one of the generals even came in and told us he appreciated us. If the military was happy with our service, why would they not pay? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Tameemi said he heard exactly the same excuse from Ephraim, but said it shouldn’t be his responsibility to wrangle the money out of the military if such a claim is true.

“We worked for Ephraim, not the military,” Tameemi said. “We don’t know what the contract agreement was between the military and Ephraim, but I’ve worked for many other companies and never had this happen before. Most of the time within two weeks of finishing work I was sent a check. That’s why we are so confused.”

Attempts to contact officials with Ephraim Logistics by the Transcript-Bulletin over the past several weeks on the non-payment issue were unsuccessful, though the Afghan men say they’re not surprised.

“They stopped answering,” said Ahmad Gul Ahmadi, a Lawrenceville, Ga., resident, who worked at Dugway and has done similar work for various contractors since the summer of 2007. “We did the job very well. The Army was very happy with us, but [the contractor] doesn’t seem to care about us. We feel like we wasted the one month and three days we spent over there and now we don’t know what to do.”

Attempts to contact the military’s 7th Special Forces, based out of Fort Bragg, N.C., who contracted Ephraim Logistics to provide the role players for the training at Dugway, were also unfruitful.

Ahmadi said the matter is especially tough for many of the men he worked with because they don’t speak English well enough to communicate their frustrations and try to find answers.

“We are just trying to find out if we are being scammed by [Ephraim]” Attar said. “They aren’t telling us anything. It’s very suspicious.”

And so Attar and his colleagues will continue to wait, vowing to continue to call Ephraim until the situation gets resolved.

“I don’t regret the service I gave to the military, but we were mistreated by the company and I don’t know what else to do,” Attar said. “We have no one else to turn to.”

Jamie Belnap: jamieb@tooeletranscript.com