Camp Gagnon - How This Taliban Hostage ESCAPED After 105 Days

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Former Taliban hostage Safi Rauf talks about how he spent 105 days in a basement in Afghanistan, escaped a refugee camp, and bribed the guards holding him hostage. WELCOME TO CAMP.Go to https://expressvpn.com/gagnon and find out how you can get 3 months of ExpressVPN free!Thanks to Express VPN and Morgan & Morgan for sponsoring today's episode!Mark Gagnon is our HostWill Schwartz is our Content Producer and Lead EditorAce Taylor provides Additional EditingMiles McCreery is our Floor Manag...

Day eight, these guys just come down. They're like, you're going to break your hunger strike. And I was like, no, I'm not. They beat me up, and then they drag me upstairs with my hands tied behind my back. They put me on a chair. And the guy who is the leader of these guys, very frustratingly looks at me. And he's like, look, you are disrupting the peace in the prison. You are making our lives miserable.

Our leadership is, like, freaked out because if anything happens to you, we have to answer to the Americans. This is nothing personal. This is prison. There is rules here, regulations here. You have to eat. And I look up to him because he said, it's not first. And I look up to him and I was like, it wasn't personal before, but you made it personal now.

And in that moment, I could see something breaking inside of him. He didn't say a word after that. This is Safi Raouf. And in 2022, he was captured by the Taliban for 105 days. During that time, he was tortured, beaten, and even went on hunger strike. And today, he's going to explain how he escaped a refugee camp, negotiated his freedom with a smuggled phone, and survived being a Taliban hostage. Now, enjoy one of the craziest stories I've ever heard.

heard. Welcome to camp. Safi. Safi Raouf. Did I pronounce that correctly? Yeah. Nice. Awesome. I've been working on it literally all morning. That was like my morning ritual. I was just in the mirror. Thank you. I said it six times. I expected you to appear. I was very nervous.

I just listened to your conversation with John Stewart and it was amazing. He rightfully called you Batman. Yes. Which I feel like you've really taken upon yourself since that moment. I feel like you're dressing in leather jackets now. Like you got the vibe. It's actually really funny. I have this. ID a badge from 2019. So when pandemic happened, I was part of the Navy component that was deployed to New York. And that operation was called Operation Gotham City. So I have this badge that says Gotham, Operation Gotham City and says my name. And I was like, this is. You were literally

Batman before he called you Batman. I mean, that is awesome. I don't know how he knew. I know. People just know. They just look at you nearly. It's like, it's the vibe. 100%. So I'm really excited to talk. I have been thinking about this for a long time and I've just been reading through your tweets, which are awesome. And I want to talk about, you know, Human First Coalition and all of the work that you're doing and all of that. But I'm curious, we were just talking a little bit before about early life. Yeah. So could you tell me, I just want to start with where you grew up, where you were born in the first like 10 years of your life, what that looks like. Yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's like anybody else's story, you know? I don't think so. I don't think so. I grew in a suburb,

okay? It's very different than your story. So my family, my dad, initially, he was, four of his siblings were killed in a Russian air strike in Afghanistan, which, you know, again, very relevant. And then he was like, I can't just sit down and watch this. So he's, he worked for an international rescue committee. Oh, really? He was doing like activism type of work in Afghanistan. Yeah, in Afghanistan. And he wasn't for having, going and, you know, killing a bunch of Russians or killing just anybody.

So he started smuggling medicine for the freedom fighters that were fighting against the Russians at the time. And then one day he has this huge bag of medicine that he had just procured from his CIA connections. and he's standing waiting for the bus, and all of a sudden a bunch of Russians just surround him and they catch him without all that medicine, and they're like, who's this medicine for? He's like, these are not mine. And then he was taken to, he was in jail for about three and a half months

before he paid off one of the guards, and he kind of snuck out. And then that day, and I mean, he was tortured and all kinds of horrible things were done to him. But then he escaped to Pakistan, and he was there for a year without my mom and siblings. Oh, wow. And then a year later, he snuck back in and took my mom and my siblings, and they went and moved to a refugee camp in Pakistan. Oh, that's why?

So you were alive at this point. You were just very young. No, and that's when I was born. I was born in that refugee camp. Wow. I was born in the refugee camp, and then I did, I kind of grew up, I have a lot of siblings. I have 10 siblings. Oh, cool.

And I was sort of homeschooled through my like initial formative years. Dude, maybe we are the same. I have six siblings and I was also homeschooled. Nice. Basically the same thing. Yeah, honestly. Exactly. You know, I don't see a difference.

No, me neither. So you're in the refugee camp. what is your dad like from that experience of having to be, I guess, like kicked out of Afghanistan at that point? Like, is he jaded towards the Russians? Does he have animosity towards the Afghan government? What is his feeling? I mean, he doesn't, my dad is like, he's really old now and he's the sweetest person you'll ever meet. And the only people that he hates with an absolute passion is to be.

the Russians. Really? He does not have any animosity towards anyone else. Well, it makes sense, right? Like, you see a bunch of people in your family tragically killed by, you know, an armed force that's in your country. You're going to get animosity. Yeah, exactly.

And it was a very tragic death as well because his sister had a child, had just had a child. And what she was doing is when the airstrikes, when they started dropping bombs, she took the kid in her in her lap she took him outside because when they would bomb the houses they collapsed and then people would be stuck underneath it so it's almost safer to be outside to be outside so she went and sat by the wall outside with the baby and while she was feeding the baby breastfeeding the baby that's when a bomb dropped and basically killed her and there were shrapnel's stuck in the baby's head and he was alive for a few days and then he died So it's that kind of horrific things that they were doing at the time.

And that your dad had to see and went through with the people that were closest to him. And your dad has young children at the same time. Exactly. So he's thinking about his own kids. Yeah. And it was, it just isn't fair. Like war is one thing. But historically, the Russians have just been more brutal than,

everyone else. Hmm. And it has been proven time in, time again. Has the current invasion of Ukraine kind of sort of invoked the similar feelings in you and your dad just in recent months? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of strange because at that time, sort of the Ukrainian military was also in Afghanistan at the time. They were part of the Russian army at the time.

So it's sort of like a weird dynamic for my dad to see that the people who are invading Afghanistan are fighting against each other now. Right. So he was being oppressed by both sides and now they're at war with each other. So it creates like probably a convoluted internal feeling of like, oh, this is reminding me of that thing, but also it's different because of, I guess, the geopolitical context. That's fascinating. And did he have to leave Afghanistan or did he make the choice to leave?

he had to leave because most people who were arrested by Russians at the time, they were executed. Eventually they were all executed. Got it. So in fact, when he escaped, he went home and literally he was there for five minutes to say goodbye to my mom and siblings and his dad. And five minutes later, he left and five minutes later, the entire village was surrounded by Russian troops looking for him. Looking for him specifically. Looking for him specifically because they had identified where he lived and his house and all that. And they were looking for him because of his connection to CIA and medicine and trying to support the fighters.

Exactly. And I mean, he escaped from prison. So they were looking for him. Wow. So, okay, so he has to leave. And in Pakistan at the time, they have an open policy to taking Afghan refugees. Is that true? Yeah.

So that was at the time, the, the. borders were wide open and also like Pakistan has 1700 mile border with with Afghanistan right you just can't control the whole thing and historically all of that border has been used from like hundreds of years by different different tribes and conquerors and occupiers and all kinds of people to cross and nobody can control that border it's just there's it's it's very porous and there's a lot of places you you can sneak through. Sure.

So now little baby Safi is born in this refugee camp, just a cute little kid. Yeah. And still cute, by the way. Oh, thanks. And my girlfriend would agree. Okay, I'm glad. And living in this refugee camp,

what is it like to grow up in a refugee camp? I have only like a fictionalized Hollywood version in my mind, but can you explain, like, the day-to-day? Yeah, and every refugee experience is different. It's, there's commonalities. there's a lot of things common between refugees where you are stateless, you have no rights. You, every day, you basically spend your days with packed bags. You don't unpack your bags because no day is certain that you will be allowed to live where you're living at the time.

That's one of the common things. But there is a lot of differences as well. some refugees basically live in the green and white UNHCR tents. However, some refugees who live in that refugee camp and then they remain there for many years, they start building something like start building mud houses, start adding more tents or start renting houses in the nearest neighborhoods. So it's different experiences. It's a lot of the times people kind of...

imagine that refugees are all living in these white and green tents that we have seen on the news or in movies all over, but it's different. So our situation was kind of a mix of all of them. Sometimes we had to live in a camp. Sometimes we could just go rent a house outside in the city. Initially, until fifth grade, I didn't go to school. So I was mostly kind of homeschooled. And then I got into a really good school, and I went to school there for about six years. And who was homeschooling you? It wasn't organized. Right.

It was just a lot of the times I used to read my siblings books. I loved reading books, and I didn't like to read just any books. I liked reading fiction stories. and in a lot of their books I would ask my siblings like, what's a good story I can read? And then they would show me this is a good story and then I would read it. And it was, it's still fascinating to me how I learned to read because there wasn't a organized or way of my siblings or my parents,

somebody like sitting me down and teaching me. Right. And so you just kind of learned to read just through like power of will, just like going through books being like, I'm going to know what this means. I'm going to know this. And that's how I do everything, you know, until this day I pick something up. I'm like, oh, I'm going to learn this.

And you'll learn this, that everything I've done in life so far, some of the most difficult things that people are like, it will blow their mind. And it's just like, I picked it up. And I'm like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to learn it and I'm going to do it. And so what language are you reading it? So my mom speaks Dari and Farsi. Okay. My dad speaks Pashto, and I was reading in Urdu.

Oh, really? So it was a dumble of four languages. What were you speaking at home predominantly? Pashto, predominantly. And Pashto, I guess, is that like a similar Arabic dialect that's found in Afghanistan? No, it's very different. It's actually closer to Hebrew than it is to Arabic. Oh, really?

But then Arabic is close to Hebrew as well. So it's actually older than Arabic. The language is older. It has a much lengthier alphabet. It has 46 letters. Right. And many more sounds. So you're speaking Pashtu growing up, but then you're getting these Ordu books, which is a predominant language in Pakistan.

And then you're just forcing yourself to read in a different language. Yeah. Yeah. And then you go outside and then some people speak Punjabi, some people speak Urdu, some speak Pashtu. Some speak Pashto. So that's one of the things from the refugee camps that I like to blend in. I never. I don't like to be singled out because when you are a refugee, you are persecuted.

And you are always trying to kind of blend in in that environment so that people don't pick on you. And as a kid growing up, that was always my defense mechanism. In school, I never told anybody I was a refugee. Because you're going to school with just regular Pakistani kids. Like a Pakistani. And you don't want to tell them that you're a refugee because then they start calling your names. So that was my motivation to be fluent in all those languages and sound like a native. Right.

And what stories were you reading? Do you remember any of the books that you read that acted as like an escape? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'll, Baba, Aladin, and all of those, some stories that have become, you know, Disney musicals. Right. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. I think a lot of the stories are kind of universal.

So you read a lot of the sort of the same stories. Now, when you're in the refugee camp for the formative parts, you said you're living in tents for a little and then living in, I guess, like regular houses. Like, how did that work? It was also one of the things that the refugees are really kind of targeted in different countries is you basically find a house to rent and then you start renting it. And then the homeowner is basically like, well, the rent, the rent for next month is going to be this much. It could be double of what you guys agree. agreed on. And then you can't say anything. You can't go through the authorities because you're actually not allowed to be living outside the camp with the tents. Wow. So you're you're kind of

living illegally outside this this sort of tent city is dedicated for refugees to live in and you can't go outside this tent to mix with the population and to live out there. So what you do is if the police catches you, you just pay them, you bribe them. And you rent a place for a little bit more than what a local person would pay. But then they take advantage of that, and they are like, okay, next month the rent is going to be double and then triple. So we moved a lot. We moved a lot from place to place. So a lot of the times just if we found a place to rent, we would go live in that or living in the tent city or living in a mud house.

So it was just a lot of different things. And even if we rented a house, it was always two bedrooms and then, you know, 10 siblings. So what would the room look like if you have 10 siblings? Oh, you just all sleep on the floor next to each other. And it's just like a line of just people, bodies laying on the floor. Yeah. That is wild. So you are bouncing around from all these different houses, but consistently at the same school.

And it was a good school. And you were really focused on fitting in. Yeah. I was super I was adamant about fitting in

and I watched a lot of Hollywood movies oh really so it's how I learned English so when I came to the U.S. I once again

could easily fit in but it's the color doesn't help you can pass for Latino though you go to Texas you are just a perfect Mexican bro honestly yeah I mean it's either good

or really bad yeah I guess depends in neighborhood But I mean, did you watch a lot of top gun? Because you got like the leather jacket. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the Navy Reserve. So it's kind of I have to represent. Yeah.

So it's a top gun. Obviously, I grew up, I grew up wanting to be a pilot. Oh, really? A fighter pilot. But when I came to the U.S., I just had a conversation one day with somebody. And I was like, yeah, I want to go and, you know, be a pilot and fly like jets and stuff. And they were like, are you kidding me? You're brown.

Nobody's going to let you fly a $70 million plane. And so it's just like those things that I had to deal with everywhere. Sure. So, okay, how do you go from like, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, Safi to then graduating from the school? And what is like teenage years in the refugee camp? Are you like getting into fights or people picking on you? Do you feel a need to like defend your family's honor? Like how does that work?

I had a lot of responsibilities. When I was 11, my parents left. My parents came to the U.S., and a lot of my older siblings, they had gone places for work, for getting married, in all different kinds of... I have a twin sister, and then I have a younger sister. So the three of us remained in Pakistan for four years. So my teenagers were basically taking care of my two sisters I mean you were 11 years old Yeah

And your family just said hey we gotta go And you gotta be the man of the house Did you, there were no older family Like a cousin that you were staying with No I was I was the oldest male in the house And in those societies and communities It's basically the

Even if you're 11 years old you're at the In charge Wow In the home because Women are not sort of don't have a lot of public life or don't go and do things that, you know, guys mostly do like grocery shopping or paying the bills or dealing with landlords or dealing with electricity. And how did you feel? Your parents sit down with you and they're like, hey, we're going to

go to the United States. I guess they had an opportunity to go and they needed to take it when it came up. It was always understood. As a reference, as a reference, refugee you it's because of the the proximity of everybody in this small house every conversation that is had you are always part of it even if you're not even if they're not talking to you you're just listening in so you always know what's happening even if it's like incredibly major decision or sensitive topics it's all in the open right so I knew that they were, because my sister had immigrated to the U.S. in the 1996, and then she was trying to get my parents.

And she was able to get my parents in 2006. So it took her about 10 years. Wow. And how does she immigrate? She won a lottery. Really? There's a program called the Diversity Visa Lottery. So you basically put your name in a hat.

And if your name comes up, you got a visa to the U.S., immigrant visa to the U.S. Wow. And that's like a golden ticket. It's a golden ticket. So she got that and she came with her husband and family to the U.S. And then in 2000, when you first come, you're just an immigrant. And then about three, four, five years later you get your green card. And then another five years later you get your citizenship. So when you become a citizen, then you can bring the rest of your family over.

Got it. So that's when, and by family, you can. bring your parents, not your siblings or older siblings. You can only bring your parents. So my sister was able to bring my parents. She wasn't able to bring us. And then my parents came and it took them about four years to bring their minor kids. So we came and joined my parents in 2011. I mean, and what is your perception of this place that you're seeing movies from? Your sister's going to, your parents are going to, like what is your perception of the United States at that time when you're just a young kid?

Yeah, it's so funny that every place I go to, I have the full experience. So I come to the U.S. and of all places end up in Omaha, Nebraska. And it's like... Yehaw, baby. Yeah, exactly. And it's just so dark. I come and I enroll in school. How old were you?

I'm 17. Okay. So I'm 17. I enroll in high school sort of halfway through the semester. as a junior and then it's I go to school for about two months. And how do you feel when you're on the airplane? Like you're sitting there. First time on a plane.

First time on a plane. It's just so, we're so excited because finally we can go to a place where we're not illegal. We're not just there and kind of fearing every day. what is going to happen to us. So for the first time, I'm feeling really good. And of course, everybody makes America this, like, amazing, beautiful place. Like, all you see is Los Angeles, New York, and all the big cities. But then you end up in Omaha, Nebraska, and especially in the winter.

And you see it's all white, the entire state is white. So I start school, go for winter breaks, come back from winter break, and first day back from winter break, one of the kids shoots the principal. What? So full American experience. What? Yeah. So we come from this war-torn country to America. Like finally I'm safe.

No more weapons. First day back to school, the kid shoots the principal and the white. vice principal and the vice principal dies and the principal is in hospital and the school is on lockdown and then each one of us is escorted by SWAT team out of our classrooms and my parents are waiting for us across the street in a church. Oh my god. So my dad works in this company for it's a meat packaging company Tyson Foods and he sees this on the news and he's like, he goes home, gets my mom, and comes in outside the school. All the parents were waiting across the street in the church.

So it was, that was my first experience of America. It's so bizarre. Why did he shoot everyone? Why did he shoot the principal? They had some dispute? Yeah, some, some, the, he was suspended from school and then he was pissed off. He went home, grabbed his dad's gun, and came and shot the principal and vice principal. What the fuck?

Yeah. So fast forward, I graduate from high school. Well, first, I'm curious, how was high school? Like, after that, obviously, that's a crazy way to start. But, like, you have a whole year and a half to graduate? Yeah, about a year and a half to graduate. And how are you treated when you get there? Do you feel like you're fitting in?

Are you there with your sister also? Yes, my twin sister were both in the same grade. It's a mixed bag. It's some experiences are really good, incredible teachers. They all love me. I'm sort of a teacher's pet. So they all love me and I'm getting along. And so in South Asian cultures, you do you really respect your elders and your teachers.

They're like. Yeah, you would never shoot them. Yeah, exactly. That's never. You don't do that. You treat them like your parents. It's extremely rude to shoot your teacher. It's just, you know, I don't know how, how dare.

So I had an incredible experience in high school. There were one-off, like, somebody wrote on the board that Safi is a terrorist. So this is those one-off experiences, but that's just... And what years is this roughly the year, like, in high school in Nebraska? 2012, 11-12. Okay. Yeah, 2011. I graduated in 2012, so 11 through 12.

And how was your sister's experience? Was it similar to yours? So I was more Americanized and fitting in better than... they were. You're a chameleon. Yeah, exactly. So I was fitting in and I was, you know, making friends and teachers were liking me. They were not as much. They, they were more still kind of traditional reserved. And I mean, they were doing incredibly as their grades in progress goes, but they were still struggling to kind of get used to the culture. And socially acclimate. Yeah. Did you play any sports or get involved in like extracurricular things? There wasn't.

I was a nerd. So I was in the chess club. I was in science club, chemistry club. Are you good at chess? I'm okay at chess. Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay at chess. So I was in the chess club.

I was in science club. And did you feel a sense, I know a lot of immigrants, obviously, will feel a sense of pressure where they're like, okay, I'm here, I have this opportunity, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to go hard on my studies and whatever and I'm going to be a great student for that reason because I have this great opportunity. Did you feel that same sense of responsibility? Absolutely. Okay.

I thought I had to do everything. I took every opportunity. I took all AP classes. I worked my butt off. I had a job. And I remember I was in regular U.S. history class. And the teacher saw me and he's like, she's like, Savvy, what are you doing in this class?

This is way below your level. And she went to the counselor and she basically told the counselor that I knew way more to be in a regular U.S. history class. And she put me in an AP U.S. history class. Oh, cool. So, and I mean, I had learned some U.S. history, but not a lot. And APUS history was tough. Yeah.

But that was the toughest class I had. Oh, wow. Because I learned English from Hollywood. So I kind of wrote like that as well and read like that as well. Oh, funny. So it's not, I didn't like learn to read and write. So I was sort of doing the same thing. But then I had phenomenal teachers.

They worked really hard. And just a side note, Dr. Biden, who was my English teacher in college. So a lot of credit goes to her in some of my writings. Oh, that's wild. And did you feel like your school in Pakistan, like, prepared you for this American high school? or was it your own personal studies that got you to the point where you were able to acclimate and excel in the school? It was a long journey. Yeah.

It was a really long journey. It had to do a lot of learning. And I continue to do. Like it's, it just happens. I kind of sometimes mix Vs and Ws. So I don't say, instead of Vs, I say Ws. And then instead of Ws, I say Vs. So I have to catch myself every time.

And my girlfriend makes fun of me. Oh, funny. All the time. And then I tell her I speak six languages. So it's kind of like a sick burn. Yeah. But I still catch myself. And that's multi, you know, multilingual.

They always have to continue to work on their languages because it's just so much vocabulary that, you know, I was about to say vocabulary. Vocabulary. So you go through this awesome transformation. So you go from this refugee camp in Pakistan, come to America. acclimate really well, get fit in, you're in all these clubs, academically performing really well, you're about to graduate. What is your mindset when you're graduating? Like, what are you thinking, oh, I'm going to do this? Is the pilot dream still on the table? Like, what are you thinking?

Yeah. So I got into really good schools. I got into U.S. Chicago and I got into MIT. Oh, really? Yeah, I got into really, really good schools. And what was that attribute? Did you just, like, kill the SAT? Like, obviously, you're brilliant, but was it grades? Was it SAT? Was it your former refugee status that helped the story? Yeah, honestly, it was a mixture of everything. It's if you have a platform and a story, if you use it the right way, you'll get into a lot of places. So it was a little bit of both.

So I had, you know, I had the options to choose from any school I wanted to go to. Wow. And I had, I didn't take any regular high school classes, my senior year. all my classes were AP AP physics chemistry calculus and APUS history so all these classes really excelled me and then I did really well on the ACTs but I think what helped me the most was also using my story and using my platform visly right visly that's so cool so what's cool did you end up picking I didn't go to school. Come on, Sophie.

This is the whole point, dude. You come here, you get all these offers. You go to MIT. So I come here and I see and I almost always I put other people ahead of me. And I see my parents and they're struggling. And they have sacrificed everything for us. And I decide to help them. So I take a job and the job takes me back to Afghanistan with the U.S. Special Operations.

So, and supporting my sisters through school. So I go back to Afghanistan working with J-Socq as a cultural advisor and linguist. What is J-Soc? Joint Special Operations Command. Got it. So it's like your Navy Sealed and Cag and Rangers. And how do you get connected with that in the first place? So I wanted to, like the pilot dream was still on board and I was thinking going into the Air Force.

And then I meet the recruiter and the recruiter is like, you speak six languages. I want you to talk to this other guy. And so I talked to this other guy. He gives me tests. And I take the test and I ace four languages. Four languages that are critical. they are like they really really need those. And I was uniquely qualified

because these small teams, these small special operations teams that are some of the most elite US military, they want to have people that if you embed with them, they don't want to have four additional people because they're so small and they want to be small like that. They don't want to have four additional people just for languages,

while they could just have one, it saves room on helicopters. It saves room on when they go for missions. It saves room on. And also, like, there's not four people privy to their secrets. So potentially millions of dollars and the health of the missions dependent on whether it's one person or five people.

Exactly. So I ace all these languages. So I ace four languages in addition to English. So five languages that they can use me for. So I graduate on May 24th. I turn 18 on May 25th. I get my secret clearance on May 26th. Wow.

And I get my clearance. And I don't know anything at this point. I just took tests. And they're like, okay, you're going to North Carolina. So. And how do you feel? Are you excited? You know, on the one hand, you've been looking at this country through movies your whole life.

And now all of a sudden you're working with the government and like a really valuable asset and they probably make you feel special. How do you feel on the inside? What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I need to tell you how you can access every single show available on Netflix. Here's the problem. Different Netflix's in different countries have different shows. That's right. I like to watch Brooklyn 9-9. It's one of my favorite shows, but I can't watch it on Netflix in the United States. I got to go to a different streaming service. I got to get like 10 different streaming services just to watch the shows that I want. But I can use ExpressVPN servers trick Netflix into thinking that I'm actually

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free, zero dollars, three months, go to ExpressVPN.com slash Gagnon. That's right, ExpressVPN.com slash Gagin-O-N or click the link in the description below. It's the VPN that I use, is the VPN that you should use. Now let's get back to the show. You know, if you've seen one of those, you know, movies about secret agents where they don't tell you, And they just come and they tell you what you need to know at the time. So initially when I met them, they're like, okay, take this test. I take the test.

They don't tell me what's going to happen after the test. So I take the test. Then they're like, okay, you did well on the test. Now you're going to fill these forms so you can get your clearance. And I fill the forms. It's like 40 pages long form that you basically pick your entire life, whatever, everything where you've been. I fill that and they don't tell you what's going to happen next.

And then they're like, okay, well, you're going to North Carolina. They don't tell you what's going to happen in North Carolina. You go to North Carolina. You end up in this base in the middle of nowhere. Fateville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg. That's where J-Slock headquarters is. So I end up there. And even then, I don't know what I'm doing.

This is like your third time on an airplane now? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So I go there and. They don't tell you, you just take a bunch of interviews, a bunch of tests, a bunch of physical tests. They fit test you. And then they're like, okay, you're going to Afghanistan.

And they don't tell you what you're doing in Afghanistan. So they put you on a plane. You end up in Afghanistan. You are in Bagam. What kind of plane do they put you on? Is it a regular airplane? Is it a military plane? So until, so they put you on a regular commercial plane until Dubai.

And then from Dubai. you take a contracted defense contracted plane to the base so you end up on Bagram and then on what are you wearing what do you pack with you they give you all of your gear okay you get everything okay so you get all your military gear and then you you go to Bagram and there you end up on a small compound and you don't even know what it is but later you find out it's the most secretive organizations in the United States military. So how do you feel?

You're 18 years old, you've been in America for a year and a half, and all of a sudden, now you're back in Afghanistan. Really, you haven't even been in Afghanistan that much. So now you're in this country that you're ethnically a part of, but you haven't even really lived in. Yeah. How do you feel? It's a surreal feeling, but again, all I'm doing is fitting in.

I'm like, I go everywhere. I'm like, yeah, I've done this before. This is what I've born to do. Like, I've always done this. On the outside, but on the inside, how do you feel? Yeah, the inside is like so nervous. Oh, really? It's like, um, I, you know, a lot of the times it's, uh, when you grow up in a refugee camp,

when you deal with so much shit, then you just, the feelings just kind of disappear. It's like you shove it down, you shove it down so deep that it's just like not there. Being uncomfortable is normal for you. Absolutely. Like it's, I'm, I'm always uncomfortable. And if, if I'm comfortable, it's something's wrong. That's when you're actually uncomfortable. If you're on a beach drinking my tithes, you're like, uh-oh, something's bad.

Something's bad. And just to back up, your parents, you had mentioned that they were struggling. So how was their experience transitioning to America? Because by the time you got there, they had already been there for a few years. How were they fitting into Nebraska? Yeah, so they don't speak the language. They have to, at this point, they're 70. And your dad's still working.

My dad is still working. And they have to leave everything that they have known for their entire life. start all over again, everything. And that's scary. Especially at that age. It's impossible for many people. Yeah. And I mean, my parents even able to do that much is kind of extraordinary.

You just, you know, you take a 70-year-old American and you take everything from them, like just the clothes on their back. And you take them and put them in the middle of nowhere. and you see them how they do. Like, raise a family. Yeah, they'll get angry. They'll get jaded. Yeah, it's like a reality show almost, right?

Like, just throw them in the middle of, but it's not for a month. It's for a lifetime. Right. So you kind of have to forget from where you come from. Because you never know whether you're ever going to go back. My dad has never been back since he's here. So it's just kind of like. Like, it's, you are eternally attached to that country.

But due to circumstances, you can never go back. And you're saying he's attached to Afghanistan. Yeah. Did he like Pakistan? Oh, I hate it. Oh, really? It continues to hate it. It's the discrimination that happens in Pakistan against refugees is just unimaginable.

Like, it's just, it's the, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, use derogatory words, they treat you like a second-class citizen. Right, you have no rights. You have no rights. You have no access to health care. You have no access to education. You have no access to food. All the food that comes from is your NHCR trucks.

And if your NHCR trucks don't show up, you don't have food. Yeah, and I guess for a kid, maybe it's a little bit easier because you're malleable. You don't know anything. You're just kind of, this is what life is. But when you're a grown man trying to raise and support your family, it must be very emasculating to live in a house. and then all of a sudden some guy goes, I'm doubling the rent.

Yeah. And you go, like, I have nothing. Yeah. And the pride that's hurt in the process. I remember so many people like stole money from my dad just because. And also like you get a new, you get a house. You pay a deposit, security deposit. And then they tell you, well, you have to pay the rent in advance.

So you have to pay the rent in advance and you pay security. And then when a month. later they tell you that the rent is double now if you leave you don't get your deposit back yeah so oh my yeah i remember so many people stole so much money from my dad and um my family and just got away with it wow and then not only did he have to restart his life when he goes to pakistan and goes to the refugee camp and that's not great you're still you know there's prejudice everything like that then in your older age you go to nebraska which now you're a citizen you're legal or not a citizen but you're legal At that point, they were citizens, right?

Yeah, so my parents became citizen. Well, they were, when they initially came, they were permanent resident, which is pretty much your legal. You can do everything. But then they became citizens in 2012. So it's amazing, but then at the same time, you're still restarting. There's probably not really any Afghans in Omaha. You still don't know English. You still can't communicate with everything.

So you're isolated. You can only talk to your wife and your kids. And if you had an amazing job in Afghanistan or Pakistan, you come to America and you have to do, you know, food packing or something like that. Exactly. It's emasculating again. It's another level of frustration. I mean, my dad really prides himself on working really hard and providing for his family. And he continues to work.

He's 76 years old. Wow. And he continues to work. Bad ass. Yeah. And he really loves working because he's saying that the day he stops working, it's basically like he, it's sort of a way of staying young for him. But my mom is struggling with. lot of health problems.

She just had a heart attack and then she had really bad knees. And she's struggling going to work every day. And I basically told her, I was like, you're going to quit your job and I'm going to go work and support you guys. Got it. And it was now, in retrospect, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because so I end up, I go to Bagram and then from Bagram, they put me on another military plane to this outpost in the middle of nowhere. And I go there and I am there for a month

getting trained on the field. And then a month later, I find myself with a task force. And basically, we're doing nighttime operations. So I'm going on these night rates where like some of the most secretive missions in the world. Like, I was part of one of the most elite U.S. Special Operations Task Force. And, like, still to this day, they are not known that they exist. So I'm part of this team, and I'm only a teen. And the next youngest person on the team is 30. Wow.

So there is this gap, but they see, they look at, and again, I'm a chameleon. I kind of blend in. I grow my beard. I grow my hair. And I like just blend in. And they see, they look at my potential that I can switch between languages like that. And they can take me everywhere.

Right. Before I got there, they had five linguists. When I got there, they only needed me. So they save. So one of those Black Hawk helicopters, you can only fit six people on each helicopter. And then the team. consisted of about 30 guys. And so they saved one helicopter because of me.

And the fuel and the risk and all of that. I couldn't imagine how valuable it is. Exactly. So they get me and, you know, and this team is sort of self-sufficient because, so they have the, they have radio guys, they have PJs, they have medics, they have a, they have a PA. So all of these guys, they are the. So the 20 guys are the shooters.

Those are basically the infantry guys. And then the other 10 are specialists in different fields like interrogation, Intel, collection, PJs, medics, PAs, even surgeons, and pilots. And then these 20 guys. So when they usually take about four helicopters to go on. on a mission. Now, if you can save one helicopter to go out on a mission, over like thousands of mission, you're saving thousand trips of one entire helicopter. So I'm like, and I'm the most valuable member of the team because the 20 guys who are shooting, anybody can replace them

with like somebody who's good at a good infantry soldier. There's a lot of people good at shooting. Yeah, a lot of people are good infantry soldiers. There's very few people that speak those specific five languages. Yeah, so I become one of the most valuable part of this team. And, you know, And they take me in as, and all these guys have kids that are as old as me. Right, yeah. So they look at me as their kid, but also like I am, and I'm always the second person on target. And that's because I'm right behind the team lead because as soon as he breaches the door, I have to speak to the people. So I have to tell them to raise their head, like hold their hands, show their hands, drop their weapons.

Do you have a weapon also? Yes. sometimes I do sometimes I don't but it's like just like but I got like trained on the field and everything so so I go there and I became really really good at it what was that first raid like what happened I had never used night vision goggles before and they just fit me the like the before the mission and I put on the night gobble and that night vision goggles. And so when you're on a helicopter, the lights are still on in a helicopter. And when you are in a ready kit room, still have the lights on. But then we get off the helicopter in its

pitch black. And you bring the knots down and you can see like it's all green. And it's just out of this world experience. Like you can see everything. Wow. And it's quite It's like pin drop, quiet. And it's this open, we landed in a field. And it's open all. And it's the fields were freshly watered. So we landed in like mud. And then you are like walking in mud, like pulling your feet.

And you're wearing, you easily wear an additional 70 to 80 pounds, body armor, kit, everything else. You're walking and it's just, I was really skinny. I weighed about 130 pounds at the time. And so one of the things that the team leader told me is like, you know, just you come back from mission, you just debrief everybody, and then you go to the gym with us and you work out with us, you eat with us, you drink with us, and you're part of us. of the team. And so I started hitting the gym and I gained 40 pounds of just just muscle and I'm like

shredded and just best shape of my life. Do you feel connected to the other guys in your unit? Oh, absolutely. This is like you feel like these are, is that the closest? We're all living together and it's just one like big family. Up until that point, is that the closest that you have felt with other people in that way? Yeah, absolutely. Because I had never lived with other people or had the time to actually spend time with other people to go to movies. Other than your family, of course. Yeah, exactly. My family, that's the only people I felt closest to.

And initially, I'm just like basically like just translating things, but they start giving me like more responsibilities. They train me with other things. They start training me with interrogation and Intel. So on target, I go and as soon as the target is secure, the first thing I do is start asking questions from all the guys. Wow. And it's from some times that meant getting more people, saving the mission, getting real-time information that could be used on target for different things. For example, where are the weapons?

Or if we were looking for a specific guy and he wasn't there, where is this guy? and trying different methods to kind of find out because you just have to learn how to get information from them. And then later down the road did some undercover missions and being on those missions. And then I was route planning for them and just which routes we were supposed to take. And then we go to Kabul. And in Kabul, I'm like planning all of these missions for them and recruiting people. kind of running sources and gathering information about enemy networks. And is this your first time in Kabul?

First time in Kabul. Wow. So I had never been before. I was born in Pakistan. Right. What is the scariest moment that you had while you're 18 working with these guys? Like what are the things that are happening that you remember now still where you're like, wow, that could have gone really bad?

Oh, almost getting shot. like because so we went on a mission and we kind of like we landed on the target and the target is this guy trying to escape on a motorcycle with another guy on the back of the motorcycle and they're both running and we landed on the highway the helicopters and we surrounded him like an L shape and I'm so the rule at the time that we had to abide by was that we had to ask him to show his hands we couldn't shoot him until he shot at us so that was sort of the the Geneva Convention rules that we had to abide by because if somebody's not shooting at you and if you can't see a weapon on them yeah you can just be gone shoot them or even if they have a weapon you have to

ask them to drop the weapon right so he's covering he's covered in a shawl and And he gets off, we land, he gets off the motorcycle, and I'm asking him to, so ask him, let me see your hand. And we're like 10 meters apart. And he can see me, I can see him. And I'm like, let me see your hands. And he's like, not budging. And I tell him again, let me see your hands.

And what was interesting in this mission as well is we usually did nighttime operations. We did all our missions in nighttime. This one was during the day because he was trying to escape. So we got the we got a We got a hint we got a report from somebody that this Top level Taliban commander was in This village and he was leaving we were planning on going to get him at night But he was gonna leave and go back to Pakistan

So we basically like just go and he leaves and we are following him on it with a helicopter he's on a port cycle during the day and I ask him once it's like let me see your hands and he doesn't budge ask him again let me see your hands and I'm almost about to ask him for the third time is when it's like he just sprays with his AK-47 under his shawl and one of my teammates just grabs me by the my body armor and like ducts me down because I was standing and we duck and then I look up and he's gone. So there were other similar times. Whatever happened to him.

Did you catch him? Oh, he's gone by that. I mean he was like just completely obliterated. He's gone. I understand. This is more, does military speak? Yeah, yeah.

I need a translator for military. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's, these guys are like they can shoot with one hand from. 300 meters in the middle of the ice. So the second he starts shooting at you guys, he were able to compromise. He was gone.

Nobody got hurt. Wow. And I'm curious, at this point, what is your perception of the Taliban? So, like, did your parents talk about the Taliban growing up? Like, when you were a kid growing up in Pakistan on the refugee camp, what did you think of this group? So my family was always moderate, modern, educated.

Most of them lived in foreign countries. in Western countries, America, and we were always against any kind of violence and against the Taliban because what they were doing and other terrorists, what they were doing is killing innocent people. There, the war was not fair. They were not targeting military.

They were not going out there and on the open field fighting against military. They were going and bombing schools. They were bombing hospitals. They were bombing. mosques and places of worship and they weren't going and you know fighting in the open field against the military or so that was incredibly clear to us that they were not the right people and again it was being in that place was sort of out of necessity but

Also, I learned so many valuable lessons from those people. They were so, so, such a diverse group of people as well. It was like, because everybody was recruited because they were good. Everybody was recruited because they were good at something. Right. You were dealing with A-Team guys. Yeah. So this is hand-selected from across a broad group.

Were there other people in your similar situation in your unit, like former refugees or Afghans that were displaced? No, I was, because all of the other guys that were working with them, some of them were local. So these were the local interpreters. And then when I got there, they won because for sensitivity of a lot of the missions that we were doing, and I had clearance. So I was able to basically become part of the team. Everyone else that had been with them before, it was sort of like when they needed them, they would just call them and grab them and take them. and then basically like they would come back and, you know, get rid of them, release them. It wasn't part of the team or work.

So, but I became part of the team in for the next four years. I stayed with them and it was part of thousands, thousands of very, sometimes really boring missions, but sometimes really interesting missions. Was that all four years, all in one deployment? You stayed there for four years straight or did you come back to the U.S.? Sort of, I only came on. leave for a month. But I stayed there for the entire time for all four years. And what was the most like rewarding or satisfying mission that you did in that four year run?

Was there something that you did that you were like, wow, I'm really proud of this specifically. The stakes of this were really high. Yes. So this one specific mission that, you know, it's still and I had a huge part in it was and I actually did it with the Australian SAS. So what happened was this guard in Oruzgan, southern Afghanistan, had killed Australian soldiers. He was a guard for the Australians, and then he turned on the Australians and basically shot his counterparts. Wow. And when he shot them, he ran away and went to Pakistan. So he went to Pakistan, and two years later, he shows up in our AO, the area of operations.

and we are there and we get the information from our sources on the ground. We are in northern Afghanistan. The Australian SAS is in southern Afghanistan. So we call the Australian guys and we're like, hey, you know, this guy, he's out here. And they send a team. They send their own Australian SAS team. It's about seven and eight guys. And they embed with our team.

So we go on this mission to this house and we surround this house. I go in with the team member. I start asking questions from all the homeowners. It's like, we're looking for this guy. Do you guys know anything about this guy? And everybody's like, no, we don't know. We don't know where he is. It's just they're confused.

They're like, we don't know who this guy is. Nobody knows. Is the guy Afghan or is he Australian? He's Afghan. Okay. He's out. But they had hired him to be a guard at their fob. Got it.

And then he just turned in, you know, shot those guys. So I'm asking these guys, it's where is he? Nobody knows him, actually. So I have to, like, kind of improvise and do things differently. So I go start talking to the children and I'm like, hey, you know, oftentimes I would have, you know, toys or candy or something. I'll give it to the kids to just bribe them a little bit. So I'm asking them.

I was like, do you guys know if anybody who has recently, you know, come from foreign country somewhere? They're like, one kid is like, oh, yeah, the kid, the guy in that house, he just came from Pakistan with, you know, he only has like an older dad and a young sister and there's no one else in the house. He just came from back then. And that's when I was like, I tell the team, I was like, and whenever we found the, I was like, Jackpot is in that house.

over there. And I asked the kid, is like, show me. So the kid shows me where the house is. So we goes around the house. And at this time, it's kind of, because the helicopters came in, it took a little bit of time. So some of the houses had already woken up. And that guy had already woken up. So it wasn't the, the element of surprise was gone at this point. Right. So we go in, something we call CQB is when you go from room to room. And, clear each room. So we go into this house. I call everybody to come out of the house. Nobody does. So now what we have to do is clear each room one by one. So we clear the first room, second room. We go into the third room and there's this guy on his knees and he's holding his

hands. He has his hands in the back. And so I yell at him and like, show me your hands. show me her he again i say the second time show me your hands and he like shows his hands and just like hollywood movies he has a grenade in his hands he takes out the pin from the grenade and i'm like landslide so whenever there's like going to be an explosion or something that's or kind of cue for everybody to kind of like duck cover run whatever so i'm just like landslide landslide landlide and everybody just uh covers for and like runs for their life And the grenade explodes and luckily nobody got hurt, but he dies and he catches on fire. And he like basically burned.

Whoa. And for whatever reason, it's like he completely like the entire place caught on fire. And then so there's a lot of funny things that happen on missions as well. I wouldn't describe it. That's how you're going to pivot. Yeah, but it was the funny thing that happened was the dog handler, because we have to send the dog now to see if there's any explosives. So we send the dog and the dog goes and he comes back with a guy's dick in his mouth.

What? So I'm just like, what the fuck? This dog is insane. So later I asked the dog, and I was like, why did he grab his dick? He's like, well, the dogs are trained. that anything that moves they grab onto. So he's like his dick might have been moving at the time, twitching or something. And he like just ripped off his dick and came back with his dick.

Got a bone. That is crazy. Yeah. And how did the Australian guys feel about the mission? Like obviously. They were so grateful to me. Like later when we went back to, because usually our missions lasted only like two hours to maximum two hours.

It's like go in, get the target and come back. So we came back, we were in the chow hall eating, and they all came in, like, thanked me. Yeah. Because, you know, I was able to find the guy on target. And that was my value to the team because a lot of the times, if we went to the wrong target, the only way we could find what the right target was to talk to the people. Right. So not only you're translating, you're also doing some investigation.

And do you feel like they implicitly trust you more because you are ethnically Afghan? Like you're not some blue-eyed, you know, Australian guy being like, oh, where's our mate? We go to find someone. Like, do you think they see you? And they go, oh, we can trust you. You speak our language. You look like us.

Yeah. And I mean, it was kind of, you have to relate to these people. And you just, because they're scared as well. Like somebody came in the middle of the night and dragged you out of your house and was asking you questions. You would just be like, the fuck. Some of these people were dazed. Yeah.

Like, it was just absolutely insane. And you're asking them questions. So you just have to be very empathetic and understand. Because what I took my job as is not only because I was helping our military, but I was also trying to bridge the gap and build trust. and in the process save lives because if these soldiers go out there and they're angry and scared and just dragging these people that they can't speak to

can't relate to are not related to them or anything can go wrong but when I'm in the middle I go and I'm like okay let me talk to them Like a lot of the times, one of the things that I was doing as well is kind of going out there and building trust, but at the same time, kind of giving the people some relief as well, because on that side, they also felt relieved when they saw somebody who could communicate between them and. and the white people.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Did you ever feel like guilt at all during this process that like you're meeting people and they don't want this war to be happening? Like you're empathizing and you're seeing the humanity in them in a different way. I think a lot of times like, you know, a white English speaking infantry person won't have the same emotional connection to some of these people, not necessarily the bad guys, but some of the people that are innocent bystanders like these kids that you're talking to.

Do you deal with the emotional burden of those conversations also? And how did you cope with that? Yeah, absolutely. it's a lot of the times you go there and you are also because when the the family comes out they look like you they're brown they're same ethnicity same they speak the same language uh sometimes it's women sometimes it's children sometimes it's older women that look like your mom some some women look like your sister so it's it's just like that but you have to justify it's some way and And for me to be bringing all these people out of their safety of their homes was for a reason.

And the reason was so that we don't have to, they don't have to be sacrificed in the crossfire. I'm saving these people's lives because when I call out and be like, hey, everybody come out of the house. We're not just storming the house and, you know, killing everybody in our path. We are looking for somebody and our information is incredibly good. We don't act on sources that are shady or we don't act on information that's just from a single source. We have to verify it from many different sources. We are employing all kinds of technology to make sure that we are going after the ripe people. And when we go there, naturally, there are going to.

to be women and children in the way. So my job is more to protect those people than harm all of them. And a lot of the times I didn't take a weapon. I went open-handed without a weapon and went and spoke to them, just so that they're not scared of me. Sure.

I mean, that is incredibly brave. So walk into a house without a weapon. Yeah, exactly. Let's just talk. Let's just use our words. And that's what I, and what I'm great, for to the team as well is they treated me like the like in that field they treated me they

gave me a full authority they gave me they treated me like the expert that was there to to do that part of the job and I had full authority there and in the process I saved lives and that that's how I have to justify it right because those terrorists, they're cowards and they hide behind women, they hide behind children, they hide in homes. So for me to

go and basically be able to save those children means a lot to the mission and to myself. That being said, it's not that nobody that was innocent got killed. Like there were innocent people that

did get killed. But not as many as it would have if somebody like me was not there. Right. Kind of watching that part. Of course. But, you know, there's war is ugly, war is not fair, war is. Yeah, it's an evil thing.

Yeah, it's the most evil that you can see because it's just everything is fair. And everybody is trying to protect themselves. and if you don't kill the enemy, the enemy is going to kill you. I've heard people say that. I've heard people say, oh, war is hell. And then people say, no, war is worse than hell. Because in hell, there's no innocent people. But in war, there's innocent people.

There's a lot of innocent people. In fact, the innocent people are the ones that are most vulnerable and easy to get in the way of getting killed. Yeah, we've been to targets where they were just hiding in, the houses. We went to a target where we started like getting, because a lot of

the women covered themselves a lot in that culture. So we are getting the children out of the compound. And children, children, women, women. Behind the woman, somebody in women's clothes

and covered doesn't quite look right because of the build and body and all. all of that, the height, it just doesn't look. And stop him and it's like, what's your name? And they're one of the terrorists trying to, you know, blend in and escape as a woman.

Wow. So things like that. They're cowards. They don't play fair. They try to shield themselves with children, women, and innocent elderly. So that was basically my job there. So at this point, you do this for four years and then you leave. Yeah, I come back to the U.S.

And what prompted you to leave? It was sort of the time. The team I was working with at the time, it got redeployed to Syria. And I just, I was like, I think it's time for me to. My job is done. Yeah. So you come back to the States. At this point, you're sending money, I guess, back to your family

Yeah, so I paid my parents' house off. My mom quit her job. My sisters are graduated at the time. That's great. My sister's finished college. I come back and I enroll in college. I went to Georgetown and then, you know, just peaceful. I also go into the Navy Reserves as a corpsman, which is a medic in the Navy.

So I'm doing that and just going to school, just living the suburban life. was that transition? Was it nice or was it kind of anxiety-inducing? I know you prefer discomfort. So I wonder going from tight camaraderie with your best friends and your family basically overseas, fighting, to then going to a little college in a suburb. How does that feel? It was very difficult because you know you're at the peak of what you're doing. It's like at the top level. The highest stakes, the highest purpose, a lot of pride. Yeah, and you're working with the best of the best. and now you have to come back and start from zero. Because one, you can't tell anybody of what you did, and the skills are not transferable.

So you have to start from zero. Right. Scratch. And so I applied to college, and I got into Georgetown. So I started pre-med. One thing, because before that, I wanted to do engineering, but after this experience, I came back, and I was like, I want to go into medical. And I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. I wanted to be a field trauma surgeon with the military.

Oh, wow. So I wanted to go back into the Navy and just, I saw a lot of guys in the field who were saving valuable lives on the ground, including, like, treating the local population, treating our soldiers that were getting injured. So I wanted to go back and do that. So I went to pre-med at Georgetown University. Went there for three years. graduated in 2021, got into medical school at University of Nebraska, where my family lives still in Omaha, so kind of wanted to be close to my family again. And then August of 2021, when I'm about to start my classes at University of Nebraska in Omaha, Afghanistan Falls, and all of a sudden,

all of the people that I had known on the ground that had worked for us, that had provided us with information, with intel, with sources, translators, people that were providing us food, supplying food, everything. Our cooks, janitors, guards, all of their lives are in danger. They all started calling me. And I had built a reputation in Afghanistan. They used to call me the shadow governor of Kabul. The shadow governor.

Yeah. So I knew everybody in the town. And I knew people all over Afghanistan. I had built these networks and I could easily use all of them to save these people. And I had a choice between going to school, medical school, that's always been my dream or helping these people. So once again, I chose to help these people. Right. This is the same choice you had when you're graduating college.

Like, do I go to MIT and chill in Boston, go to school, party a little? Yeah. Or do I help my family? Do I help the country? Exactly. So I chose to help these people. And where were you the day you found out that U.S. troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan? And what was going through your mind?

Were you angry? Were you scared? I mean, I was always in favor of withdrawal. Oh, really? Because another 20 years and the results wouldn't have been any different because it's just the war was just not going anywhere. It was just, you know, innocent people's lives were being affected by it. And we just didn't have a goal. We just didn't know what we were doing there.

And it wasn't going anywhere. And as somebody who is in the military, I didn't want for us to keep sending our troops out there. Right. There needed to be it. It was our longest war and there needed to be an end somehow. It could have been done differently. It could have been done much better. But it needed to be done.

It wasn't a choice between, oh, if we had stayed another six months or another year, things would have turned out differently. It wouldn't have turned out. Right. So it's not the decision. It's just the way it was carried out. Exactly. So I was in Arlington, Virginia.

My brother was in Kabul at this time. he was back there running a Coca-Cola factory. So I call him three days before the fall. That's like, the fuck you're doing there. We were seeing all over the news that, you know, that places, things are not looking good. He's like, oh, everything's fine. You know, outside, everything, nothing's out of the ordinary. And I was like, yeah, you just need to leave.

So he got his ticket for like two days later. and he got on a plane his plane landed in Dallas Virginia I went to pick him up at the airport and I'm like so did you hear the news he's like what news it's like Kabul fell Taliban took over he's like what so he was on a plane he didn't know that it had

happened so he came and he also had a major there were about 600 people working for him so these 600 people were all really smart people. So we put about a hundred of those people to work to start rallying people, start gathering people. We built our network from ground up and started evacuating people. And how are you evacuating people? How does how does that work? It's I haven't I've never talked about this before but so what happened at the airport was there we didn't have military on the ground.

State Department was kind of screwed. They had no plan to exit. The airport got run over by the people. So nobody has a plan of what to do. How to clear the airport, how to secure the airport, and how to start evacuating Americans, American assets, embassy employees.

and CIA comes through the only people who had assets on the ground is the CIA CIA has

40,000 basically soldiers that they had trained over the last 20 years and these are locals that work for CIA they're called zero units

and so some of them are called zero units and then there's one that's called KPF, the host protective force. So CIA basically goes to the state department there like, we can clear the airport for you, we can secure the airport for you, we can pull security, and we can run the airport for you. But when it's all done, the last people that are going to go out are all of these guys. There's 40,000 of them. So this is not known to it. anybody. So what happened is the CIA cleared the airport. And the airport is the only place

that is in control of the Americans on the ground. Well, there's one other place, but people don't know about this. This is a CIA secret location called Eagle Base. So this place is also in control of US, but the CIA. So what I was doing is collecting people across Kabul and then taking all of these people to a pickup location and then these zero units were coming with their trucks, putting all of these people on trucks, they were taking them to Eagle Base,

and then from Eagle Base, helicopters were taking them from there to the airport. So airlifting them from Eagle Base to the airport. And you're doing this all remotely? I'm doing all of this remotely, but I have like 100 guys on the ground that are working and doing this. You're basically commanding to say, hey, keep everyone safe, keep them away from Taliban-occupied territory. Yeah. You know, U.S. base to U.S. base to airport. Yeah.

Got it. a little bit of DOD that showed up later, we carried out this mission. And we were able to evacuate thousands of people during that time, a lot of them being U.S. citizens. And you're seeing, I'm sure, on the news, the videos of people desperately hanging onto airplanes as they're taking off, like this level of delusional desperation that is like tragic and heartbreaking to see. What is your feeling when you're seeing these videos and what are you thinking? Yeah, so that was the very beginning, right? That's when the airport was run over by people.

I was just free for all. Just free for all. And we didn't have enough, enough military on the ground to clear the airport. Apaches were not able to do it, because Apaches were doing really low flyovers on the runway to clear the people off the runway. People were just on the runway.

They were not leaving until the CIA came with the zero units and cleared the runway. Right. And even then, we had about 25,000 people that had got onto the airport, both on the military and the civilian side of the airport, and these 25,000 people were now on the airport. Now, we had a choice to either start, like,

kicking these 25,000 people off the airport, or to clear the airport, take them somewhere. So what the military did was started putting them on planes and getting them out. So they evacuated about 25,000 people that had just ran over the airport. And then they didn't come to the U.S. They were taken to Doha.

They were taken to Abu Dhabi. They were taken to Germany. They were taken to Kuwait. All of these places where we have bases, they were taken there. And they all went through vetting, and they all were vetted and screened and all that. Right.

So got documentation and they went to a refugee camp in one of those countries. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So between state CIA, DOD, we were able to evacuate about 100. 25,000 people. Wow. And you played an integral role in getting all of those people evacuated. Yeah, I mean, my team, the people on the ground, we had about 40, 40 guys in our

operation center. And our operation center was like across the street from the White House on 15th street. And I had a team of about 40 here in the U.S. and all of these guys were former special forces guys and former Intel guys and CIA guys, FBI. So just all day taking calls, getting people organized, and I mean, that's an insane amount of coordination. It was insane how it all happened. And like I said, you know, I, this is what I've always done in life, is just see a problem. And even if I've never done it before, like someday I would, you know, end up in a plane and we won't have a pilot and I'll just be like, I'm going to figure this out. So it was just like that. I had never before evacuated people out of, of course. another country. And the amount of work that takes to get one plane off the ground is incredible.

So, and this until August 31st is when we are, the military is there. We have military planes. We have other chartered planes. It's all happening. But August 31st happens and everybody leaves. And that's the cutoff. That is the cutoff. Now, that's the cutoff for planes and all, but we still have thousands of people left there, including U.S. citizens. Right. So we're obligated to evacuate them. So it's another set of problem, and I get to work.

I start calling people. I start while we were doing the evacuation on the ground, and during that time, we had developed a lot of relationships with the Taliban. So start talking to Taliban, start trying to kind of appeal to what would appeal to them, like, well, you guys are the government right now. You guys are in charge. So either you guys can look like North Korea and Iran and be like somebody who the rest of the world never sees off, or you can be legitimate. And the first thing to legitimacy is to have the international community be coming in and out of Afghanistan. And the way you do that is to fix the airport. Wow. So you're

telling the Taliban leadership this. Yeah. So I'm telling them that's the first thing to do. So we start talking and I'm like, well, I can help you. I can help you bring planes to Afghanistan. All you have to do is cooperate with us. So through like almost three weeks of talking back and forth, I was able to get the first plane back to Kabul. Wow. And the first plane, October, September 28th, we got the first plane off the ground.

And with 117 U.S. citizens. and it took us actually for they came the the US citizens they came to the airport and while we were arranging a plane things fell through didn't happen and all of those US citizens had to stay on the airport for three days so they were just living in the airport in the airport for three days and we had to provide security food shelter water there were children there were women that is a logistical nightmare yeah it's like from tampons to like diapers to baby formula, to food, all of it. We had to provide all of that.

Medical care, I'm sure people are sick. Exactly. People with diabetes, we had to provide all of it. And the Taliban is cooperating generally to leave the airport as a safe place. The airport is like incredibly visible to the entire world. Right. And this is the first plane that's going to take off from Kabul. So it's a privately chartered plane.

So they have to, you know, give a good. good, good, good phase to the rest of it. So it happens in three days. The plane leaves to Abu Dhabi with 117 U.S. citizens. Great. And mission accomplished. First plane happened. State Department saw this and they're like, can you repeat?

Can you do this again? And what do you think? You're like, yeah, of course. So State Department starts paying for the planes, chartered planes, and all of the expenses on the ground for my team. and we start chartering planes. Wow. We start evacuating people

and we evacuated close to almost like the number if you add up all the numbers until today it's probably about close to 10,000 people. And so you're acting as the liaison between the State Department in the United States and D.C. And the head of the Taliban basically in Kabul and being that intermediary. How do you get the trust of the head of the Taliban?

They look at you and they're like, this is an American guy, he's working with them. Why should they believe you? I mean, they need something that I have, and they have something that I need. They do want to look legitimate. They do want to have a relationship with the Western world. They do want to look like a legitimate government. So they see me as somebody who can give them some legitimacy.

If they keep cooperating, they keep doing what we want them to do, they, you know, they think that someday we will see them as a legitimate government. Right. And I'm also, like, giving them that hope as well. I'm like, yeah, I mean, this is how you become a legitimate government. This is the biggest thing you can do is operating an airport. And if the airport is operational, you are going to have some people leaving, but you're also going to have some people coming back to see you guys, to observe you guys.

Westerners are going to come. Journalists are going to come, photographers, like documentary producers are going to come. Everybody's going to come and see you guys. And they want to see what you've done with the place. Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you about my good friends at Morgan and Morgan. Let me paint a picture for you. Okay, this is a thing that happened to me once. I was driving down the road, mine of my own business. It's a little rainy. Boom, someone drives into the back of me. My whole back of my car is dented. My neck hurts.

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slash Gagnon, Gagnan, G-A-G-G-N-O-N-O-N, or dial Pound-Law, pound-529 from your cell phone. Let's get back to the show. And then I go. I went to Kabul. They're like, well, can you come and meet with us in Kabul? I was like, sure. And how do you feel? Are you like, oh, this is a setup? I'm incredibly nervous, but, you know, whatever. Like, I have to do it. And why do you have to go? So we were doing this on a phone, right? Like we haven't had any face time. There's not that to get it to the next level to build that more trust.

To continue to do that is to actually go and have some face time with them. And I didn't do it like I wasn't being careless or I had you could be the most careful person in the world and something will still go wrong. But I had everything in place security wise. We had bodyguards. I had talked to all of the senior Taliban leadership. We had everything on paper. You're not going as just a guy. You're going as someone with military training,

linguistics training, negotiation training. Yeah, all of that. So I go there and I meet with all of the Taliban leadership. And they give me like eight bodyguards, like three land cruisers with like pickup trucks. Oh, the Taliban gave you the security. Yeah, they gave me all of that. And, you know, I am meeting with them. Everything is going really well.

How was that first meeting? You walk in the door. and what was it like? It was surreal to see like all these guys that for the longest time I was fighting against them. And did you know them as targets and as people? Oh yeah, these are all like really popular guys. Some of these guys had been in Guantanamo for like 10 years. So they are really really like notoriously known, well-known Taliban leaders.

So you walk in the room and you're like, there's you, I know you, I know you, and you shake their hands. And they probably know you too. Yeah, I mean, they don't exactly know me. me because I was sort of a mystery. I, so I've recently, like after all of that, I became sort of public about a lot of this after my captivity. Before that, I was sort of a mystery because I was able to get a lot of things done, but people didn't know who I was.

Right. There was this mystery to me, and they all were trying to figure out who I was. Yeah. That first visit went really well. We got promises from Taliban that we could continue flights, we could continue to evacuate with people. They were not going to harm anybody. They were going to give amnesty to all of the people that had fought against them or worked with the U.S. government. So it's all going well. I come back. I go and debrief the State Department about all of that. They're so excited and

ecstatic. They're like, first American on the ground bringing us back real intel of the airport and Taliban's like temperature. So, and then, so I do this, but at the same time, I see, saw the situation on the ground, it was people didn't have anything to eat. They had lost jobs overnight and they had lost their way to feed themselves. So I basically am like, I have to go back to fix this. So I come back and then I go back in December to take a lot of humanitarian aid and bring more aid and bring kind of awareness to the problem that was on the ground. And everything is going well. Everything is fine.

But the last day, the day I'm supposed to leave, people from the directorate of intelligence just come and they're like, we have to talk to you about something. I was like, okay, I guess, you know. We have everything official. We have all the permissions from ministered level. We're not doing anything illegal, so this shouldn't be any problem. So I speak to them and they're like, oh yeah, everything is fine. You guys are clear, but this is just a regular procedure that we are implementing that all foreigners have to register with us at the headquarters.

And initially, I was like, it doesn't, like, I don't want to like, I don't want to escalate. So I go with them to the headquarters and there, I mean, a lot of things happen in between, but we end up at the headquarters. And that's when the guy who had it targeted just disappears, and then there's a bunch of guys with weapons. And we're in this room, the whole day, and then at night, they take us to a different location, and they take us to a basement. And then for the next 105 days, I'm in that basement.

This basement is the most secure place in all of Afghanistan. It's in the middle of this giant garrison. There's like all of the military of the Taliban is surrounding this place. And we're in the basement of this place. And who's with you? So there were five other Brits, five Brits, and then my brother. My brother is also with me. And why did your brother go with you when you went over there from the U.S.?

We were doing different things across the world because we had operations going on in Tajikistan, in Uzbekistan, in Pakistan, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in UAE, all over the world. And then different people were doing things and different things. My brother was in Pakistan at the time, taking care of people that we had in Pakistan. So he came to meet me in Kabul and sort of like figure some things out because we had to get to the next level. We continue to have to get to the next level, to elevate things, to do it faster, to do more, to have more effect, to have more humanitarian aid, more flights, more people evacuating. So that, for that reason, he came to Kabul. Wow. And I was going to leave Kabul and then he was going to remain in Kabul to oversee everything.

I leave and so I'm in this basement initially for the first five, six days. I'm by myself in a single room. What does the basement look like? It's like a dark room. There's one light that's on 24-7 in the ceiling. It has like a small window at the very top that can see outside. And then the rest of the room is underground. It's a little damp.

There's no blankets. Kind of cold. Yeah, very cold. It was a middle of winter. There's no heaters, no blankets, no mattresses, nothing you're just on the floor. And they gave us a blanket. And then I was just using that one blanket to cover and sleep on. But it's disgusting. It's dirty. Really, really dirty. Everyone in the same room. We were all in separate rooms. We were all kept in separate rooms.

And the room is about eight feet by eight feet. So you can basically like kind of you can stretch and sleep, but you can't do much more. And you couldn't even talk to anyone else. You're completely alone. Couldn't talk to anyone else. And at what point did you know you were kidnapped? I mean, I think when they put us in that basement, we were basically like, shit, this is bad. And this was like a separate group within the Taliban that is there a direct rate of intelligence.

is they are like if you combine CIA and FBI together and made one organization that sort of rogue works outside the Taliban sort of authority and has a grip on all the leadership and has, you know, dirt on everybody. So everybody's scared of them. Nobody can stand up to them. And so they do whatever they want. And a lot of the foreigners that are being held are held by them.

There's multiple factions within the Taliban. It's not some type of monolith that is all operating in some united front. There's a rogue faction that's capturing people and there's maybe a public-facing faction. Yeah. So the faction that you were speaking with when you were on the phone in D.C., is that a different faction? Yeah, it's a completely different faction. And they were doing their best to get me out of there. But then the intelligence is like we have information against these guys and we're going to interrogate them.

Oh, wow. So some of the Taliban were trying to get you out. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of Taliban that are trying to get me out. So it was at that time. And then about six, seven days later, the guy who was interrogating us comes back, asks us questions, and he's like, oh, everything is fine.

You guys will be released in a couple of days. And then they also put us together. They bring my brother to my room. We're in that room. And then from time to time, other people would come stay with us. So in this room, sometimes we were two, sometimes three, sometimes four. And then for the rest of the time, we were in that same room. It was just, you know, a lot of the same things that I had learned.

I had to apply a lot of that there and kind of befriend a lot of the guards to get help from them. Eventually we had a guard. Day 17, we had a guard who smuggled the phone for us. and we got the smuggled phone and that was the first time when we called our family. Our family didn't know where we were if we were alive or dead because nobody was talking to us. And that was the first time when we got information out to our family that we were here and stuck in. Still, you know, alive. Was it scary using the phone?

How did you feel using this smuggled phone? I mean, we had that guard kind of watching over us and seeing what was happening. And why did he want to help you? Kind of a long story. So this new guy comes in and we're like, he's kind of kind of looks like he's really stressed or depressed or whatever you call it. And we're like, hey, buddy, what's going on? Why are you like? So, I mean, we are inside.

we're not leaving, but he comes to our room and like we talked to all of them and kind of get a temperature of all of them and see who can be like manipulated. So this guy comes in where like, what's going on? He's like, oh, I went home to get married and I asked my commander to give me some money because I need to go get married. And the commander basically said, no. And then I left. But I went home. I couldn't get married because I don't have money. And I was like, oh, you need money to get married. It was like, well, you know, we have an NGO. We help people.

That's what we do. And we'll help you get married. And but I was like, I could give you the address of my folks outside and you can go ask them for money, but they're not going to believe you. So what you can do is if I call them myself and tell them to give you money and then you can go pick up the money from them. And it's like, oh, okay. So I called, I called my guys outside and I was like, hey, this guy is going to come give him this much money and to so he can get married and also give him a phone so wow he brought the phone and then uh use that phone to speak to the outside

world and your first call was to who did you call um it was also really difficult to actually work that phone in the basement right so what we did uh what I did was I called uh our guys who was in Kabul and because that was the easiest way to call him we had to put the phone all the way up in like by the window to get signal and then he had to like connect our guys here in the US so State Department was involved at this point so then this three-way phone call between like my team here in the US my girlfriend my brother other team members we were all connected and I'm talking to them from this basement of Taliban wow and what are you eating this first like two weeks while you're in there

yeah the food is horrible like there's beans and rice and bread and tea for the morning one meal a day yeah I mean two-ish meals a day but it was just beans and rice the whole time. But it was also like being there in that basement 24-7, not being able to go anywhere is also like a unique experience to introspect and see everything from a different perspective. And what are you thinking about the first few days? The first few days are kind of like almost blank. Like there is no thoughts because I'm at.

shock. And you're also like wondering what is going to happen, where are you going to go, what is to become of you. All of those questions are incredibly difficult. And you're also thinking about your family, whether they know you're alive, because we had no, we had no connection to the outside world. We had no communications to the outside world. So they don't know, you don't know if they know whether you're alive or dead or if they know what to do like you're like I'm here you're trying to find a way to tell them where you are

so that they can come and help you rescue and you know that time when I was there a lot of my former teammates that guys at work they were they were like kind of thinking about like just doing a hostage rescue you know storming the place but every way they looked at it it was impossible it's so fortified so protected it was so fortified there were like thousands of people

there thousands of taliban fighters there and are you considering trying to escape is that even crossing your mind at all yeah and i mean everything right everything is on table at the time rescue missions are on the table escaping is on the table uh paying off the guards is on the table uh to just let you go but this place is like a fortress yeah and all of the these guys are like hardened Taliban fighters who just wouldn't budge at any cost. And it's not just you escaping, you have to escape with your brother too. You're not going to leave him behind. Yeah, and I wasn't going to leave the Brits behind either.

I mean, they were not associated with me, but it just felt like the right thing to do. Right. So then, you know, with negotiations, my entire family, my, my dad, my mom, my other brother and my sister-in-law, they all came to Kabul. Oh, really? Yeah. And basically my dad went up to the director of intelligence. And he stood up to him.

He's like, why are you holding my son? Director of intelligence for the Taliban? Yeah. Like, why are you holding my son? And then my dad basically told him his history, who he was. And he's like, oh, why didn't you come earlier? And then the director was basically like, I'm going to release your kids. And right then and there, he was scared of my dad.

Yeah, he was really scared of my dad. I mean, my dad wields this kind of power in his community and his tribe. Where we are from in Afghanistan, he wields kind of tribal power that could mean very dangerous for the Taliban. So before you released, you get in touch with the outside world on day 17. You're able to bribe the guard. You get a cell phone. You're talking. You're getting a little bit of signal, just peeping out of the top of the cell.

it's you, your brother, a couple of Brits, finally able to get in touch with your team, people now know where you are. Yeah. What happens from day 17? Because you're here for 105 days. Yeah, so my family came to Afghanistan day 45, and we saw them.

They came to the prison. They brought us food, and after that, they started bringing us food regularly. Okay, so we got books. Treatment got better. Yeah, we got books, we got food, we got blankets, we got heater. mattresses, all of that.

At this point, you're starting to feel hopeful. Yeah, very hopeful. And I'm talking to the outside world as well, and everything is coming together. Like, they're making, because it has to be planned. The plan is coming together, and there's a lot of hope. Any day now you're going to be released. Any day now, you're going to be released.

Day 70 is when my family reached sort of the Taliban, basically, the director of intelligence basically told my dad, it's like, I will release your children as long as, you know, Americans send a plane to pick him up at the airport. And day 70, our job shifted from convincing the Taliban to release us to convincing the U.S. government to send a plane. Wow. So day 70, everybody, my entire team in the U.S., my girlfriend, they all started, like, bombarding the government with. Like, what is it going to be?

I have a lot of senators know me, Congress members know me, people in the government know me. They all start using their influence to make this plane happen. And it is happening. Everything is being planned. Like, it's, the work is in progress. March 23rd, 2021, Taliban are supposed to allow girls to go to school. they double down on that prohibition and basically say they're not going to let girls go to school

in the entire world basically is like what the fuck and at this point the state department was about to send a plane to come get me and then they are like kind of tracking back on their promises they're like well if we send a plane it's going to look like we are talking to the Taliban and optically it's going to look really bad to the rest of the world that we're kind of negotiating or talking or having diplomatic relationships with the Taliban.

Because at this point they've shown their face. They've shown, oh, we're not going to be this Western government. So everything that's happening, all of a sudden, it's all scratched. And how do you feel? You had all this hope, all these things we're looking up. Yeah. And at this one, I had gone on hunger strikes. like multiple times.

What do you mean? So basically like when the Taliban, the way of the trip, I was like, I'm not eating this fucking food. So day 30-ish, 35, we, I stopped eating. And I didn't eat for the next 10 days. And then my family came to Afghanistan to basically convince me to eat and they brought food. And they were like, you're getting out. All you need to do is just eat, stay strong.

Don't lose your health. Don't waste your health over this. And what are your thoughts on the hunger strike? What is the tactic here? Applying pressure. To be released. To be released. Applying pressure, not.

And also getting better treatment and better conditions down there in the basement. Not for just myself, but also everybody else. Right. Is anyone else hunger striking with you? Is it just you? So day four, I was hunger striking. Me and my brother were hunger striking for four days. And then day four, everybody saw that the Taliban kept coming every day

in trying to convince us that they were going to release us, we need to break our hunger strike. And then day four, when they all see that, oh, it's working, they joined us. Wow. It's really funny. Day, day eight, day eight is when the Brits were not hunger striking with us at this point. They were just like, no, we're not going to do this. Because I guess they're not weak sauce, I guess. Brits are kind of weak.

So, Day eight is when these guys, like random guys just come down, they're like, you're going to break your hunger strike. And I was like, no, I'm not. And we got into basically a fight. And they like hold me with like nine people. And then more people come down and there's like 15 people like nine holding me. And then the other four like wielding pipes and like just trying to like kind of break me.

and the guy who is the leader of these guys, like they drag me upstairs. Like they beat me up and then they drag me upstairs and basically like prison style dragging me with my hands tied behind my back. And beating you with the pipes. Yeah, beating me in the pipes. So I go upstairs. They put me on a chair and this guy very frustratingly looks at me and he's like, look, you are disrupting the peace in the prison.

you are making our lives miserable. Our leadership is like freaked out because if anything happens to you, we have to answer to the Americans. This is nothing personal. And this is prison. There is rules here, regulations here. You have to eat.

And I look up to him because he said it's not personal. And I look up to him, and I was like it wasn't personal before, but you made it personal now. And I said that. And in that moment, I could see something.

breaking inside of him. He didn't say a word after that. Took me back to my cell and I still had my hands tied and just let me left me there like that. Beaten? Yeah. The next day other people came and like untied my hands, brought my brother back to the room and then sat there. And this was about, you know, day 44-ish. For the rest of the time, almost, you know, 60 days, I did not see that entire team.

He was so scared he wouldn't even come downstairs to the basement to see me. Wow. So, and he was trying, because it was so funny because he would sometimes come to the basement. to get other prisoners, but he would kind of hide so I wouldn't see him. He would hide behind like the pillars or something, so I wouldn't see him. He was afraid that you, because you're taking this personally, we're going to somehow hurt yourself and then the whole organization is going to have to answer to the U.S. government and that's going to be a problem.

Or like hurt him or something. Right. I wasn't, I was unpredictable. I made their lives really difficult. I made them really difficult. I would wake up at three in the morning. I had this like big metal kind of thermos for tea or water, I would get that and I would start banging on the door.

I would start banging on the door. I would wake up all the guards and I'd be like just good morning. Good morning, yeah. And how do you know to be difficult? Like why are you not afraid that your difficulty is going to have resulted you getting beaten more or getting, you know, potentially killed? I kind of realized that the Taliban were like not going. to kill me. They weren't going to hurt me or harm me. They were, they looked, they, every foreigner

they take hostage or anything, they look, they, they're also afraid. It's like, it's one of the thing is everyone is afraid of America. The, the power that we wield across the world is unmatched. Like, it's, nobody can stand up to us. Like, they, they talk a lot of shit. But when it comes to reality, they do listen to us. And they're not going to do something that would piss America off. So at this point, I do know that no matter how difficult and how hard I am, they're not going to do anything. And also at the same time, they also realize that America doesn't leave any of their own people behind. They know that one day I'm going to get out of there and then I'm going to come back and how they treat me there is going to be wide open to the rest of the world. So they're doing

their best to show their best face. But I'm making it really hard for them. They're like, I'm cussing their leadership. I'm cussing their supreme leader. And when my dad went to meet with the director of intelligence, he's like, your son is cussing out or a supreme leader. And then my dad came, he's like, don't cuss their supreme leader. What are you doing?

Don't do that. I'll try to help you and you're out of cussing everyone out. But you're just trying to be a thorn. You're just trying to be a strong. Trying to break them, trying to break them as well. Like, they are frustrated. They are, no one else in that prison is doing that. And I'm just like making their life a living out.

Oh, so the thing to the Brits, like, so day eight, they beat me up. In the morning, before they beat me up, the British, one of the British guy is super like ecstatic. He's like, Safi, I'm going to hunger strike with you as well. I'm starting this morning. And I was like, oh, cool, mate. Okay. That's nice. you are in solidarity.

What happens? He doesn't get breakfast. And then lunchtime comes around. And that's when I get, right before lunch, I get beaten up. So I come back from beating up and I call up on him. I was like, hey, mate, how are you doing? Did you eat lunch? He's like, yeah, mate.

And I was like, you said you were going to hunger strike with me. He's like, bro, I'm ready to not. eat food but I don't want to be getting beaten up so the second he sees you get beaten him he's like this whole hunger strike thing I'd rather be not beaten up and fed than rather be hungry and beaten up yeah so the next day some very senior Talban leadership comes and actually the executive secretary for the director of intelligence comes down there and basically like begs us to eat and he brings us everything we asked for what kind of damage did you have from the pipes I mean

It wasn't damage that permanent, but it was like, oh, my feet, they were all kind of scarred at the time and had bruises all over my body. But it wasn't anything that was like permanent or like it didn't break me. Right. So you were not shaken by that at all. No, not even a little bit. Like, why? You just got your ass beat by the Taliban. Like, and you're hungry, you haven't eaten in three days.

Yeah. You're not even mentally. Yeah, I mean, you just, the resilience of that is that when you decide to do something, you just have to stick to it like 100%. You can't just kind of be committed because if you're kind of committed, you're basically not committed. It doesn't mean anything. You have to go all the way or not go at all. And that was the philosophy as well.

It's like we're not going to do hunger because we waited for 44 days. 35 days, we waited and we were like the best model prisoners. We didn't do anything by day 35 we're like, the shit is not changing. We have to do something drastic. And then I told my brother as well as you don't have to do this.

But if once we do it, you can't break. No matter what they do, the purpose of the hunger strike is to break them. Now, it's kind of. kind of a competition. You either break them or they break you. And 100% we broke them. Like, there's no question about that. And how do you know? What was the moment that you know, oh, they are broken? They gave us everything we asked for. And when I told that guy that's personal now, he knows. And I mean, he knows the culture and everything as well is that until my death,

I'm not going to forget his face. And it's going to, you know, it's not going to go anywhere. You know, one day we're going to face each other. And that's going to happen. That's not, and he knows that. So, and that guy was so broken after that, the director of that department came and apologized to me. While you're in prison.

While I was in prison, they all basically were like, left and right, everybody was like trying to, they're trying to appease us and do all of that. Wow. So, I mean, back to the day, almost seven days before we got released, March 23rd, my girlfriend really did a lot of, she became like the champion at this point. And she's American living in D.C. from New York. She's a New Yorker. Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah. That'll do it. New Yorker, Jewish.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the best. You can, I'll take one Jew from New York against the whole Taliban. You know what I mean? Especially with the cell service and Wi-Fi? She's a power to reckon with. Yeah. So what is she doing in the U.S.? And what are your parents doing? So at this point, March 20th, she's been talking to state the whole time. She actually spent a whole month in Dubai trying to figure out. And then the last minute she went to Doha to Qatar and she's there like meeting with all of the State Department officials and then in that meeting when March 23rd when the education girl education thing happens things were kind of going to slip she asks a meeting with the president as a meeting with the secretary of

Lincoln and asked for meeting with Mindy Sherman senior state department officials and they She demands from the government that she wants a meeting with a senior State Department official. She writes a press release. She writes a press release that says Biden, Taliban agreed to release American hostage, but Biden does not take their offer because of optics and the hostage is condemned to death. So she writes this title and writes an entire scathing, skating press release and sends this to everybody at State Department.

Wow. Including the National Security Council, it goes to the president. So she's just fucking shit up. She's just like, look. If you guys don't, they, she basically gives them, she's like, if you guys don't do anything in three days, we're releasing this. And that's, if you want to talk about optics. Yeah.

And so she just knows like, so you're, I mean, this is crazy. So you're applying pressure to the guards on the inside on the Taliban. Yeah. She's applying pressure to the U.S. government. Like, yo, let's get a plane over there. Like, who gives a fuck about the bureaucracy, the optics? Like, let's just get this guy home. So she does this and she gets a meeting with Wendy Sherman, Assistant Secretary of State.

And it's a 40-minute phone call. And, you know, Assistant Secretary of State just, and my girlfriend is like 28 years old. So she is all her life. She's been a diplomat and like old athlete who's dealt who she was the basically the main negotiator during the Iran deal during Obama's time. So she's like been through it all. Yeah. And she's like, well, this little girl from a Broadway director, I'm going to just like in two minutes, it will be over and I'll give her run for her money. and taking on a phone call, and for 45 minutes, everything she says, my girlfriend has an answer.

She's like, oh, we don't really, like, believe that the Taliban are have a deal, and it's like the deals don't work like that. And then she's like, culturally, absolutely, that's a deal. Taliban are not going to give it to you on a piece of paper that we're going to release him. If they said it to his dad, looked into his eyes and said he's going to shake, shook hands, and told him he's going to release his dad. And this is the condition. Wendy Sherman keeps like trying to

Buffer by time. Yeah. You don't understand. Yeah, you don't understand kids. You direct musicals. Yeah, and we have like a transcript of the whole call. We have a video of the whole call. You have the video?

Yeah, video of the entire call. And it's crazy. By the end, my girlfriend asked, we want a meeting with the president. We want a meeting with the Secretary of State. And we want it, within three days, we're going to release this press. release unless we get a meeting with the president. And the dynamics at this point is so funny to

actually listen to the phone call and see the dynamic change. Wendy Sherman is like, please don't release the press leaves, give us some time. We just need this much time and please, we'll like, well, we're going to do our best. And my girlfriend at this time is like, well, I can't promise that we're going to release this, but I will talk to the rest of the team and we'll do what we can do, but this press release is going to get released in three days. And at this time, we have like Jake Tapper on like, like speed dial. So they know that as well. That is going to go directly on Jake Tapper. We have all of this. All of it is ready to go out. Now in the press release, she has the line. Oh, if not, if we don't send a plane, he'll be condemned to death. Yeah,

he'll be killed. At that point, was that an exaggeration or was that? No, that was not an exaggeration because not only from the Taliban side, but I was going to be like, because when I heard on March 23rd that they were not going to come anymore because I knew they were going to, March 133rd was the date they were going to send a plane and then they didn't send a plane.

I went on a hunger strike and I was like, I'm not stopping my hunger strike until I see a plane here. I'm either going to die here or you're going to send a plane. And you were prepared to die? I was prepared to die. Not just because I

I wanted to make a point. It's just to make a point, I was ready to die. Because it was so infuriating as well is the fact that they weren't going to come get me while I evacuated thousands of American citizens for them, like, all of the work. Literally, the reason I'm here is because I was saving American citizens

and now you just need to save one American citizen. And I had saved their asses, like Biden's ass because he had a, terrible evacuation and then he had left American citizens. You guys look stupid. I covered for you. I protected these people. I set all this stuff up. And now I'm in here and no one's going to fight for me. What the fuck is that? Exactly. And I to make a point and everybody knew this as well. That if they didn't come, I wasn't going to eat. And on top of that, they didn't even negotiate your release.

Exactly. You negotiated your release. Your dad negotiated your release. Exactly. So are your parents still there? Are they in couple? No, they came back. So they negotiated the release and then how do they leave? They're able to... So they left before I got released. They went to Doha to basically tell the U.S. government, it's like, hey, we have a deal. We just came back from Kabul and this is the deal.

You guys need to go back. Right. So they came back. And then when he Sherman keeps like, it's like, please, please, please don't to release its emails and all that. It's like they keep sending emails. Tom West, who is the special envoy for Afghanistan, president, special presidential envoy to Afghanistan,

is like sending emails like, please don't release that. Press release. And then it goes directly to Biden. And then Biden is like, send the plane. Oh, he's getting the press release. Yeah. So Biden gets the press release and they talk to Biden. They all sit down and they're like, well, what are you going to do?

So this piece of paper that your girlfriend wrote goes to the president of the United States. he looks at it and within a minute he's like the fuck are we doing yeah send the plane wow and also like because I said before uh they know me too dr. Biden was my English teacher so they know me that part is crazy do they connect the dots like yeah they know me um so then they send a plane on of all days like they actually uh tell tell my girlfriend that they're going to send the plane and then my girlfriend texts me on this smuggled phone I get a text It says, Uncle Joe said yes. That's literally the text.

Uncle Joe said yes. And then on April 1st, the plane comes, I fly from Kabul to Doha. They send this massive C-17. And so what does that release look like? So you get the text, so you know you're going to get released. Yeah. So then what? And what are you feeling?

What's your heart rate? Yeah. So actually, right before that text. the senior interrogator comes in and he's like, oh, you guys are, you guys are getting out. You haven't eaten at this point for how many days? Because I hadn't eaten for like about two days. And then they're like, they bring me food and they're like, you're getting released. And I was like, oh, yes.

Then the day before the plane, like the day before April 1st, they, the senior interrogator comes in and he's, like, oh, you guys, the plane is coming tomorrow. Because of operational security, State Department told that they were going to send the plane within, like, because it was a Friday, so Friday is religious holiday. It's off. That was April 1st. And so my girlfriend, my family, they all thought that it's not going to be Friday,

it's going to be Sunday. Their thing was that I was going to get released on Sunday. So that night, when the senior integrity comes in, and he's like, you are releasing, getting released to me. tomorrow and I'm like oh wow awesome so when they leave I get under the blanket and I call my girlfriend on the on the secret phone and I'm like where the plane is coming tomorrow we're getting released he's like she's like oh my God I'm not ready she says I'm not ready she said a typical girlfriend response it it's like I'm not ready to go yet how dare you try

to get out of captivity I got stuff to do I was like Like, oh shit, okay, I guess I'll stay here. Yeah, bad timing. In prison, bad timing. You need to go get like a manny and petty and, you know, get all of that out of the way before I come in. Yeah, of course. You know, you want to be presentable. Exactly.

But what she meant was like she had to write a press release. She had to like communicate because we hadn't made public any of it. Did you laugh when she said that? Like you're in a jail cell? You're like, what do you want me to do? Come on. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, at that time it was because I'm also like, it could be. be like the most stressful, like, sad people would be like falling and dying left and right.

I'm still just like this, like normal. It's not. Oh, really? It's, I am so calm about everything. Mentally, you didn't break down at all physically. No, not at all. It's, it was just. Even without eating basically anything for three months, hunger striking here and there. Yeah. Physically, you felt fine. I perfectly, I had lost a lot of weight, but never felt better. Wow. Are you doing anything to stay mentally sharp? Like, sitting in a cell? Reading, reading.

Reading. Reading. Reading a lot of Harry Potter. Really? I read the Harry Potter series in prison for the first time. Oh, wow. I mean, this is basically you being back in a refugee camp again. Like, you're just a kid surrounded by people reading your books.

Exactly. And that's your escape. Yeah. And it's just like. that is a beautiful circle. A lot of people who go like really crazy in prison is because of they just mentally, like, they go nuts. Yeah.

The guy next to us in our cell, the British guy went nuts. What do you mean? He was going to like, he was going insane every day. Like what was he doing? Just breaking mentally. Just completely breaking, crying. Screaming, crying. Crying.

And like. just, he's like, I'm going to kill myself. It's like, just suicidal. And were the guards harder on him because they saw weakness? No, they were just. They knew they had him. Yeah. But I, like, didn't even, like, slightly phased me.

And like I said, I was, and everything is always funny. And so people think that I'm, like, really serious. But on the inside, I'm always, like, kind of, happy yeah and so it was just so relieving and light and just joking around with her at that point it's like okay i will just okay princess you're gonna you're gonna uh you need you need your manny and petty before i come so are you staying fit at all are you like we're doing walking are you like doing push-ups in the room just trying to like not atrophy yeah exactly and just trying to like I mean, I lost all muscle, everything, but it was not something that I can't just come back and gain all of it back.

What is the bathroom situation? So they have to take us to the bathroom under guard, and they only took us like three times a day in the morning, afternoon, and then at night. And it's just a regular sort of... Yeah. I mean, there is no shower that we didn't shower for the first two months. Wow. We had the same clothes. We didn't change our clothes for the first two months.

Didn't shower. So sleeping on the ground sleeping on the ground Our clothes had changed colors Wow They were so dirty they had changed colors The water was extremely cold Right So it was all just

Completely like inhumane So the guards come in on the last day Your girlfriend says not yet wait The guards come in and they basically say hey today You're getting worse Yeah so they came that's how I Because my girlfriend wasn't told. The guards knew because the plane had to get permission to come into Kabul.

So they knew, but my girlfriend didn't know. So the next day I wake up, they're like, they give us new clothes. They like arrange a shower. We like take a shower. They try to make you look nice. Make us look nice. Yeah. So in the next day they like basically, it was so funny.

Two guards, they put us in a white sedan corolla and just drive us to the other. airport with me and my brother in the back without our hands tied or anything. It's ironic as they were going through the checkpoint at the airport, the guards take their weapons from them. So he go into the airport and we're like, well, there's two of us. There's two of you. Neither of us have weapons. We're not going back.

Wow. So, and then we see like this convoy of like armored land cruiser, like at least 10, just walk by us, pass by us. And it's like, oh, that's for us. And then they try to put like the corolla in the middle of the conway. And the convoy people are like, no, you can't get the corolla. And the guards are like, we have the people that you came for idiots. And then we get in the middle of the convoy, drive onto the tarmac.

And there's like a giant C-17 just like bigger than life size like C-17. Just look at it. And there's like the airport is bustling with activity. There's so many people there. So many guards, like the U.S. had sent like 100 people to just get the two of us. Wow. Like security, diplomats, like everybody, the whole nine yards in. So you go from three months underground all of a sudden now you're in new clothes, you're

showered, you're seeing life for the first time again. Is it bright? Like, how do you feel physically? Or do you just feel completely normal and unbroken? So I go to the bottom of the plane and I shake hands with them. the guys, they gave me this, this toy deer. And I'm like, this is from your family. And I knew what that was.

So in Harry Potter, Harry Potter's Patronus is a deer. And it was sort of like I used to tell my girlfriend that, she was my patroness and so she sent that from Doha with the guys and they gave me that and so and what did you feel like when it was just like like unbelievable like emotional emotional and we just got on the plane and got on the flight and then a lot of the guys that had come to get me on the plane were the guys from my team so back in the days they are all from the same team and then they had brought so much food on the plane just for us. They had a doctor on the plane.

They checked us out on the plane and then we landed and again we went to the military hospital, did all the x-rays and images, everything checked us medically. Everything was fine. Wow. Then I got off the base and my girlfriend was waiting for me there. And so what happened when you see her? I get out of the truck and she's right there, she comes in, we just hug.

And it's just like not a minute has passed. It's like I had just left for like a couple minutes and I was back. It was no different. So it's very, very. And when I got out, a lot of people had given her like worst case scenarios. It's like he's going to be so broken. he's going to be like, you have to be very careful with him. You have to treat him like a broken piece of article,

and you have to be really careful with him and give him time to heal. I came back and I was like, so what are we doing? Really? And yeah, I jumped back right in life. Like, I didn't even, I didn't miss a single day. Did you cry when you saw her? No, I usually, I actually don't cry. Like, I have never cried in my, like, many years.

You never cried? I never cry. It's just a thing that I don't do. even when I'm sad, I'm sad for like five minutes and then on to the next chapter. Wow. I mean, why waste time on stupid, unnecessary things that you can just do some of the best things in life? Wow. So what happens when you see her?

Do you guys meet up? You're in Doha? Yeah. Do you just go back to a hotel? Do you go eat? What is like your first meal once you're out of captivity for three months? Yeah. So we go back to our hotel.

room. She had got like two hotel rooms for just one for me and her one for my brother. So we go into the hotel room and we I had a full beard. So we kind of like talk and then it's like I was hungry. It's like, okay, let's go. So we went, it's in Doha, Sukwakif. This was, they were getting it ready for the World Cup. So there's a lot of constructions, but it's like really nice for walking. So we go get some food there and then we go back to take the food back to the hotel room. We're up all night. We didn't sleep. Just talking? Just talking. We didn't sleep at all. The next day we had an appointment at the base with some other military folks. We go there and then we do our meeting. We go shopping. We go shopping in Doha and just didn't sleep for a long time. You didn't sleep. I didn't sleep for a long time.

It's just so much to catch up on, like, just talking. And, I mean, I came back, like, as soon as I came back to the U.S., four days after I got to the U.S., I went to Canada to give a TED Talk. I saw that. So it was, I wrote the speech, like, the night before and just gave it the next day. So it was, I didn't, like, waste a minute on. even like remembering how it was back to work back to work and back to life and I mean I love everything about life and it's just I'm not going to waste a single minute of it did you ever

lose hope while in captivity was there ever a moment where you were like the darkness was overwhelming and you were like I don't know how I'm going to get through this no it's just because the life I've lived it's like I'm so many people. I have so many people in my life. So many people who would absolutely do everything to make sure I'm safe and everything that has happened in my life is always temporary. It's always changes. And that's one thing. I've time always heals everything and changes situations changes life like I was I was a refugee kid and today I'm like on podcasts and when did you see your parents um actually I didn't see my parents for a month why um because

overwhelming work so much I came back to D.C because my parents live in Omaha I came to D.C. went to Canada for the podcast, came back from Canada, uh had so much things still needed to be done in terms of the organization. So I kept doing that. And also the five Brits that were still in captivity. I was, you know, doubling down on getting them out. I went to London to meet with them for an office. I met with their families.

Oh, really? Yeah. So, like, I didn't go see my parents. I went to London first. To try to get those other people out. Yeah. And then I went and I gave them all the right, the foreign office, I gave them all the right contacts of the people who were.

helpful in my release and gave them the strategy and continue to work with them for the next three and a half months until they got released so all the people you were in captivity with all got released yeah they all got released and um I did a lot of work on that and I didn't like relax until I got all of them out and what did they say to you when you were being released you were leaving and you look at them you have to say goodbye to them well yeah and I was like I'm not I promise you guys I made them a promise I was like I'm not going to sit until you are all out of here and I was like you guys are all getting out of here and I'm gonna make sure that you guys do and the reason they were not getting out is because the Brits are fucking stupid like their foreign office is so dumb they were not even talking to the people who could get them out they were talking to the wrong people the wrong fucking people like my first meeting I went and I'm meeting with their like lead guy who is in charge of this whole fucking operation I'm sitting with him and he's he has this fucking problem he's like he

man, we can't like really see to solve this problem. I gave him a phone number. I'm like, call this guy right then and there. And he's like, oh, are you sure that's the right idea? That's a good idea. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely fucking sure that's a good idea. I was there, bro. You're not going to trust me?

Like, hello. So he leaves in the middle of the meeting, goes outside, calls, talks to the guy for 10 minutes, he comes back. The problem is solved. I'm like, fuck have you guys been doing. You guys don't know what you guys. Yeah, it's been three months. My girlfriend is able to get a press release to Biden. You guys can't, the whole country can't get people out.

Yeah. And then I went, my girlfriend also went to London with me. And she goes everywhere with me now because she's just, we're just a tie. We never separate. Yeah. We go everywhere together. And like she's directing a reading right now and I'm there every day. Wow.

We can't seem to be separate from each other. Wow. So what did you tell the families when you saw them? Like, oh, my husband is in captivity. tell someone like that? So, I mean, they saw me released. They see a lot of hope, and I was with their loved ones in prison, and I had letters from them as well.

From some of them, I had letters, so I gave them their letters, the family. And then I basically sat them down, and I told him, look, this is not just going to happen. You have to make it happen. My girlfriend, my family, they all made it happen. And it didn't just miraculously randomly, one day Taliban were like, we're going to just release him. We had to do a lot of work. And then I met with all of the families and gave them the strategies, gave them the information, gave them. I met with them several times over Zoom and for the next three and a half months.

I kept the contact with them. Wow. And when they got released, they were really grateful. Did you see them after they got released? Oh, yeah. And what did they say to you? I went back to London and I met with them. And, yeah, I mean, even I had a major role in the release, so they were really grateful.

Did they cry when they saw you? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So then they got released, and it's just the work keeps going, man. It's so many fucking people out there and so much work. There's still hostages out there, American. Right.

And other coalition partners. So we continue to do that work. So can you talk to me about Human First Coalition and sort of what that is? Yeah, so far we have been involved in about the release of about 10 hostages that were held by Taliban. In addition to that, we are evacuating people from Afghanistan and then also helping people with their cases who are eligible to come to the U.S. And then all the people that we have evacuated, there's about 80,000 of them who came to the U.S. on a two-year parole visa. so it expires in August. So we worked with Congress to enact, introduce this bill in Congress called the Afghan Adjustment Act,

which basically, like, after thorough vetting of all these people, gives them permanent residency here in the U.S. These people aren't, these are not somebody we are bringing from other random countries. These are Afghans that we evacuated on our planes and they're here in the U.S., but they need permanent residency because without that, they can't stay here. Right. So doing a lot of that work and continuing to ramp up the humanitarian aid. And the more the Taliban ramp up their anti-human rights activities and their war against women, the more we ramp up our activities to help and alleviate some of those things

and help some of those women, help some of those kids, children, girls, everybody. And the release of those 10 hostages. that comes through the same type of work that it took to get you released. It's calling the right people, offering them something, I guess, money, access, legitimacy. And just telling the Taliban that it's not in their best interest

to be holding hostages because the legitimate government does not hold hostages. It's against every international law to just hold somebody without a reason. There is no reason to be holding those people. They haven't committed any crimes. They were there in Afghanistan

in the first place to help in some way. They weren't there to break any loss. Wow. And so now your day to day is spent working with the coalition, working to get people evacuated, and that's how you spend. That's how everybody every day spent, unless I'm, you know, on a musical to help my girlfriend direct a musical. I mean, what a wild double life.

So you come back and now your girlfriend is working on musicals. How long were you guys dating when you were in captivity? do? About four months. Four months? Yeah, we actually met through the work. I was in D.C., evacuating these people, and she had some families in Afghanistan that she was connected to somehow, a musician. And she was trying, trying, and trying and wasn't able to get them out because they were a target for the Taliban. And then she sees a special about the work that I'm doing on CNN, and she calls a CNN producer that I need the phone number of this guy. And she gets my phone number from CNN,

and then messages me while I'm in D.C. And she's like, I have this family that I really need to get out, and I will help you in your work if you help me get this family out. And I was like, here's the deal. I can put your family on. on a list, but that's just a list. We have thousands of people on those lists. And by the time I'm able to help your family, it may be too late.

And I'll give you a deal, though. If you come volunteer for me in D.C. and help me get this work done, I will prioritize your family. And she's like, I'll be there. She's like, I'm in New York. It takes about four hours for me to get on the train and make it to D.C., but I'll be there. And I was like, oh, New York. Nice.

I didn't know you were in New York. I thought you were in D.C. So she comes and I evacuate her family. She's actually living in Queens now with her family. And she's interning on Phantom of the Opera. Wow. So she's learning to be a conductor. She was actually a conductor in Afghanistan.

So she was the first and only female conductor of the. Afghanistan's first and only female all-female orchestra so yeah she's here in Queens now with her family and she's learning to be a conductor on Phantom so my girlfriend also does a lot of this work and if you see her email inbox it's like Taliban Broadway there's no in between it's like musicals and Taliban that is so crazy I mean there's people listening to this that can't get a call back or the person they're dating for four months, like, is ghosting them. Like, and after four months, your girlfriend's writing to the president, like, yo, free my man.

Yeah, exactly. That is so crazy. Yeah, and it's like, we just have such a strong connection. And it's like, she's going to be directing some of like the most beautiful musicals in the next, this year. She's, she's directing Sunset Boulevard at the Kennedy Center end of this month. Oh, I'm going. Yeah, it's so gorgeous. It's Stephanie J. Block is in it.

and the girl who played Moana. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's in it. Wow. So it's like A-list stars all. And then after that, she's directing Aveda at A-R-T, then in D.C. And then comes to Broadway. I mean, this is unbelievable.

And now, is there any part of you that, like, what motivates you to continue to do the work? Like, is there any part of you that's like, look, I got my people out that I needed to get out? I've paid my debts. I've done more than that. This is a lot of stress. Maybe I just go, you know, work on musicals and yeah, and live a normal life. You know, so after high school, when I started working with that team, and it was some of the most interesting people I've ever met in my life, one of the guy was like doing professional circus. Like he would like put himself on a fire and jump from like 100 feet into a swimming pool.

So it was those kinds of people and I don't want to do anything ordinary. I don't want to just go and have a night to five job and be an accountant. I'm not that an accountant is a boring job but but it's more normal than what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. So I always want to do something interesting. Like I want to do things that are fun. I want to do things that are bigger than life. I want to do things that I do and I'm like no one else is doing this.

Yeah. So I'm going to do it. Yeah. And make an impression, make a stamp on the world. Yeah, it's like it's everybody is there's so many ordinary people in the world. It's like seven billion people. and you know six billion nine hundred ninety nine million are very boring yeah you spent a long time blending in yeah you don't want to blend in anymore no I mean

it's you you have to stand out and and do something extraordinary because life is so precious and so short and so just you can't just live on wasting that I mean there's a lot of people who great for them but I don't want to be that guy yeah even if that means going back to Afghanistan and evacuating more people. Yeah, and I mean, everything's on the table. Although my girlfriend holds my passport now. She's like, you're not going anywhere, motherfucker. Yeah, she has to approve everywhere I go.

Yeah, I'm 100%. And eventually one day you're going to probably have kids maybe. And, you know, that's going to probably change your dynamic a little bit too. Yeah, but I also want to, if I have kids, I don't want to raise them in a bubble or a shelter. They're going to experience the world, and they're going to go to a lot of these places with us, and they're going to experience a lot of that as well. And they're going to learn the value of life as well. They're not just going to be some sheltered kids.

They're going to have a very interesting life as well. And they have to live up to, you know, they have to live up to their parents. Right. Yeah. Do you have any regrets from the time that you were in captivity? Is there anything you wish you had done differently or mistakes that you made? You're like, oh, if I hadn't had done that, maybe I would have been released quicker. or I mean not necessarily like that but sometimes I'm just like should have like cranked the heat a little bit

like sometimes because even like when you are there you're always like calculating like you're taking calculated risk it's like how far is too far so I'm like I could have taken it a little bit farther you wish you went further yeah it just like a little bit further you are crazy you are an insane yeah wow um that's that's one other things I always think I was like I should have taken it Should have like I went on a hunger strike nine days. I mean should have went like for at least 20 Set a record or something. You know it's just like those things like you get a chance once in a life and It's like I should have just gone 10 more days. Yeah 20 days hunger strike or maybe 30 days That is so crazy and now is there anything that you want to do in your life that is not related to this work where you're like

Oh, I would be interested in pursuing this thing or this other aspiration that you have or a dream now that you've gone through so much. I think raising awareness about issues that are very close to my heart. And I think a lot of that I want to get into the documentary film world. I want to create documentaries about things that actually matter. And I'm, you know, slowly getting into that world. And hopefully I can make some art pieces that are more, creates more awareness. than the work.

Because I'm doing the work, it's creating some change, but on a bigger scale, you have to get to the media that gets to more people widespread. And you see the power of a media apparatus that when you write a press release and all of a sudden hit Jake Tapper, things can happen. Yeah, so that's what I want to do. And I want to create art.

I want to create films. I want to create things that would raise more awareness about all sorts of issues. all things. I don't leave any issue out there. If there is something that needs to be changed, I'm on it. Wow. I mean, this has been such a fascinating conversation. My mind is blown and then put back together again and then blown again. I'm like, it's so impressed and inspired by you and your fortitude and your story and just your resilience, I think, more than anything. I've really learned a lot from that. But I think about the problems that I go through in my life and I'm like,

I'm not kidnapped by the Taliban in a cell. So I can probably get through the things I'm dealing with in my life. If you were able to go on a hunger strike and stay mentally tough for that, I can probably be mentally tough in my own battle. Yeah, I mean, you just have to, you just have to pick your battles. You know, I don't go around having a chip on my shoulder, saying everybody that I've been to Taliban prison or I've been a refugee or I've done these difficult things in my life,

that everybody should be on that level. everybody has their own like somebody's problem because they are late to work is probably they can compare their problems to mine it's not like every everybody's tolerance for difficult situations is different and I don't want to like create this narrative that everybody should just forget about their problems because they're not big enough to them they're probably mountains right yeah I've heard that quote suffering is like a gas yeah I think Victor Frankel said that that even if you're in a really difficult situation or relatively a less difficult situation, that suffering you feel just absorbs the space, expands to the space that you have. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one of the most important thing is that you must have a tribe. You must find the people that think like you, that work like you, that have the same things matter to them. That's where the difference.

Yeah, people that are, you need a tribe and people that will be willing to fight for you. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. So, yeah, that's. That's what my philosophy in life is to just continue to get those people and continue to fight. Absolutely. Well, man, Safia, I'm so inspired. This is truly like an amazing conversation.

Thank you so much for spending the time to chat with me and Cheryl does with me. I'm blown away. Any last thoughts? Any last words? I'll give you the last word if you would like. Just if you want to say anything to the people about how they can support, how they can support your work in Afghanistan. and any words of encouragement for people that are dealing with, you know, challenging things in their life.

You have the floor. Yeah, so Afghanistan continues to suffer. And it just looks like everybody has forgotten about it. The only country in the world where women can't go outside their home, they can't work, they're not allowed literally to step outside their front door. They can't go to school. They are banned from universities, from schools, from every aspect of public life. they continue to suffer.

The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan continues to worsen every day. Almost 95% of people are not getting anything to eat. And that's unbelievable to even think about it. We just don't understand what that means. But just think about it a little bit. If you weren't able to get food, you were having one meal a day, and that's all you could get. So what we're doing, we're trying to fill some of the gaps. We can't do it all.

It's an overwhelming task. It's over 30 million people that needs to be fed. But we are doing our small part, and we're doing all of that work through Human First Coalition. And our website is humanfirstcollection.org. It's a 501c3, so it's tax deductible. You can deduct all of that from your taxes. In addition to that, just do the best you can. at anything you do. You could be a janitor and if you do the best job at being a janitor,

that's enough. So just don't do a mediocre job because it's not worth it. Thank you, Safi. Thank you.