Julian Dorey Podcast - 🫢 [VIDEO] - Taliban Hostage WARNS Us About Their Sinister Plan | Safi Rauf • #142

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Support Our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Safi Rauf is an Afghan-American humanitarian, Navy reservist, and former refugee. Rauf rose to prominence in 2022 after the Taliban held him hostage in Afghanistan for 105 days. Currently, Safi runs the Human First Coalition –– which facilitates undercover missions to evacuate refugees from Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan (CIA, Special Forces vets, etc. facilitating). Prior to HFC, Safi was in the US Special Forces working black ops missions overseas. Human First Coalition: https://www.humanfirstcoalition.org/  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Safi born a refugee in Pakistan (as an Afghan refugee) 7:38 - Pakistan History & Conflicts w/ India 12:59 - The Durand-Line Agreement; US / Pakistan Relationship 21:53 - Safi’s difficult life growing up in Pakistan 27:01 - Safi trained himself to be a spy; Safi’s dad’s travels back to Afghanistan 34:56 - Safi’s parents leave Middle East for US; Safi comes to US 40:06 - Safi works with Special Forces 46:04 - Safi’s 4-year supporting SF 50:34 - What Safi was inspired to go to Medical School 55:20 - Afghanistan falls & Safi gets to work with CIA & Special Forces guys 59:44 - The lay of the land around Kabul Airport in August 2021 1:06:28 - Taliban provided security for Airport?; Why Afghan militia was a problem 1:11:36 - Safi’s ground evacuation operation in Afghanistan 1:17:08 - The helicopter runs of August 2021 1:20:56 - 160,000 people still left behind in Afghanistan today; Vetting Refugees 1:25:07 - Political difficulties in Washington DC for Afghan refugees 1:30:33 - State Department Shuts down ops August 31, 2021 1:37:08 - Safi puts new plans in place for rescue missions; Biden’s interpreter 1:40:43 - How the undercover evacs post-August 2021 worked 1:46:29 - Safi develops contact with Taliban leadership to facilitate evacs; $360,000 plane rides 1:56:32 - Funding the mission & gov support 1:59:25 - Safi heads to Afghanistan; Dinner w/ Taliban 2:09:00 - Safi captured by Taliban 2:12:13 - The Taliban’s structure / politics 2:14:11 - Safi tells story of what happened immediately after capture 2:19:05 - How Safi smuggled a phone into prison; Solitary confinement; The Taliban questioning 2:28:23 - Biden gets involved; Safi’s hunger strike 2:35:46 - Safi’s parents negotiate with Taliban; Safi’s girlfriend meets with White House 2:44:32 - Safi released and immediately gives TED Talk in America; Taliban allows Safi to continue ops 2:50:11 - Humor through trauma; Channeling inner spy 2:53:43 - Afghanistan refugee crisis today and work Safi is doing to evacuate victims of the regime ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, if you're on Spotify right now, please hit that follow button so that you don't miss any future episodes. And I'd love to see you leave a five star review as well. Thank you. A solution for Afghanistan does not exist in America. It does not exist in Europe. The solution exists within Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been at war for the last 50 years. And if you go all the way back to you know Alexander the Great and then you go to Genghis Khan and then you go to the Brits and then the Russians and then the Americans everyone's been to that country and everybody's tried to invade that country but they've all failed today something could be the right thing to do for one party and tomorrow that would be the

wrong thing for the same party yeah just because it doesn't fit their agenda oh it's all it's like you were saying it's all deal making and i have a lot more questions on this but we gotta get there because we gotta work in like how you ended up in this cyclone to where you're still doing unbelievable work despite what happened to you i mean you know sometimes i i try to catch catch the vibe and see when there's some signs that line up, like, oh, yeah, I should definitely do this. And so I had two fans hit me up who I don't think knew each other, like, back to back,

like, oh, you got to talk to this guy, Safi Ruff. I'm like, okay, I Googled the story real quick. I'm like, oh, that sounds awesome. Like, I'll do that. And then Mark Gagnon, who's got a fucking phenomenal show on YouTube that I watch, I think he put out the episode, the next day with you and I'm like, okay Let's get this guy's story out there Like that was a good start right there and and I'd love to see you do a lot more

Podcast to talk about this because by the way on that bill you were just talking about with me This is the kind of thing that can help push that forward, can put not just one human face on it, but a lot more than that, too. But to see somebody like you who is a veteran of this country, who has been a hero for your people over there and our recorded on Afghanistan, some of its greater history, and the Middle East that is going to appear over on Patreon only. Essentially, if I included it in this episode, it would have been way too long for one episode on YouTube, and this was not long enough of a total recording to split it up into two episodes. So we've put it over on Patreon, and you can join our Patreon and help support this show by hitting the link in my description. And if you are on Spotify or Apple, you can hit the link in the show description as well as in the episode description. But I'm just putting two and two together in my head. You were born in 94, I think, right? Yes. So, and you were born in a refugee

camp in Pakistan? Yes. So this is were born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Yes So this is during what I would view as I assumed the height of the civil war is That did your parents flee once the war started or they've been in Pakistan for a while So my my parents fled During the Russian invasion because once again, we didn't live in the city the city was fine uh during the russian invasion when you say the city like kabul city uh kabul city kandahar city mazari sharif like those cities the big cities were fine it was the villages and again same thing in the american invasion the cities were fine it was the villages and the towns that were um far away and the only the poor people and the farmers lived there those were the cities that were repeatedly attacked and bombed and all of that by russians

and then you know we didn't change that course either we continue to do that same action in afghanistan um so sorry you were saying that they left when the russians invaded yes so they because my parents were living in uh the villages and they uh the russians basically were bombarding those villages my my dad actually was arrested and he was in jail for three months in um uh russian occupied afghanistan and why did they arrest him just because they came to the village and arrested anyone there so one day he was uh my dad is a veterinarian and one day he was standing at the bus stop with a bag full of medicine um and they arrested him for that they arrested them for that because that medicine was for the the freedom fighters uh the mujahideen the medicine he was delivering was when does fast grocery delivery through instacart matter most

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Groceries that over-deliver. Meant for people that were injured in the war. Oh, so I was putting two and two together. I was thinking he had like animal medicine, but he had human. Yeah. Got it. For people. And the Russians

basically were like, oh, he's giving this to the mujahideen because they have injured and he's on their side. So they arrested him for three months and then he escaped from prison. And as soon as he escaped, he left. How did he escape from prison? Well, it was somebody in the prison was sympathetic to him and knew him. And then one day he just left the door open to his cell and he looked the other way and let him walk away. So he was able to do that. And then right after that, they all left for Pakistan.

And ever since then, they lived in refugee camp. And that's where I was born. How far were they from Pakistan, where they were ever since then they lived in refugee camp and that's where I was born how far were they from Pakistan where they were I mean again by drive it's not that far it's by drive it was about 14 15 hours but they have yeah it's not like an hour or something yeah but if you do it by a car it's still fine but they had to walk that whole way. So it took them many days. And so your dad and your mom went.

Did they already have kids at that time? Yes. So I have 10 siblings. I think at the time they had about five kids. Jesus. 10 siblings. Yeah. It's a crowded house, man.

It's a lot. It's a lot, man. Sometimes you lose a child and you don't even know. Well, that's a wild concept to me. I don't know anything about that. But, I mean, so they already take five. I'm just picturing five kids going 14, 15 hours in the middle of a war zone to another country for a refugee camp. That's insane. Oh, they didn't drive.

They walked for weeks. They walked? They walked for weeks they walked they walked for weeks you couldn't drive on the roads because the russians were targeting the road i didn't know if they got like yeah what's it called like smuggled out there or something well the smuggling was the the route smuggling route was not uh drivable because it was through the mountains so you had to go over the mountains you have to walk um so they walked for weeks uh to go over the mountains and basically went to pakistan and then they lived there um and then i was born in 95 and i lived there until 2010 and wow so i was actually in in pakistan and i was going back and forth between pakistan and afghanistan when the invasion happened right so before we get there though

with your backstory and growing up pakistan to start with it's such an interesting topic to bring up like especially if you talk with intelligence people about like pakistan they're like oh boy it's like highest bidder goes. But, you know, they're a neighboring country. It's kind of like they've had a front row seat to witnessing all this craziness, like, right next door for the last God knows how many years. How much, like, you know, how many refugee camps do they have? How helpful are they? How much is it just like they feel forced to do it to put on a good face for other countries that they care about what they think about them

like what's the setup there or are they genuinely at least the people the parts of the government who are running the various camps are they genuinely sympathetic to you know in this case the fighting that was going on in afghanistan so it's a very complicated relationship between afghanistan and pakistan uh pakistan doesn't help afghanistan because from the goodness of their heart they help them because there's there's always an incentive for them um the the the very first time when they allowed afghan refugees to settle in pakistan was because the U.S. paid them billions of dollars. We not only paid them billions of dollars, but we went there, trained their military, give them helicopters, give them planes, give them everything they asked for. So I take it this is like when the Russian

thing was going on. Yes. So second thing, you know why Russia invaded Afghanistan? In fact, Russia didn't invade Afghanistan. Russia was invited into Afghanistan by the government that was in place at the time, because Pakistan was supporting the opposition to that government and the government could not protect itself. So they asked the Russians to come and protect that government. Well, Russia came, but Russia's main target was not Afghanistan. Russia's main target was Pakistan. And why was it Pakistan because all the ports that Russia have

they are they can't use them because they're all frozen it's so-called they are all frozen so what does Pakistan have they have a port that is not frozen and you can use it use it throughout the year it's in Karachi it's called Gawadar and Gawadar G-A-W-A-D-A-R okay so that's that was basically like a leverage tool in the middle where now someone had to play ball with them so yeah so russia wanted to make their way to pakistan to invade pakistan and get access to that port to use that port for their international uh basically trade well they were forced to support that the up the the freedom fighters in Afghanistan because if they defeat Russia in Afghanistan, then Pakistan is safe.

So Pakistan has a permanent enemy, India. So Pakistan is sort of in a really, really bad place where on one side they have Afghanistan, which Afghanistan is never happy with anybody. And place where on one side they have Afghanistan, which Afghanistan is never happy with anybody. And then on the other side, they have India. And they've been in three wars so far. They got in a war in 1948, 1965, 1971. And they also had a skirmish on the border in 2001 in Kargil. This is another part of history, especially in the Western world,

very few people know about. But this goes way back, as you said. Yeah, and I think one of the important parts and the thing to understand here is that America is barely 250 years old. And these parts of the world, they are 5,000, 6,000 years old. Yes.

And they don't forget their history. It's an oral history that's been transferred from generations to generations. And they remember that. And they remember who their enemies are. So, and they remember who drew the borders and where the borders are supposed to be. So a lot of the clashes come because the border that is drawn is not where it's supposed to be. Because somebody at some point had more power than that other country, and they were like, well, I'm taking the border

and building it over here now. And am I way off base if I say that Britain and that part played a huge role in that? Yes. Okay. So almost half of Pakistan actually belongs to Afghanistan. And if Afghanistan is powerful and stable, they're going to come back and be like, give me my territory back. Wait, really? I didn't know that.

So what happened when, because Pakistan is a very new country. Pakistan was established in 1947, August 14, 1947. So at that, so back in 1901, there was, in the 1900s, 1901, sometime over there, so the Brits and Afghans used to fight all the freaking time. And the last time, the Brits sent 200 soldiers to Afghanistan to basically fight the people of Afghanistan at the time, and only one person survived. One British soldier survived, and he was also injured in one foot.

And he made it back and basically was like, I can't fight these people. Fuck that place. Yeah, we can't fight these people. Fuck that place. Yeah, we can't fight these people, so we must make, we must sign an agreement with them. So that's when they signed this agreement called the Durand Line.

It's D-U-R-A-N-D, the Durand Line agreement between the Brits and Afghanistan. And they basically said, this is going to be the line. We're not going to come to the other side of this line, and you are not going to come to this side of the line. However, there was a lot of territory and they did this agreement. They're like, we're going to do the agreement for 100 years. This agreement was supposed to last for 100 years. They're like, we're going to do an agreement for 100 years

and after 100 years you guys can have all this territory back. Which is, you know, on, there is on the province that's called Paktunkhwa, all the way until Atuk, that's the territory of Afghanistan. And then on the Quetta side, you have it, you have a lot of territory on that side as well. I'll put this map in the corner of the screen. And there were probably a few things you said a few minutes ago that I'll put something in the corner of the screen then too as well just so people can follow along so all of that belongs to Afghanistan and the time of

the agreement has actually uh ran out so in Pakistan as it is is a tiny freaking country and they have no strategic depth so it it comes and now talking about militarily talking about strategic depth what does that mean india is a big powerful strong country yeah india is large and they have a lot of strategic depth so on the pun Punjab side, on the southern Pakistan, when India attacks Pakistan, what they can do is they can retreat into northern Pakistan and all the way into Afghanistan. They retreat and then they regroup and then they go back and attack. And basically, that's how they usually fight their wars because they can't on the battlefield they can't fight india so they need to have that strategic depth they need to have a country enough they need to have a government in afghanistan that if needed can be used to the benefit of pak. It's basically like they view Afghanistan as like the redheaded stepchild,

but they kind of need him around to smile for the pictures. Yeah, exactly. So any day if there is like a stable, powerful government in Afghanistan, they're going to go to Pakistan and be like, you know, hand it back over. Give me that territory back. But that goes way, way back in history and, you know, having some history lessons to understand why that all happens. But coming back to Pakistan, they get billions of dollars of aid every time. Every refugee that they receive, they receive like hundreds of thousands of dollars

for them and not only that but you know it's more buying power like somebody who goes there if they have money they will rent a place they will buy food they will invest in that economy some of the biggest investors in Pakistan are actually Afghans. They have huge businesses there. And now we come to 2001. So Pakistan became a nuclear power in 1998. And when they became a nuclear power, the U.S. put a lot of sanctions on them because they were like, you can't do that. You can't develop that. You just,

you can't develop a nuclear weapon. And they did. So the US was like, I'm putting all these sanctions on you. And basically Pakistan started their economy and everything started to cripple. And in 2001, the US was basically like,

are you going to support me against the war, war against terrorism in Afghanistan? I will, I will, I will lift all the sanctions. I'll give you money and all the trade that's going to flow from, you know, the port that I talked about before in Karachi. Everything that we need in Afghanistan, all of the supplies are going to come to this port, they're going to be landed in this port, and they're going to be trucked into Afghanistan. So you will benefit not only that we will lift all the sanctions, but all of the logistics, all of the food, all the military equipment, everything that we're going to use, it's going to go through your country, and you're going to benefit massively from that.

So pretty much when those planes hit those buildings, that was like winning the lottery for Pakistan. Exactly. And not only that, but President Bush at the time also called Parvez Musharraf was the—actually, he was an army dictator at the time. He was an army general who actually uh did a coup d'etat that sounds like yeah yeah so he did a coup d'etat against um president nawaz sharif and he was the army basically president bush called him he's like we'll do all these things for you, stand with us. But he also told him that if you don't stand with us,

I'll send you back to Stone Age. We're going to come in there and we're going to kill all of you. Yeah. So that, and that's why Pakistan accepts refugees, Pakistan supports Americans. And it's an odd country for doing that, actually, because most of the countries in that region are not pro-America.

You don't say. Wouldn't have guessed. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like America doesn't have that much leverage in those countries. And Pakistan, in the middle of all these countries that actually are pro-russia they are more pro-russia than they are pro-us pakistan is an odd uh ball in there and they actually are kind of an ally to the us when it's convenient for them right but also they backstab us

every chance they get, every opportunity. They have continued to support terrorism from day one. Because terrorists for them are, they perform two functions for them.

One, they fight in Afghanistan, keep Afghanistan unstable. Second, they fight in Afghanistan, keep Afghanistan unstable. Second, they fight against India. Those terrorists are basically free disposable fighters for Pakistan to use however they please.

They use it in India, they use it in Kashmir, they use it on the border areas all across India. They carry out attacks the border areas all across India. They carry out attacks in India all the time. And, you know, the Mumbai attacks on the hotel, they were all planned in Pakistan by those terrorists. Well, it gives them, it gives the government perfect deniability. It's like, well well they're not ours

officially you know but we're not going to throw them in jail yeah so what are you really doing yeah so and all of those people like i i lived in paxton for 17 years all those people roam free in paxton yeah there's no they roam free with weapons and trainings and they have training camps and all that and nobody you know bats an eye well what was it like for you growing up there because you're you're from afghanistan but you were born in this refugee camp in pakistan and and did you guys did you move out of the refugee camp and just live within the country or we did from time to time but you know the the practices that the people of pakistan were doing at the time were predatory so what would happen is they would be like okay this house for rent you know six hundred dollars uh and we do an agreement for three months and you're like oh

great okay i'll move into this house three month agreement six hundred dollar month three months and you're like oh great okay i'll move into this house three month agreement six hundred dollar a month three months were up they would come knock on the door the rent tomorrow is gonna be twelve hundred dollars or get the fuck out and then they would come back a month later, they'd be like, oh, now it's 2400. So it was predatory practices that they did. In addition to that, being a refugee in Pakistan was like being a second class citizen. Even worse, you were persecuted. Police bothered you all the time. They harassed you, called you names.

Little children, like in school, you couldn't go to Pakistani schools because you would be bullied, you would be persecuted. And for most of the schools, you were actually not allowed to go to those schools. So where did you go? I actually pretended to not be a refugee. So most of the times that was the easy way out for me is to just pretend that I'm not a refugee. And that's actually one of the

reasons that I know multiple languages and I became so good at all those languages that people couldn't tell where I was from. So every time I came across somebody, I spoke so fluently the language that they were, that was their mother tongue, that they just couldn't tell that I was a refugee. So, and, you know, in retrospect, I was like a chameleon. I fit in everywhere. Because you were born there too. I mean, I'm just thinking about like your parents for example here's a good question over in afghanistan and pakistan there's several different languages and it depends where you are so when your parents came to pakistan what was the language of where they were in pakistan and did they speak it at all no so uh my mom is actually tajik she speaks dari my dad is pashtun he speaks pashtu and where we were living uh the predominant language is urdu um so they spoke that both together they

both spoke oh where you were living in pakistan you're saying it's urdu so wait i'm sorry did your parents speak a common language like so my mom also but in afghanistan the way it works like if you if you if you are like your mother tongue is one language or the other you speak both languages basically okay but but ethnically you are one or the other but you can most of the times you can speak both languages so they spoke both languages uh and and that's why i speak both languages and then learn you know um urdu in pakistan and also punjabi in pakistan and how close are these languages like if if we were i don't know if you can make any kind of comparison like this but if people compare like spanish and italian or like french and french and italian

or something like that like what how far apart are they um so punjabi and urdu is basically like they are different they are like uh spanish and more like italian there you can understand if you want to speak one of the language and it's super easy to learn the other but they're still different uh hindi and urdu are basically like either speaking scottish english or you know american english yeah um similarly in pashto they have very different accents they have very different accents. They have many different accents, depending on which region you're from.

And that's why people usually can tell where you're from, because you have that accent. For you, how well did you take on, because you're learning all these as a very little kid, which helps. How well are you taking on the, say, native accent of each of the languages you're learning? Yeah, so I spoke multiple accents. I spoke about five different accents of Pashto,

and depending on who I was speaking to, I would just switch to that language. And it became very useful later in life, because for what I was doing, and we'll get to that later, but it became very useful. I'll bet. Yeah, it became very useful to actually identifying people from where they were from. environment of upbringing was different in the sense that just like some of the basic things you were describing, like you're not welcome in certain areas or there are different people in the world who exist. I mean, I remember when I was like four or five, I didn't know, you didn't know the difference between an American and someone from Pakistan or something like that. You didn't have a concept of tribes yet. But I feel like when you're born into chaos in a way, you probably get that younger. You probably an idea that no so I had very young

age from from the time I could speak and understand some things I knew that and the primary reason for that is because every house we lived in or everywhere we live we didn't have more than two rooms. You see, I had 10 siblings, but most of the times we didn't have more than two rooms. So what happened in there is like when the adults were talking about these complex issues, they were not talking it in a place where we weren't present. So we were either sleeping in

that room and they were sitting up or talking about that and we heard it and we knew what was happening because they were discussing that, you know, somebody got arrested or somebody was, you know, harassed today or somebody was, you know, persecuted or somebody was deported. And all of those conversations happened in the open. So I knew from a very young age that, and then from a very young age, from like basically first grade, I basically knew that I had to pretend to to be somebody else than uh then then who actually was so you know going first grade you realize yeah in first grade i

you know the first day i went to school i didn't say i was an african refugee i said oh i'm from like this far village in pakistan they didn't have a copy of your records, obviously, or anything like that? No. You just show up to school? They just show up to school. Now, what about your name? Is your name a telltale sign at all, or how does that work? No, because most names in that region are Muslim names. Got it. So it's

pretty much the same. They're all the same. They're Arabic names. So they're all somehow similar. And what about your parents too because you know your dad was a veterinarian yeah serious guy what what is how was he making a living in Pakistan and how much of an adjustment I imagine it was an enormous adjustment but like what what kinds of things was he doing and and I assume he was getting the same second class treatment that you were getting if if the rent on the story is consistent across a lot of other things.

Yeah, so that's actually another interesting point that my dad was actually not allowed to work in Pakistan. Not allowed to work? Yeah, Afghans were not allowed to work in Pakistan in fields that were more reserved for the Pakistanis. So what my dad was doing was he was going all the way back to Afghanistan to work. So every month he was going back to Afghanistan, he was working for 25, 27 days of the month. And then he was coming home for four or five days and you know bringing all the money back and buying um groceries and everything for the entire month and then he was going back

so he was going back to afghanistan he had a clinic uh in afghanistan was it back where you where he was originally from or was it closer uh it wasn't where he was from it was in a different province uh it wasn't necessarily closer but it was in a place where there was more um uh livestock and there was more uh opportunities for him to uh to make money and he didn't have problems crossing the border or getting caught as to what he was doing basically like taking his own remittances back you know this wasn't like an issue with in the middle of this whole civil war or even the aftermath when you had the taliban and stuff like that so i mean this was mostly when taliban were in power and when taliban were in power, most of Afghanistan. I mean, it was the poverty. Poverty was extreme,

but it was because they had such extreme laws, there wasn't much crime. The crime was super low. That's interesting. Because if you stole something, they would cut your freaking arm. Yeah. they would cut your freaking arm yeah so um that that that was that basically encouraged a lot of people to uh not steal so this last time i was in afghanistan a lot of people it was sort of making

a joke is that you know back the the previous government when they would arrest uh thieves and they would put them in the back of the truck, you know, as soon as the police would start driving, they would jump from the truck and run away. And now they're like, when the Taliban arrested thieves, they put them in the back of the truck and they just sit there and don't do anything. Because if you make a sudden move,

they're going to fucking shoot you. So at the time, most of the time, my dad didn't. And my dad was a smart guy. He would blend in. He didn't look like he was carrying money or carrying anything. He was well-respected in the community, and he made sure that he didn't, it didn't look like he was, he had money. Did he also have, because he took obviously his wife and kids to Pakistan, but extended initially, we were all in Pakistan.

But by the time I actually was seven or eight, my siblings started, because I'm the second youngest, and there's a large gap between the ages. So my eldest sister is about 45, 45, 50, almost twice my age. I love how you don't know. Yeah. There's too many. Hilarious. Yeah, she's almost twice my age. So they were already married off and they had their own you know homes and families uh in fact i have and they went back to afghanistan you're saying

uh no they were just in pakistan in different places um and then my sister actually um came to the u.s and my eldest sister came to the U.S. in 1995. She won a lottery. Yeah. She won the diversity visa lottery, and that's how she... Oh, she won a literal lottery. A literal lottery. I thought you were saying that as like a phrase. No, no, no.

She won a lottery. There's a program called the diversity visa lottery. So you basically put your name down, and then they shuffle, and then the people whose names come out Wow good for her gets the gets the visa to the United States so she just left and then the rest of you were still over there we were all there and then my sister with her family lived here and kind of made a life for herself here and then she invited my parents to come did you ever visit before you actually came or

no it was okay no so in 2006 both my parents came to the u.s and uh i was actually left i was doing math in my head i'm like wait a minute you didn't come here in 2006 so they the two of them came and all the kids were still back. All the kids were still back. Who'd they stay with? So at this point, all my other siblings had moved out to different places. Okay. Yeah.

But I was about 13 years old and I became the man of the house. Wow. So at 13, I was care of um three of my siblings so a younger sister and then an older sister but but in pakistan in most of those countries it's it's the male that is that does everything around the anything outside the house and also like i did a lot around the house as well but sort of did you get a job like did you or no i mean my parents send money back because my dad got a job here and he was sending us money back that's um so that wasn't an issue and also my brothers and my siblings they supported us as

well when they came over to america were they here did were they able to get like a visa to come here or yeah they got an immigration visa so my sister because you can't bring you can if your parents are in another country you can apply for them to come it takes about four or five years to bring your parents uh for them to immigrate here so they did and then immigrate to immigrate to the u.s full-blown like become a citizen well you don't become a citizen you become a permanent resident first okay you become a permanent resident and then five years later you become a citizen so they came they became permanent residents in 2006 and then they applied for us

for us to come yeah immigrate to the US and when did you come 2010 so it took about a little over four years for us to come to the US as well and these were the miners children and then the rest of my siblings were still all over the place and so my last uh brother came in 2019 so it started in 1995 and my last brother came in 2019 wow so it took 23 years and where did you guys come in america where'd you move to omaha nebraska what a random omaha nebraska how'd you how'd your sister land on that uh so my sister first went to california and she couldn't find a good job the the life the standard of living was too expensive and they

couldn't afford it so my cousin was living in Omaha, Nebraska, and he basically called them and was like, hey, there's jobs here and it's cheap. And if you just get just a random job, you can support your family. So they went to Omaha. Outside of the cousin, was there like, was there any sort of Afghan community there?

I think there were a dozen families there um something so it's funny university of nebraska at the time it's called the afghan cultural center um it had that and in the 70s it was producing propaganda papers for afghanistan against the russians so full circle right there yeah so uh that had created some community in that area because a lot of afghans were working there producing books and stuff for afghanistan their job was to actually their job was to it's called the nebraska printing press and uh universe of nebraska printing press Their job was to print books for the children in the schools that they were living in, the refugee camps in Pakistan for Afghan refugees.

Instead, they were basically printing propaganda books against the Russians and basically encouraging children to learn about weapons and bombs. And, you know, our children's book here in the U.S., it's like A, Apple, B, Ball, and C, Cat and stuff. Yeah. Those books were basically like...

A, Atomic Bomb, B. A, Airplane, and B, Bomb, and C, like something else related to war. And, and you know there were poems that my uncle so and so has an ak-47 and he uses that ak-47 to fight the russians those were basically like poems and stuff in those books and again those were produced by here in America. They were all written by people here in America and produced and it was supported by CIA. And, you know, so it was... Well, there's your answer right there.

It was useful is the answer. Wild. So, but when you come here, did you speak any English at the time or did you have to learn that from scratch oh i speak fluent english you did yeah i did because uh when i was in pakistan most pakistan schools are uh basically mostly english and english is like a second language yeah um a lot of the good schools urdu they only have as a language most of all the science

subjects and everything is in English but it's it's the reminiscent of the British Empire god that makes sense so um I knew my English was really good I took the the tests and I basically enrolled in high school in just regular English and I went to high school for about a year and a half. I became a U.S. citizen on May 25th. Of what year? 2012. I graduated from high school May 24, 2012.

I became a teen May 25, 2012. May 26, 2012. I became 18 May 25, 2012. May 26, 2012, I was on my way to Fort Braggs to get my clearance and ship out to Afghanistan. Now, what made you want to enlist? So I didn't actually enlist at that time. At that time, I went to speak to an Air Force recruiter, and I was like, I want to fly planes. I had watched Top Gun at the time.

Oh, that's helpful. So I was like, but, you know, I went to the wrong branch. I was like, Air Force, okay, Air Force, they fly planes. So I went to him, and he basically, like, talked to me, and he basically like talked to me and he's like oh so what's your background and i was like oh you know afghanistan i speak six languages and he's like oh you're fluent and i'm like yeah i'm fluent and then he's like well i don't think enlisting in the air force is i think we there's bigger needs for you right yes so they hit the lottery with you they're like oh shit we got one yeah so they sent me to a different

recruiter and i went to that guy and basically i was uh i wasn't given any answers like they're like oh okay do you want to make a lot of money i was like i'm 18 of course i want to make a lot of money uh and then i was sent to north carolina fort bragg's where the joint special operations command is so i went there, I did interviews, I took tests in six different languages, and I aced all of them. Special forces, though. This is like, you know, you bumped up some steps there from where you first walked in. I mean, not just special forces. It was one of the most elite tier one units in the United States military. But I didn't know at the time.

You're just blind on this. You're like, all right, tell me where to go. Yeah, they're telling me where to go and they're telling me what to do. And I'm acing all tests, you know. And, you know, I actually, in high school, I had 4.3 GPA and, you know, even more than the 4.0. Because when I came to the US.S. in high school,

I was taking all AP classes. And I actually got into a lot of prestigious schools for college. But I couldn't go to college because I had to support my parents and my family um we could not um survive without me actually getting a job to support the rest of my family and now you also happen to land yourself into a really as far as like paying with the government goes like a pretty high paying first job yeah doing this to support and you're going to get in a situation where you're going to have to use your skills meaning they're going to be sending you to some of the very same places or the same place that you came from i'll let you guess how much i was making here doing that job

i have nothing to go off of me i'll say i'll say an absolutely stupid number uh 110 so doing that job at the age of 18 i was making quarter million dollar quarter million dollars yeah i was making quarter million dollars the fbi doesn't even pay that exactly so uh i got that job and you know i get shipped to afghanistan i land in bagram and then from bagram i get on another small plane private charter plane um just a four-seater and i go into this remote place and i land there i go there and i've never seen like this kind of people like they all have beards and they're like jacked and tattooed and you know just a whole different world uh and every one of them they all have gray beards like they're all in their late 20s or i mean only a few of them were in their late 20s most of them were over 30. and when you walk in yeah i look at you what's what's what's

the face like oh yeah we gotta drag this kid around yeah so i'm, and I go in there. But they had seen my credentials from before. They had seen what was on paper. They were actually very excited. Because before me, they were taking six people with them. Oh, because they needed one for each? Yeah. And now you checked all the boxes? Yeah.

So what that does is, you know, this Tier 1 team goes on every mission they do is they go on a helicopter. And when you are flying a helicopter at that elevation, every person matters. They could only take four people per helicopter. Yeah. So when I got there, I actually saved them a helicopter and a half. Every mission they were going, they didn't have to take a helicopter and a half every mission they were going they were they didn't have to take a helicopter and a half were you had you worked out before in your life like were you working with anything i was 135 pounds skinny as fuck you're not 135 pounds now no i'm not you filled

out yeah is that when it happened or that happened later? Yeah. So that's when they took me in and they basically mentored me. And the first thing they did, they took me to the gym and he's like, this is the gym. And you're going to come here every day and we're going to train you. So they added a half a person to you pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Gotcha. So I go there and the food is absolutely amazing there. And you have these fridges full of the best kind of nutrition.

What are we talking, like Meathead's Paradise? Exactly. Like anything you wanted. You know, we could get sushi flown out to us. Could have, like, we had everything that you asked for was there. And protein, I mean, like, the protein, I don't know what they're called, but there were these like protein shakes that the fridges were just full. Love that.

Yeah. Love that. And in the gym, the fridges were full. You could just go in, grab. Like the pre-made ones. The pre-made protein. Like MetaRx stuff. Yeah, but MetaRx tastes like shit.

These tasted good. So, yeah, they had the premium-made ones. The pre-made proteins. Like MetRx stuff? Yeah, but MetRx tastes like shit. These tasted good. So yeah, they had the premium stuff. Yeah. So every time you go into the gym, you grab a protein shake, you drink it and work out. Then you leave the gym, you grab another protein shake and you drink it. And then you go to the chow hall, which is basically the cafeteria. And there's chefs in there, cooks in the cafeteria and you there's uh chefs in there cooks in there and you ask them what to make for you and they make you whatever you ask them

custom custom and um the entire team consisted of 30 uh people but the support element like everybody who was pulling security of the bay like like the FOB and the kitchen and everything, there was a lot more. But the team, the core team that was actually conducting the mission was only 30. You may have said this. I just want to make sure for the timeline in my head and for everyone listening. But you had gone in for your first meeting on May 26, 2012 with the Air Force. Eventually, they work your way and you find your way to the special forces here so now you're settled in with the special forces you've been there a few weeks you're in

your routine what what year are we in are we still in 2012 yeah uh we're still in 2012 because it didn't take too long they it i spent about a month in fort bragg's to do all the things that i needed to do uh but then soon i found myself in the middle of like this. I learned everything on the job. Because I knew a lot of the things that they needed from me, but everything else that was pertinent, I learned on the job. Did you also have a timeline yet on when the next deployment would be

that you would have to be ready for? Or did that? No, I mean, for the next four years, I remained there. I wasn't getting deployed for a certain amount of time. I was there for the next four years. I would come home every six to seven months for a month vacation, and then I'd just go back. And I had incredible time with those guys. They were the absolute best, humble guys down to earth. They were not young guys who were obnoxious and unprofessional. The most professional guys I've ever worked with

and the most down-to-earth guys I've ever worked with. That's awesome. Most caring, because they all had children as well. Some of them had children that were my age. So they looked at me as like, you know, they mentored me. They looked at me as one of their child. And they really, really made a change in my life. So, you know, I continue to be amazed at what I learned

from that experience continues to propel me. So initially I was just doing interpretation. But now where the interesting part comes is I became so good at the job because, you know, I knew all the different accents for the languages. So, for example, if we went to a target, and because before we went on the target, we would have a briefing and we were like, we were looking for this guy. He's from this place. He's from this region.

He is here visiting because he wants to conduct an attack or wants to do something. So we would go to the target and I would start talking to him because he would try to blend in with all the people. And this is after the four years of Fort Bragg, obviously, what you're talking about right now. So it's about a couple years down the road as I become more part of the team.

So I'm talking to these guys know the terrorists would try to blend in with the local people and i'm talking to the local people and i'm like okay you're local you're local and then in the middle somebody would just speak some random accent and i'm like goose well you Like, well, you don't belong here. So a lot of the times it became very useful for me to do that job. And did a lot of different things. And, you know, working with tier one teams, you sign a lot of NDAs. So, so much of what I did with them, you know, obviously you can't talk about it and um it would also be disrespectful to the team to actually you know talk details and um expose some of their work that they do and things that they do or you know even the name of the team or any details about

them are you allowed to say broadly what any of the any of the countries that you may have gone to? If not, no worries. Oh, I mean, we went to many different places. But again, like, that's also sort of like, because we went to some countries that we weren't supposed to go. It's like sometimes the GPS stopped working and, you know, there's no lines on the ground. So you kind of... You don't see lines from the sky? Yeah, exactly.

It's not like a borderline? Yeah, exactly. There's nothing like that on the ground, so you kind of... You don't see lines from the sky? Yeah, exactly. It's not like a borderline? Yeah, exactly. Come on now. There's nothing like that on the ground. So sometimes you venture into places that you're not supposed to be, and the GPS just doesn't pick up, and you end up killing some dudes, and you go back. But we went to a lot of different places so how many years were you in so i was with that team for four years and from 2012 2016 i was with

that team and then in 2016 i came back to northern virgin and I, cause I wanted to go back to school. I had made enough money and I'd done enough adventure. I wanted to go back to school and I want to actually go to medical school. So. Was that, was that a little bit from your dad being a veterinarian or? Absolutely. It was, uh, from from from living in refugee camp from seeing my dad um all of it uh in refugee camp the number one thing that most people died from was minor infections and things that they just couldn't get um treated and they were very minor infections it's they just couldn't get antibiotics or something and they would die from it and i saw uh my best friend growing up i was really young i was like six seven years old is when you know one of my best friend uh fell and

he got his foot injured uh because he was riding a bicycle and he fell and he had a small injury on his foot and then the injury didn't get treated it got infected and he died from it so basically um what the reason i wanted to go to back to medical school is because i wanted to go back into those communities and you know do some good uh 2016 i got into georgetown university and i went I went to Georgetown, graduated in 2021. It's a real shit school, man. Yeah. Couldn't do better than that.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't go to Harvard, so. Georgetown's pretty good, man. So disappointed. That's, that's, that's a pretty good start right there, I'd say. Um, so I graduated in 2021, got into medical school, did everything, was ready to go to medical school. The day I was supposed to start classes is when Afghanistan fell. So.

So let's go back there. You see that happen. How, like I've had people in here probably four or five times before who did some sort of service and they talk about like 9-11 and the day that happened and how it flipped something in them was that would you describe it as probably a similar moment for you in the sense that like okay let's get to work yeah and i think i mean going to medical school was a dream right but i couldn't just close my eyes and not help these people. So, and I was in the best position to help these people. What the work that I had done in Afghanistan and the relationships that I had built and developed and the reach and the team and everything that I had there was just perfect

for the kind of work that I needed to do there. So I got to work and I started working with a lot of the same people that had worked four years ago. So a lot of those people once again needed my help. Now, are they still, when you do this, are they still in or are they, because you heard about a lot of guys who were out who then went back some of them went back actually and some of them were still there and you also i'm just remembering this i don't know if this is related but you had before we got on camera you had been saying about something completely separate that during this time period you were a navy reservist is that right i'm still a navy reservist and you're still one now yeah so where did you get to act in that

capacity then for this or was this you were starting up your thing and getting the help of your contacts with special forces no i was i was mostly doing this with special forces and with a number of other agencies um and these agencies needed help and i was providing help to those agencies when you say agencies i? I mean, you know, some three-letter agencies. Gotcha. So they needed a lot of help on the ground and so I started helping them, started helping the team I was working with before and just anything I could do. Started collecting people who were stranded all across Afghanistan. And I built a team of over 100 drivers and escorts and all kinds of experts within two days.

And then they all got to work and started collecting people all over Afghanistan and bringing them to the airport. When did you get on a plane and fly over to that part of the world? How fast? Or were you coordinating all this from the United States? Yeah. So I was coordinating all of this from the United States because there wasn't enough time because to get back there, it would have taken about two, three days while I stood

everything up and I was ready to implement everything, ready to deploy my teams in Afghanistan. And they were doing everything under my command. How fast did you open up Human First Coalition or was that not a thing yet? It actually happened very quickly. So this was a part of yeah okay so that also happened regularly because a team we had a team here in the u.s as well we had a team of over 40 uh strong here in the u.s and they were all volunteers uh so we stood that up and we stood team in afghanistan and when you stand up a team like that you can't just willy-nilly be like,

oh, we're a collection of people. You have to organize them under something. That's where He-Man first came from. So very soon I realized that I can't just be a one-man army. And if it's not organized and if it doesn't have a name under which they all basically sort of feel a belonging, then it's going to fall apart very quickly. So I decided to create Human First, and we applied to be an NGO of 501c3 right away. And then we didn't get a recognition as a 501c3 until a couple couple months later. But as a registered entity, we could operate as a 501c3

because we had the intentions to register it as a 501c3. And I'm also trying to understand this on the spot here just for like the logistics but when you set up something like this can you basically in the heat of what is a now crisis moment especially apply for i don't know if this is the right term to say for it but like a government contract in a sense that you get access to these existing forces special special forces, agency people, in an official deal with the government that provides you resources to coordinate and basically gives you some control over the matter?

What's the process here? So I think it wasn't so much as you get a control or force over it. It's just you kind of collaborate. It's a public private partnership and it's basically you do what they don't have reach or access to just because they are held by rules and regulations and higher standards than private organizations so they were completely banned from leaving the base, leaving the airport. They couldn't leave the wire.

No, not Kabul, just the airport, like the Kabul airport wire, they couldn't leave that. Couldn't go outside the walls. Yeah. So that became very difficult because between that wire and the people they needed to help were several Taliban checkpoints. Can we go back for one sec just so that we can set the scene here correctly? Because, I mean, people, they at least watch the news.

They saw some of these indelible images that were horrifying that we all saw at the airport. So they know what you're talking about there but biden as you pointed out earlier says in march or april 2021 we're going to pull out sometime this year a few months they go to pull out in august yeah literally it's the whatever americans were left abandoned the bases they leave the ship behind the talibans you know taking propaganda videos with all this shit they're in the old president's house at his desk yeah and anyone who was pulled out who did not make it out on one of those apache helicopters or whatever they went to the airport how big is this airport how many people were there who was there let's start there like like what was going on so this is about uh 16 days before the u.s completely pulled out that's when the government that we had put in place it's called the republic

that fell and taliban basically took over everything and they took over the presidential palace and the u.s embassy still has all of its staff so the priority for usg is to move all of the embassy staff well if you see that uh shinok helicopters going from on the news going from the embassy to the uh airport that's when they were transferring all of the um embassy staff and that's the largest embassy to the airport, that's when they were transferring all of the embassy staff. And that's the largest embassy in the world that we have. Really? I didn't know that. So Afghanistan embassy is the largest in the world that we have. And there were a lot of people,

at least 5,000, 6,000 people just at the embassy. So they were trying to move those people. And it became chaotic very quickly. The Kabul airport is tiny tiny it's only one runway you only have one runway one plane can take off or land at a time so it's not very big um it's probably the size of a small town airport in america if that and if that it has it has a total of three terminals well by

I mean terminal in America means a little bit more it has basically three planes can be loaded or offloaded at one time sure yes so and then one plane can fly or

land at one time. So, and then it only has one entrance, that's civilian entrance. It had three military entrances, but it only has one civilian entrance. So everybody rushed that one entrance. And since all of the security, the military, everybody had left, had just abandoned all of their position, it was basically open season for the civilians to take over the runway. So the civilians basically overran the airport and they were on the tarmac and these are effectively not to be too obvious here but to go back to your initial roundabout numbers we're talking about members of the 5 million of the 40 who hate the taliban and are horrified at what's about to

happen exactly so they are like clinging to planes they They are, planes can't take off. Apaches are doing like very low flies and nobody is bothering. And that's when we, I think, sent 4,000 additional troops to do the, to clear the runway. Just to the airport. Just to the airport. And that didn't help at all because when they got, it was too late. How did we get the troops in there? Did we fly them on a plane? Yeah, they flew on a plane, but at the time the runway was already cleared.

And it was cleared in a very unconventional way, but I'll keep that at that. You can't talk about that? No. Okay. that at that you can't talk about that okay um so it the runway is cleared but the people who had overran the airport about 25 000 remained there and they basically uh sat them down in the different um basically the spaces that were there for planes. They kept them there. And then instead of just kicking them out of the airport, they started flying them out.

So they have these C-17s that they were filling with 900 people. Yeah, I put one of those pictures in the corner. I remember some of those images. It's wild. So they started putting them on the planes. And now once they secured all of the parameters of the airport, millions of people continue to go towards the airport because they were like, it was basically they, everybody heard that there are American planes and they're taking everybody to the US. Was there any concern? I mean, I remember thinking this at the time, but I didn't really know what the logistics were with, you know, some of the attempted diplomacy, I guess, with huge air quotes there, you could say. But was there concern about these planes being shot out of the sky? I mean, most people think that it all just happened in a vacuum.

We were talking to the Taliban, and basically the USG was talking to the Taliban, and there was an understanding, and the Taliban were allowing it. The Taliban were providing security for the airport. The Taliban were not letting bad actors to go to the airport. They were providing security for the airport where all these people who were screaming and crying, trying to the away from them being afraid of being killed if they help the Americans at all also are yeah at this point because I mean Taliban at this point were

victorious they just got a country and to themselves and they didn't care about like a bunch of people and they didn't want to show that on the news as well. They didn't want people to see, because there was so much coverage at the time as well. The Taliban didn't really want people to see the coverage of masses of people getting killed. And the credit that I would give to the Taliban is that even though they dissent in some places,

but mostly they do listen to their senior leadership. So from the top, if it comes, you're not to touch anybody that's trying to leave. That's what everybody will do. So, which is, you know, huge, considering how undisciplined they are uh that's or or you know it's it's it's complicated to even say that that they're not disciplined because they they took over a country that was supported by the u.s for the last 20 years um yeah anyway yeah but just on a side point right there you had said something earlier that was in the middle of a bunch of other stuff but it's it's a point that should be reiterated we are so used in this country to looking at tomorrow yeah like today yeah you know and you

were talking about how this is generational stuff and to look at the taliban it's like you know they just they got beat down into a corner in 2001, 2002, and they licked their wounds and they slowly but carefully recultivated. And so if you, you know, obviously we can disagree with that as we should because of who they are and what they represent. But there is a lesson that should be learned from that that probably won't be. But there's a lesson that should be learned from that. Yeah. So that's happening and in fact that what's really ironic is some of the taliban were actually treating those people better than a different force that was supported by the

u.s were treating i won't go into that but there was what do you mean they're like opening doors for them and shit or like what do you mean when you're saying treat it better like it's hard for me to process like the Taliban's treating people well so so there's a Taliban checkpoint right uh-huh and although they are harassing them they are like kind of making fun of them. They are like, they're not killing them. You know? Hmm. But. We're going that far. Yeah.

Okay. So, then you go there and then we deployed a force that, you know, that was, basically,

is a militia that was trained by us. They are, like, literally shooting into crowds. Why? They're just shooting into the crowds just because they are mercenaries they why are they shooting into the crowds you control the crowd

yeah um not the best approach but that's what they were doing and then the third line of control is the US military. So this is happening and there is so many people that nobody can get through. This place is just surrounded and there is hundreds of thousands of people.

So what we did was we determined HLZ's helicopter landing zones all across the city determined HLZs, helicopter landing zones, all across the city. HLZs? Yeah, helicopter landing zones. Oh, sorry. You should have picked up on that. Where helicopters can land.

So we picked different locations where it was kind of like an open area where a helicopter could land. So what we would do, the people that were eligible and the people that worked with us, the people that we knew, we would find them, collect them, and then drive them to that location. A helicopter would come, land, and take all those people to the airport. So that's how we did most of the evacuation. Now, so we've been going through basically the instant on the ground scene there which is great to set it as far as like what the logistics look like there but all the while you are as you had pointed out back in america right now quickly within two days

i think you said siphoning up a team together yeah that is comprised of government people including agencies and military where you are coordinating to get people out of afghanistan so the first question is were you getting like a master date were you getting access to like a master database of individuals who had been translators or just helped or as you had said earlier like cooks in a camp and stuff like that and you and it was your job to coordinate where these people might be right now or to get in touch with them if possible? Like what did the scene look like in America? Yeah, so I have a team on this side, and they have their computers open.

They have lists of people. I have a team on this side who has computers open. They have WhatsApp and the apps that we were using to communicate to afghanistan and then i have team over there who is talking to another agency and this agency is giving them names and contact numbers and phone numbers contacts addresses then i have a team over there who is doing another thing so the team over here is giving me, it's like, okay, there is these 40 people. They've been vetted. They've been vetted through like either DOD, one of the agencies or state department,

giving me the list. I'm taking the list, taking one look at it, kind of making sure that it goes through my like sort of a glance. I'm giving it to this team. I like okay this is a list give this list to the team on the ground and who was on the ground uh this is the team that I built on the ground and most of the people that are part of the ground are actually my first cousins these These are all related to me. Okay. So when you're saying team on the ground, I was thinking of this wrong a little bit. You don't necessarily mean like the people working in special forces or agency or something like that.

You were talking about literal native Afghan citizens on the ground who have networks to be able to help in any, let's say like smuggling processes that gotta happen to get people out so there's both because these people thus the natives can get in places without getting noticed they're going to those far places but the helicopters coming these are special forces yes yes so I'm basically like determining, but this helicopter zone is right outside the airport, so it's not far. There is open areas right outside the airport,

and that's where we're landing these, we're bringing these people by cars, and then the helicopter is landing. So I'm telling this team to give these names to the team that's on standby. And they're going picking them up. Another person, I'm like, so they are. But the only team that exclusively only I was privy to and I was handling was those special forces teams.

I was talking to them directly. I was like, hey these people then this person would be like okay they've been picked up they're in route they're five minutes away from the location that they're supposed to be that's when i'm talking to the guys the special forces teams i'm like hey guys they'll be there in five minutes and that's when they start rolling and then go. And it's multiple. And this one is like, okay, that, because we had over 20 teams that were picking up people and then they were like, okay, this other team is 20 minutes out

from where they're supposed to be. And then this other volunteer comes to me, he's like, okay, this other team is about to reach the HLZ. So every time one of those groups is reaching the hlz i am communicating back to the special forces teams that have the helicopters that hey this team has reached go uh the helicopter needs to be there to pick them up this is insane logistics from being across the world i mean and obviously like it's not like there's any language problems. You speak all the languages, so you can handle both ends of it.

But still, like, we're talking, at least from my seat, how I'm picturing it, these are two five-minute window type things where you don't have a lookout who's going to, like, point out, like, oh, what's going on there? You know what I mean? If that. You don't even have a guarantee of that and yet you got to figure out match government with resources like flying in fucking helicopters and shit and then assets on the ground who you don't know where they are or what's going on or who's watching them yeah and you got to bring all these together and you're the guy on the iphone on the other end going okay good clear yeah that's nuts man yeah it was I mean nothing like this has ever happened in history it's just absolutely incredible but I think uh covet

really helped with that that we got kind of got trained for this that during covet we were doing a lot of things you know remotely uh very different different things. So as they're picking them up, but so we were holding these helicopters in a secret place. We had about six helicopters and these six helicopters are being kept in a secret location. So we were running these operations from August 18.

So almost like, actually from August 17, 18, we started these missions until August 26. And what happened on August 26 is one, a suicide bomber. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So a suicide bomber. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So a suicide bomber went off right outside the airport. Second, Taliban found our secret location of the helicopters, and all the helicopters were destroyed. Oh, a different suicide bomber.

Well, not a... Not the one that I was thinking of. So the one suicide bomber happened at the airport. Yes. But then Taliban found the helicopters. So they just went and destroyed the helicopters. Well, they were going to go and get the helicopters, but before they could get there, we destroyed the helicopters ourselves

so that the Taliban won't get their hands on them. So you get the call that like, okay, we're out of helicopters now. Yeah. And you're only eight days in how many people had you evacuated at this point approximately uh close to seven thousand but we didn't really keep numbers actually you got seven thousand people out on on helicopters yeah in eight days in eight days um and that was actually the majority of the evacuation after august 26th not not much happened how big are these helicopters uh pretty big how many people can so six helicopters and usually we could fit about so the two types of helicopters one that you can only fit like about 10 15 people

but then there's another helicopter that you could fit up to 60 people in it but still this is a lot 7 000 people in eight days is a lot of trips and where so they would take off where are they taking them immediately the trip was only five minutes to where to the airport oh just literally getting them down there so they could get them okay so they're picking them up flying up going over the wall and landing at the airport. Because they can't go. There's no way to go. I mean, there were ways that we used those as well, but not enough to matter.

I can't believe this went on for eight days until the Taliban did something about it. Yeah. Like, that's crazy that you guys pulled that off. Just imagine, like imagine a fucking helicopter going over and over and they're not going to see this? You can see the pictures. There's pictures of them. Are they on the internet?

It's not the pictures like the famous one that they were splicing with the picture of Saigon. Not that one. There were helicopters going back and forth between different places that were picking up people let me see if i can if you can spot one here on google images if i pull it up all right so and i'll put it in the corner screen if i can

that one was the one they were splicing with like saigon that's a different type of thing that's not one of yours yeah so it was mostly like these kind of helicopters and those helicopters okay um so mostly like this helicopter over here which one this one the cnn one yeah because they most they all looked civilian. If you see this helicopter, it doesn't look military. Yeah. So they mostly looked civilian, so it was kind of like more... That wouldn't tip them off more? That wouldn't tip them off because they would get tipped off by military helicopters.

Hmm. I'll have to think about that one a little bit more i guess i could see that going either way but still okay so then they eventually they do they do get tipped off so that's out so august 26 you've gotten 7 000 people out now you and i when we were talking in the kitchen before this we i'd asked you how many people today are still there, including people that are among the estimates that may be dead. And you said it was around 160,000. 160,000 that are all eligible to be here. There is over 300,000 people who worked with us in some capacity okay and so many of them are not eligible because we have made very strict rules of who can come and who can't come for example

if somebody didn't work with us so for them to be eligible to come here they must have worked with us for over a year so if somebody worked with us for like 11 months and 29 days they're not eligible to come here i don't think the taliban cares though if it was 11 months 29 days or 12 months and two days you know they don't like them and they might do something even if somebody went on and a taliban saw somebody who went on the base for one day is their life is in danger that it so at the at the beginning those you said it's it was 300,000 you had in mind so 160,000 is actually the ones that are eligible and should be here today today same back then was that what you were

saying 300,000 300,000 is the one that actually have worked with us in some capacity but we just okay don't we're not gonna give them the visa necessary to come here so without getting too bogged down by numbers essentially at the beginning you know you have hundreds of thousands of people in this country who you want to at least try to get out and the chaos of this so for eight days you get out seven thousand great job obviously but then that gets shut down. So how do you adjust? What's the next steps? So, I mean, there were other people doing similar things as well, right? Some people were using secret passageways. Some people, the military itself had Blackhawks and Chinooks

that were making trips from the embassy. You know, at the end, the total number of people by August 31st that were taken out were 120,000 people. So that's like the biggest military airlift in history in such a short time. And did all these people end up in the united states or did they take them to also some other countries around there so none of these ended up in the united states none of them did none of them ended up in the united states right away like they weren't taken from kabul to the u.s right yes they They all went to bases across the world.

Yes. And most of them, majority of them, like probably about 100,000 have made to the U.S. Some have made it to other countries, but there is still thousands left stranded in actually in these bases as well. So we are... I guess it's better in Afghanistanghanistan but yeah we're a year

and a half later and you know not all of them have still made it to the united states which is a point that i want to make the point that i'm trying to make here is that these people were not willingly brought here in the united states the the purpose for them to go end up on that secondary base was to be vetted, to make sure that we didn't pick up some fucking terrorist while we were in the heat of the moment and make sure that everybody, that none of them were a security threat

for the U.S. There were some people that they found out that cannot go to the U.S. For whatever reason, something came up on their background and they weren't able to come to the U.S. And they are in another country now and they will not come to the U.S. Well, and honestly, that's probably data like that is probably a good thing because we all know to all large numbers you're going to have creeks in the ship. And people who may be nervous about this type of system want to see that we are catching people who did slip through the cracks because you know some people had to.

So that should be a tailwind to this kind of thing that's that's the point i want to make because most people just think that because we evacuated so many people that people who shouldn't be here in the u.s made it to the u.s they didn't there were rumors and republicans were trying to use that as a sort of a a um ploy to say that people who shouldn't be here made it, but we did a very good job at vetting them in those secondary lily pads, is what we called them, and then after that, they were brought to the U.S. See, I don't know why they would pick that, like looking at the Republicans in that situation, I don't know why they would pick that as a as a good hill to die on because

correct me if i'm wrong here more people in the military than not lean conservative so that's their constituents right and also correct me if i'm wrong here across the military the support for the people of afghanistan who helped us is astra fucking nomical yeah so i think the reason they do that is because it's easy to fear mongering is very easy in america like if you make if you got that right yeah if you tell somebody somebody's coming to like harm you it's very easy to do that and you know americans are one of the most protected people in the world like there's countries where you go to sleep you don't know if you're gonna wake up or not yeah so but but we are the most scared people like we're like oh somebody's just gonna come in you know do things to

me so it's very easy to fearmonger because we do that all the time with many different like ethnicities of people they're gonna come and you know rape our woman and kill our children and you know, do that sort of stuff. So it's easy for them. And one thing I want to say about that is the military right now is actually very, a lot of soldiers that I talk to, a lot of military veterans I talk to, they're really confused of what is happening with the republican party you remember last summer when the republicans voted against the pact act is that the burn pits thing yeah yes the republicans voted against that it was one of the most necessary bills for veterans and the republicans were like oh no we don't care

about veterans especially veterans that were dying because of burn pits because they had cancer they developed cancer because of those burn pits yeah just had one in here chris gathers has stage four late cancer because of that a bunch of dudes were working through back channels pulling resource where we could to get people out of out of afghanistan and you were thinking about going over there dude if i could man with stage four cancer oh yeah man it's just physically i knew you know i had to make that assessment i'm like look i could be more of a hindrance because of you know this thing's not tested you know my hip my glute my quad and i had it all and my femur taken out so if i need to carry somebody like i know i can do it but not like i used to be able to do it

exactly so they voted against that so i don't know if they really care about their veteran constituents uh and veterans are really pissed off about that um they're gonna pick any point they possibly can and that's that was one of the points from the afghan adjustment act that they picked up they were basically like oh all these people that came here if we just give them permanent residency here there may be some people that could be a threat to the US national security so but there is specific language in the bill that says that we are going to use the highest standard of vetting for all these people. So nobody can slip through the cracks to actually stay here.

And it actually is like, it should be one thing that we should be asking for because the specific language that requires for all those people to be vetted, if there's no bill like that, there's no reason to vet those people. So to make sure that they are safe for national security we should be vetting yes and that's why that bill is

so important and we continue to advocate for that bill and we hopefully will reintroduce it in Congress next month yeah i hope it goes through man yeah that's just it's crazy to me but back to to where you were in in the story before i got you off track there for a second you have those 7 000 people out you lose the helicopters now you're coordinating to find other ways to get people out of the country. How did the mission adjust? And did you add, like, throughout those eight days and then the weeks after, are you constantly adding people, I assume?

Like, people are volunteering, be it former military, active military, people in the country who just want to help, stuff like that? Yeah, so my team continued to grow and the mission continued to grow. The mission continued to become more official. The government saw us as a very capable force. The government saw us as somebody who could do things.

And then it was August 31st. Everybody left. The U.S. military completely abandoned everything and took off. And that's when the real work began. That's when the work to make a difference, that's when everything that we were going to do, we were on our own. We had to do every single uh step we didn't have helicopters we didn't have planes we didn't have the airport we didn't have any way

of getting these people out how the hell do you do that you have a country that's now under control of this government who doesn't fucking like you yeah you have no no airport how do you even like like you're sitting. You have no airport. Mm-hmm. How do you even, like, you're sitting here. Where were you at the time, D.C.? Washington, D.C. You're sitting in your office in D.C. How do you even start to imagine how you're going to get people out now? Exactly.

So the last day, everybody basically thought that it was over. And we had no way of getting these people out. We had left hundreds of thousands of people behind. And the State Department issued a press release and basically said, well, we can't help you. The press release is still out there, and in archives you can look it up. And basically it was like the press release on August 31st from State Department was like, we are not in country.

We can't get you out. There is no hope for you guys. Most of the team cried that night they all cried and told everybody to go home because we all of the people that were there they hadn't gone home they had just been living they just been living in the office for weeks. Now, how many people there, you know, you're a native, right? How many people there were like you who had family still there and were helping? About 10. About 10 people.

Wow. Because they were helping us with a lot of like translations and language and communications and all of that, told everybody to go home, and they all cried. And basically we had to tell everybody that, I mean, it's over. We can't do anything anymore. For two reasons. One, we knew there was a next step. Like, I was preparing for this moment. I was preparing for this moment from, you know, very early on because I could see things with a bird's eye view and I knew we wouldn't be able to get all those people out.

Not only people that had worked with us, but American citizens. From a bird's eye view, I could see that a lot of American citizens would be left behind. How many American citizens did we have still in Afghanistan? Are you talking about, in this case, people who were non-state department affiliated? Yeah, about 1,400. We had 1,400 U yeah about 1400 we had 14 wow that's not too i didn't realize it was that high holy shit uh about 1400 u.s citizens were still on the ground and because we spent 20 years in afghanistan a lot of people had just gone to afghanistan opened a restaurant you know opened a business really yeah yeah there was a lot of americans who who were uh doing different things uh there and are these usually i'm sorry i gotta stay yeah these usually like ex-military people who had been there type deal or is you're talking like regular americans

were like oh let's go somewhere to afghanistan some are like dual citizens like some of some are like native afghans who are also American citizens. That makes sense. Some are actually Americans who just went there and decided to stay. And also, because there was so much money there, everybody just tried to get a piece of the pie. Of course. And they set up shop there in Kabul,

and so many of them were U.S. citizens. So all of them are left behind. There were dog shelters. There were Americans who were running dog shelters. In the middle of all this. In the middle of that. I mean, they've been running these dog shelters for years, and now they have these animals.

I mean, that's great. It is not just one. It's not just one. There were a few. I don't know. It just seems like it's hard to imagine that was towards the top of the priority list during this time period. I mean, they're left behind. Yeah, the American citizens that were handling or caring for those dogs handling or no i'm talking about the dog

business and like in general like like i feel like that's not top of the list of things to go start while there's like a war going on in afghanistan but again love dogs so good for them rescuing dogs um so those people were also there i i can't say anything about it because I have friends, some people I know now that were running dog rescues there. But I mean, they're passionate about it and they couldn't see the dogs in those bad conditions, so they weren't there. It is a beautiful, I don't want to take away from that

or be absurd, it's a beautiful thing. Animals and all kinds of animals, not just dogs. So they're all left behind and now i have to come up with something so the next so i went home that day um slept and just um my phones were not i didn't put the phones in the same room that I was sleeping because the phones kept ringing and people were crying and sending, please help. I put the phones in a separate room and i went to bed slept for about 12 13 hours and i woke up and i was like okay i went back to dc and i got the core team being just the five six of us who are like okay so what's next who was on that team like what were the where did the other people hail from like what were their backgrounds

military all military military military uh federal agencies and um veterans all kind of everybody um so we sat down and what are we gonna do but we have no idea one we did have one way of just taking people overground to pakistan and then flying them out of pakistan or taking them overground to tajikistan and then flying them out of tajikistan uzbekistan all of those options were on the table but these options were not enough to get large numbers of people we could take like maybe 10 20 30 40 people a day maybe like 100 people a week and And it just wasn't sustainable. It was dangerous. The long drive in remote areas where Taliban are not as controlled or don't have to answer to people, we were not comfortable.

But we did a lot of ground runs as well. You're talking about human smuggling operations essentially um well I wouldn't call it that no no but for a good cause and yes what yes but I mean like you literally have to smuggle them like under the beds of trucks and stuff like that yeah so mostly we call it rescue because you know people do that on the southern border here. And they're not very looked at with a... It won't take long to tell you neutrals ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors.

So, what should we talk about no sugar added neutral refreshingly simple i understand completely why you say that i'm just trying to get the visual because i mean it is mean, we're talking black ops jobs. Maybe I can say it like that. So doing that, I was able to get people for Hillary Clinton out. Hillary Clinton was supporting a lot of women rights activists and people who had been working for Hillary Clinton in different capacities in Afghanistan, I was able to get all of them out through that ground route. Another very high

profile person that I was able to get out through that route was President Biden's interpreter. So the president's people reached out to us and asked us to get this person out of Afghanistan, and we did. And many, many more. We were able to get through that way. But how does this happen, though? Like, you're able to get these people out. That's amazing. And you're mentioning that you got to get them across the border, be able to helicopter them from somewhere else.

But take me to the front of the chain. So you identify a person let's use the example maybe if it's possible we can use the example one of the people you just mentioned like biden's interpreter you identify who this person is because you're told you get contacted by the government which that's pretty wild that that happened very cool and you find out that this guy is at location x and location x is however far it is inside of afghanistan what's the first steps to getting him to freedom um so it was a very compartmental process uh the whole thing there wasn't the chain,

every chain link was a separate, sort of separate, they didn't all connect. And that was on purpose because the person who picked up this guy from the initial position and then took him and gave him to this next person, didn't know

who he was. Didn't know where he was going. Didn't know how far he was going. His job was to pick him up at the house and give him to this next person. And then the next person's job was to give it to the person who was in the next city. It's like an underground railroad.

Yeah. Basically. So, and there were about almost 10 stops of this exchange that happened for every transfer. And it happened to keep things from spilling information. information and if somebody picked up a guy in like it took us about 36 hours to get this guy from where he was to across the border to Islamabad Islamabad, Pakistan so along that way if the person who picked him up initially knew that he was going all the way from where he was to Islamabad, Pakistan, you know, you might think that, why is this guy being taken all the way to Pakistan? Why where they're going to be able to get out of the country? I'm not saying like, in this case, they need to know that it

was Biden's interpreter for this one, but like, don't they already know that they're getting something valuable away? And who are these people? Like, I thought these were assets on the ground who were passionate to your cause. Yeah. I mean, they were. Most most of the at the higher level they were but then we were also working with a lot of people that uh for example a driver you know we didn't trust a driver or we didn't trust somebody who was whose job was only to deliver a guy from point a to point b and how much do you like is there a rate is like, a market that you got to pay these people for a certain amount of time? It was salaries. So, most of these people were salaried and whatever the... So, the most of the people that were working for me at the time, they weren't doing it because for the salary on loan. They wouldn't be doing this because it was

dangerous work. It wasn't,'t you know safe for them to be helping people that could potentially be uh people that the uh the taliban government wanted so it was dangerous work but they weren't only doing it because of the salary the salary was just to compensate them but they were doing it because they were loyal to me uh and they continue to be loyal to me they continue to do that work for me because they're loyal to me how long so there's another question i just keep on thinking of things because there's so many moving parts here i hope you don't mind but were a lot of these people say sources that you had because you said loyal to me were they sources that you had cultivated on the ground in previous work,

or was it more your connections to extended family across Afghanistan? Well, it was not extended family. They're my first cousins. So, all these people were your first cousins? A lot of them are my first cousins. So, my immediate family, my brothers and my nephews, there's 53 of us. So you can imagine my first cousins, how many of them are out there? There's a lot of them. I'm doing some math.

Yeah, there's a lot of them. It's over close to 200. A lot of Ralphs. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them. So most of them are doing it because they are blood relatives. Got it. That's great. Yeah. As far as loyalty goes,

you feel pretty good about that, right? Exactly. So, that was the people who were doing all of this work, but at the same time, nobody, not even my first cousins, would know who a person was until they actually made it out.

And then they would be on the news and they'd be like, holy shit, didn't we just rescue this guy? Because when we got the Biden's interpreter out, he was all over the news. He was on every major news. Jen Psaki was asked in a press briefing about him. So it's a very high profile case. But then I wanted something bigger, something more sustainable, something more

official. So then, you know, during the most of this work that we had been doing, we had come across many Taliban leadership. and through tribal connections and through tribal relationships um we started approaching taliban leadership you did yeah so are you still in dc at this point yes i started approaching the taliban leadership and we started talking to them and you know after like kind of having a casual conversation with them i'd be like oh congratulations you guys you got it um and i'm only running a whole operation to get people to fuck away from you yeah congrats exactly so so i was like how how would it sound like if we could start the airport operations how would that sound to you now how does this happen you hit them with like a

whatsapp dm like yo what's up fam uh well i tell somebody on the ground to find like a connection to them that's related to them and then we a mutual somebody and uh tell them who i am and i run a non-profit ngo humanitarian aid organization that wants to help people. That they want to kill. Yeah. And also bring aid into the country. Basically, the carrot was that we will bring aid into Afghanistan because people were dying of hunger at the point. So we told basically the Taliban, it's like there's millions of dollars of aid that's sitting in all over the world and it needs to make it to afghanistan so how would you feel if

the airport operations were to begin so we started pressuring the taliban on like restarting the airport operations and and then they actually surprisingly were very receptive to it and the way you know i convinced and started talking to them it was it wasn't easy like it wasn't just i hit them up i was like hey the airport they're like yes absolutely there was a lot longer conversations of hours of speaking and one of the major points that i was always making that to connect to the rest of the world the only way you afghanistan is a landlocked country and the only way you can connect to the rest of the world is through these airports and you must start that that's the number it should be your number one priority and that's that's what you should be

focusing on is this all over text or at some point do you also get like vocal or video contact? Oh, both, both, both video, uh, phone calls,

uh, and everything. Um, it's wild to me. Yeah. And so, so that's all happening and they are, they're receptive to it.

They are like, I mean, when, when you say things that are logical to any human it's they're kind of like think about it even though they don't agree with you right away but then they go back and they sleep on it and they're like yeah i mean this guy is not wrong so they started working on the airport they cleared cleared the airport. And now I'm like, hey, how about I do a flight from Kabul airport? It took us almost three weeks to get permission for the first flight.

So we kept asking and asking and asking and asking and going from one person to another. First of all, we couldn't find who would be the right person to make that decision from the Taliban side. So that was a challenge to find that person first and then convincing him to actually let us do the flight. And the problem was also that everybody you called, they were like, oh yeah, sure. I have the authority to do that because it's just how they, a lot of them were out there to, you know, make some money. And they would be like, oh yeah, sure.

I can give you permission to fly a plane. I can, I can figure it out. It's just going to cost this much money. And I was like, well, as soon as you like say money it's i'm out so we started doing that and three weeks later we finally got permission to get an get an airplane into afghanistan and out uh plane land a plane actually the day the plane was supposed to land, we get... In this first plane, actually, 117, they were all American citizens. They were all American, either citizens or nationals, which some of them had...

Most of them had U.S. passports. Some of them had U.S. green cards. So the day the plane is supposed to come to Afghanistan, in the morning, we take all of them to the terminal. They get COVID tested and everything, and their paperwork gets checked. They go through the immigration. They go sit in the waiting room waiting for the plane to come.

Now, even just getting them to the airport, first of all, are they all local right there, or are they coming from all over the place coming from everywhere from everywhere so it could be a 10-hour drive yeah okay so so security just to get them like let's even say an hour drive forget the 10-hour ones you have one of your guys go pick up someone at the house even though you're sitting here talking with the taliban on whatsapp you know go back and forth on text messages you might run into the wrong guy on the way there and then be like all right we're gonna kill this dude yeah yeah i mean it's um done very carefully with a lot of like secret you know phrases and words and using a lot of the things that I had learned over doing my previous job. So it, everybody makes it safely

to the airport and they go into the airport, they make it to the terminal. They make it through the security. They make it through immigration. They get their tickets issued. Now they're just sitting to get on a plane. They're all American citizens. So somebody always makes a mistake. Someone had chartered a plane from Syria. And as it flew from Syria to come to Afghanistan,

Iraq didn't give it permission to cross over there. Basically over their airspace. So now we don't have a plane. We have all the people. We have permission for the plane to land in Kabul, but we don't have a plane. Wait a second. They can't fly around.

I'm trying to think of the map in my head right now. They can't fly around that? I guess they'd have to go over Iran if if they did that or something am i right apparently the plane was on a sanction list and couldn't couldn't fly over uh it just couldn't come to afghanistan what does that mean on a plane is on a sanction list it's basically like they have done something that the us is just like okay i guess this uh syrian company is on a sanction list and it can't fly uh over certain the the permission was actually denied by the us embassy in in bata that's convenient yeah so now i don't have a plane i have 117 us citizens sitting

at the airport they can't go anywhere like they can't leave the airport because if they leave the airport now they're done like taliban know that they are american citizens um so we arrange blankets, food, water for them at the terminal. The entire staff of the airport leaves at night. And these people are there with all of my people basically watching over them. Okay, so your people are still there. Yeah. Gotcha. My people are there.

I thought you were going to say they're sleeping there alone. I'm like, Jesus Christ. My team was there with them they brought them food they and it's like it's kind of these are the type of things where you learn how many things humans need yeah like okay this person needs baby formula this person needs a fucking tampon this person needs a diaper this person needs diabetes medication this person needs a fucking tampon. This person needs a diaper. This person needs diabetes medication. This person needs hypertension medication. This person is nervous and losing it. So you have to

account for all of that and kind of deal with all of that. But at the same time time try to find a plane so I'm running around and trying to see where I can find a plane and finally I called the CEO of came here I'm like hey I need a plane and he's like well I got a plane I can give you a plane it's gonna cost you three hundred sixty thousand dollars three hundred sixty thousand dollars yeah it's gonna cost you three hundred sixty thousand dollars three hundred sixty thousand dollars yeah it's gonna cost you three hundred seventy three hundred sixty thousand dollars is that cuz I like insurance and everything yeah I mean it's like they had opportunity to make money I was I needed a plane so it's just business had you bought a balls yeah so I was like okay fine I'll

give you two three hundred sixty thousand dollars where's the plane you're like oh it's sitting on tarmac in cobble um so i was like yeah turn around the plane bring it to the terminal and started loading the plane that was day three of uh since the people have been at the airport were so you were getting funding like right away yeah obviously to be able to afford all this shit. Yeah. We had a lot of major donors. How fast did...

So Afghanistan falls, like we said, day one on the news. How fast did you have major donations coming in? I didn't have it right away. And even until then, we were using a lot of our own money as well. Because like I told you before, I made a lot of money doing that. Yeah, but you weren't making enough money to be chopping off three racks for fucking a plane. I mean, that's crazy town. Yeah, so we were able to raise the money and get the money from and pay for the plane so turn on the plane got everybody on the plane

and that was the first plane that left kabul with american citizens to abu dhabi post post august 31 post august 31 the first plane out of kabul and when was this? September? yeah late September end of September so now you have a comfortable cadence of okay

we know what it takes to what was your word? rescue people around the country to get them from point a to point b to point c to point d we're being the airport yeah and we once we get them out of the country we can figure all that shit out later so now you go back to your list you had gotten out 7 000 at the beginning you just yeah but it's even more surprising what happens next. Well, please do tell. So it's American citizens.

State Department sees that we did this. State Department comes back to us. They're like, can you do this again? It's like, yeah, of course. So after that, State Department is paying for the planes. Got that government funding, baby. Yeah. Love that.

So they're paying for the planes, and we are funding, baby. Love that. So they're paying for the planes and we are putting people on them. So we did many, many, many flights. Thousands. I mean, many flights with thousands of people.

So we got thousands of people out that way as well. Did you lose anybody? No. You never lost a person. No, I'm a professional. I'm a pro. We don't lose people. Wow, man.

Yeah. That's some high-level spy shit to a T. And you're a dude who at this point was outside the Special Forces running this from D.C. That is crazy. So I did that. And, you know, at this point I have developed some relationship with the Taliban and, you know, we're comfortable or we're doing things. And at this point I decided I'm going to go visit Afghanistan. So I, uh, I go back, I go to Afghanistan to go, uh, basically do an inventory of what we're doing

and how everything is going on. But also it was mostly for the morale of the team on the ground because I wasn't going to just be like, oh, I'm going to sit here in D.C. while you guys do all the ground dangerous work. I was like, I'm going you know see all of them talk to them and kind of give them more of a motivation and kind of um uh the the commitment that i have to them as well and show that to them on the ground and so i went and how big is the network at this point ballpark huge huge we have like hundreds of people all across afghanistan

every major city we have safe houses every major city we have um people that we are uh sheltering we were holding at that point in our safe houses about 10 000 people so we were providing food shelter everything like medical babies are born getting, and there are pregnant women that are giving birth to babies there. So everything. The safe houses, was part of this, was this a combination, like where safe houses included some of your original people you had who were putting people up, but also now because you have the power of the U.S. government behind you, you get access to State Department and agency-related safe houses too? Well, there is no agency-related safe houses at this point in Afghanistan, so we had to be creative and have our own sort of safe houses.

But also the people that were left behind after August 31st, a lot of those people that were high priority and they were on our list, we put a lot of them in our own safe houses because they had lost their homes. They had lost their homes because Taliban knew their addresses from before, so they couldn't stay there. So we provided them with living places and that was postust 31st. So we had 10,000 people and we started evacuating people and some of them are U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals. And I went to Afghanistan the first time. I spent four days.

Everything was great. Everything went well. Taliban were fine. Were you meeting with some of the guys you've been talking with? Oh, yeah. I met with a bunch of Taliban guys. You go, like, just get lunch with them? Or, like, how does this work? I went to dinner and there was, like, about

50 Taliban dudes. We just grabbed food and talked and basically they were like, oh, yeah, we won and we have nothing against America anymore and we're done with fighting, and we're just going to have... But, I mean, that's like talking points, right? Yeah, I was going to say.

It's talking points, and they're like, we're done fighting. We're going to have a relationship with the U.S. where we don't want to fight anymore. How do you... Let me ask about that, though. How do you sit there and have a normal diplomatic conversation with these guys? I mean, and I don't blame you. I think point, it's just, it's not about me hating them or, you know, it's about saving as many people as we can at whatever. And, you know, to go and sit with them, it's scary and difficult,

but, you know, it's the purpose that you're sitting with them and talking to them is bigger than your own fear in your own reservations. So I don't present myself as being that I don't like them. I'm just like, oh, you guys won. It was a war. War is over. we're fair and square you know it's a different era we're all gonna get along uh but i mean i have bigger plans and agendas and uh purpose here it's amazing perspective man it's it's it's really impressive

that you can do that and you're going you said there'd be like 50 guys in there yeah about there were about 50 guys and we had like five six lambs slaughtered and like made a big meal and just had a a good old shindig slaughter it right there yeah yeah nice nice um pita loves that yeah exactly um pita won't do well in Afghanistan. I don't think Afghanistan is for them. I think that's a first world problem. Yeah. So that happens.

I do great meetings. You know what's really surprising? In fact, the Taliban guys that I was talking to at the time, they actually gave me about eight bodyguards to just be with me all the time and kind of like protect me. You trusted them? I mean, I don't know. I didn't have a choice. But also like I, there was that trust built until, because initially I didn't trust them.

But then we had done like three, four flights with them. I had, you know, had food with them. If any, at any point they wanted to do any harm to me or to my people, they would have done it already. Did you have, did you ever develop some sort of rapport where you had a conversation about philosophy with any of them? Yeah. I mean, we, we, we had a lot of conversations and, you know, they were basically like, we won, we're the victors, and now we are going to forgive everybody. So they, in that sense, they kind of felt like they were the good guys and they were

the guys that had the... What I mean, though, maybe i should have been more specific there what i mean is did you have any conversations around your views on society and i mean to put it broadly like i guess their politics if that's what you want to call it um why they think that way yeah i and i mean the relationships that i built most of the people that i did build relationships with were more the moderate taliban they're more moderate so glad to hear that yeah so it was also like they believed in education and they believed in some freedoms and i mean they're still strict muslims but they also like have seen the world and are somewhat educated and have you know been around for a while to basically like understand that they can't survive without you know kind of

getting along with the rest of the world um i try to like i said I'm a chameleon. So a lot of the places I just went, I'd be like, oh yeah, you guys are great. You know, it should be like this everywhere. Um, why are, why is it not like this in America? You know, we should just all, um, adapt this, but you have to do what you have to do for what you're doing. So it all went well. My guards, I came back and spent some time, had some briefings, and everybody was comfortable, happy, how things were going. But one of the things that I saw during this trip was how horrible the situation of the people on the ground was, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid. People were hungry, it was cold, and just absolutely horrible. People didn't have anything to eat and that was difficult for me to see. So I came back and decided I was going to do some more outreach and,

you know, continue to advocate for the people and continue to kind of make sure that the wall doesn't sort of their attention span doesn't run out and afghanistan is once again forgotten uh i spent some time did some briefings made some plans concrete plans what we were going to do so we basically made a plan that we were going to provide um meals and food and like grocery everything to about 5 000 families so with that plan i went back to afghanistan and what month are we in now um it's uh december so i went back the second time in december uh december 9th and everything is well we are giving you know aid to everybody we're giving food we are on the street everywhere we are giving them like groceries and and you feel comfortable doing this do you once again

have like some security from the town then yeah I have bodyguards I have everything everything is going well so the first time I spent four days, this time I'm actually there for nine days. December 18, so I've been there for almost nine days now. So day nine is when I have my flight back to the US. And that morning, the Taliban from the Directorate of Intelligence, which is sort of an entity within the government that operates outside the government. What does that mean?

They're not answerable to the general Taliban hierarchy. They have sort of their own hierarchy, and they mostly collect intelligence. If you put CIA and FBI together into one entity, that's basically who they are. And they come and they're like, oh, we have some reports about you and we just want to ask you some questions. Like, okay, no problem. And then we're like, they're like, oh, what are you doing here? Why are you here?

Where are you from? All the just basic questions. I answer all of them and they're like, oh, checks out. You're fine. We don't have anything against you. Uh, but just to make everything official, you just have to come back to the headquarters with us and, you know, give a statement, sign it with us and you know give a statement sign it and then you'll be good to go um and what's your mind doing right now are you suspicious

a little bit but i we we've had like problems like that before and it we had just kind of resolved it um by you know just talking through with it, talking through them. So I'm not really like that suspicious about it. So we actually go to the headquarter in our own vehicles and I have the Taliban headquarter, the Taliban bodyguards with me. So four vehicles, the front vehicle is the intelligence guys and when we get to the headquarters there is an arm that goes up and the first vehicle from the director of intelligence goes through, the second vehicle is five British citizens that were also staying at the same hotel, so that goes through. Third vehicle, it's me. And then the fourth vehicle is the bodyguards. Did you have any of your people with you?

Yeah. I mean, I was in the vehicle that had some people with me. It's from your team. Yeah. So my brother is also with me in that vehicle so as soon as the third vehicle that's we are in it passes through the arm they put the arm down they don't let the guards in and then the guards like kind of get into a little um i've seen this movie scene before yeah they movies yeah they get into a little argument with them and they're like yeah you can't go in this is directed of intelligence no one is allowed to go in a in the taliban because again the taliban organization is not a monolith there's like everybody has sort of their own rules and sort of their own agendas rules and they abide by different rules what is it actually as a little aside though what is if

you could explain that structure like cuz me and everyone else just throws the word Taliban on it I'm gonna continue to do that I'm sure but like is there a way to relate their their power structure to like any sort of traditional government like this guy kind of reports to that guy and this department like you said what was it the office of directorate directorate of general intelligence right so you said they're kind of like an entity that doesn't really have to report to anyone but they're a part of the taliban like how is all this how does it from like their leader to their senate if there even is something like that, down to intelligence, like how do they report to each other? How does it work? So there is the supreme leader.

There is a supreme leader that's above everybody. And he is basically in charge of above everybody and everybody answers to him. But then above him are ministers. Minister of Interior, Minister of Defense, Minister of... Below him. Below him is the Minister of Interior, Minister of Defense, Minister of Foreign Affairs, like all the ministry-level people, Minister of Civil Aviation and all that. In between the Supreme Leader and the ministers, there's three people, three key people that are also

on the hierarchy that are above the ministers. So the Director of General Intelligence does not belong to a ministry. They answer directly to the top. They don't answer to any of the guys that are in that hierarchy. So it's a small organization, but they are only responsible for answering to the headquarters and then the that um we sat there all day they didn't answer any of our questions and just basically had us sit there when dark when it gets dark they take us from that room put us uh cover our, and put us in vehicles and sort of drive us from there to another place. And then once we get to this other place, they basically start processing us like prisoners. So you know we got a big problem.

Yeah. Once they put something on your head, you're like, oh, this is... Yeah, but then at that point, our bodyguards were not allowed to come inside and these guys have like about a dozen armed guys that are just the guys who actually brought us they left and then now they have just random armed guys that are telling us to do and when we ask them questions they're like oh we have no idea we don't know because of the office's power they could pretty much tell your guys to fuck off yeah and no repercussions for that that's what you're saying okay so um the armed guys are basically like hurting us and taking us to this uh prison

basically uh they take all our stuff process us and basically take us to this basement that's these basement cells that is um eight feet by eight feet and then we got there and then for the next three and a half months that's where we we spent the next three and a half months in those basements in a little cell like that yeah um and for the first 17 days, we were not able to speak to anyone outside. I mean, did they feed you? Yeah, I mean, they fed us rice and beans twice a day. Nothing really special. They fed us that

and then we remained there for three and a half months but when did they start questioning you like right away or day five they just put us without answering any questions for about five days

so they just stick you in there no one's saying anything to you you don't know what's going on none of the guards are talking to you so day five the guy who initially came to our hotel comes back and he starts asking us questions and we once again tell all of that and he once again is like oh yeah all of this checks out you guys are actually haven't you guys haven't done anything wrong it's those other five brits that were in the same hotel we just brought you guys as well on suspicion we were those were the guys we were looking for i thought they let them

through because they didn't put the arm down uh they let them through into the to the director of and to the headquarters right so um they're like we're looking for the we are interested in the brits you guys are just here for bad luck what did do you know if they ever what they ever did with those guys they were in the same prison with us oh you saw them yeah they were they were we were in the same place we're were in the same prison with us oh you saw them yeah they were they were we were in the same place we're all in the same place and what was their story what were they doing there you know i don't know what brits do why they do it and it's just like they're weird people all british people are weird they're so weird man we got a lot of listeners out there going oh don't think so yeah they were doing some shady shit

out there in Afghanistan and they had their hands in so many fucking things and they had caught like stuff with them and just were not kosher so we are just like fuck so just because we were in that hotel we are also

um subjected to this did you actually think that was why no because later we found out that some people had gone to the director of intelligence and basically some people who uh had asked for money and we didn't we hadn't paid them because we didn't want to pay anyone bribes and then they had gone and just basically um spread false rumors and given them um fake stories about us that do you know what kinds of things they were saying uh basically that we work for the intelligence u, US intelligence agencies and we were there to overthrow the Taliban government. We were working against them and we were smuggling and we were like doing all kinds of

The regular dollar menu of reasons. Yeah. So but you know three and a half months we spent in that basement and day 17 was the first time we were actually able to call home and our families didn't know if you were alive or dead. They let you call home?

They didn't. We smuggled the phone by recruiting one of the guards. Hold on a minute. All right. All right. But before we get to that, back up a second. So the first five days, they don't say anything to you. They don't question you or anything like that you had said they're eight by eight cells but that all these different prisoners the british guys you and was it you and

your brother and someone else or was it just you and your brother uh so initially it was just me then that he was my brother was in a different cell but after the the first interrogation we were put back to we were put together okay so when you guys were all in separate cells at the beginning though are these cells like closed door or can you talk to each other okay so there's no talking to each other you're just completely sitting in a room how do you i've never done that before how do you go like five days alone in a room with nothing what do you do it's hard you think really think about all the decisions that you've made until that point in your life. But also, like I told you, like my life is not just, it's not like somebody who's never been in a difficult situation or don't know how to deal with situations like that. Were you doing anything to calm your mind?

Like trying to imagine yourself somewhere else? Yeah. The vacations I'm going to go on when I come back to the US. you doing anything to calm your mind like trying to imagine yourself somewhere else like um yeah the vacations i'm gonna go on when i come back to the u.s you're still thinking about getting out good for you yeah i don't know if i'd be thinking that right yeah um one of the things that i always thought about is like when i get back i'm gonna go like on a road trip um well you did that yeah that's good so so five days like that let's start with the questioning though before we get to the smuggle on the phone thing the questioning word was not that like serious it's just it's actually a fucking joke um it's just so simple like i was

like you guys why are we even here like it was just just felt like a fucking joke now do they do like good cop bad cop yeah oh they do yeah even at the taliban yeah it's like one of the guys like oh yeah if you just tell us everything you know you know we will help you and then some dude comes in like tell us fucking everything yeah yeah yeah and um just because we were uh americans and you know foreigners they treated us better than everyone else so they didn't really like it was all a fucking show um just trying to show to their like they knew that when i get out i was gonna come back and be like talk about them so they weren't like showing me their real faces either they were like they they were basically showing me the most orchestrated best kind of

behavior face and best practice that's could you see their could you physically see their faces though too or were they wearing shit yeah no i can all right so you know who they are at least but like when they're asking you these questions you already are in contact with the whole with like the leadership of the taliban they know the reason why you're there which is not why they're under suspicion holding you right now but are you just pretty much just reiterating that like yes i'm here i already talked with you guys this is what i'm doing and they're just like i don't believe you yeah and even the leadership was because like i said before they don't they're not listening to the leadership because all the leadership is

vouching for me but they're not they don't fall within that hierarchy so they don't have to listen to them and every time they those people say something they're like we have to do our thorough investigation we have to do a thorough investigation and make sure that they're not up to anything that is against us or the government or trying to do something shady here. How long would the interrogations last? Like an hour. It was only twice they interrogated us, twice. It was one hour.

And basically like, they're like, oh yeah, I mean, there's nothing you guys have done wrong. It's just, you're in a wrong place at the wrong time. That was basically their whole narrative. So from day five to 17, it's like two times. They question you for an hour. The rest of it, you're in a cell. But at some point, your brother also joins you in that cell.

Yeah. So now you're living with your brother in an eight-by-eight cell. Yeah, that was the hardest part. Yeah, that was the most difficult part. I did not enjoy that. It's just not pleasant. You didn't like being that close-quartered.

Yeah, I know, but also, like, it's because this is my mission. I started this. I've been doing this. He's like, the fuck did you got me? You're getting the guilt trip 24- yeah and i mean this guy is like in his 40s and like probably like he's like 15 20 years older than me and he's just he's just like what am i doing i'm too old for this shit i'm too old for this shit and isn't really in the best shape or health to be there so do they have a toilet in there for you guys by the way no so they took us out to the toilet like three times a day

holy shit yeah so you have to the bathroom twice since this podcast started. So you have to hold it. That sucks. We had bottles in the room. But it's going and the worst part is just being with my brother in there. And day 17 we recruit one of the guards, call home, tell them we're good and where we are. Now, how does that happen? So you said these are closed door cells.

Mm-hmm. So you can't just like hang your hand on it. It's not open bars where you can hang your hands on the bar and say, so you watched the game last night? Like how do you develop a relationship with the guard? Oh, when they're taking us to the bathroom. That's not long yeah we're talking like probably three minute spurts here yeah in between streams exactly you have to use it to your you'll have to be good okay so i'm a taliban guard we're walking out to the fucking pisha duel right now yeah what are you saying to me i mean it was it was something the guard needed that we had and the guard could do something for us so it was just like it was more of a transaction than actually like what what did

he need uh he he needed to get married did have money to get married so we we we uh we sponsored his marriage we like the us of a government sponsored i'd be happy to do that to get you out of there but you know no i i just had my team i i had i directed my team to basically like arrange his wedding uh and pay for it. So, yeah, I'm responsible for getting a Talib guy married. Was she, was it voluntary or involuntary on her end? Oh,

none of it is voluntary. I was going to say. It's just like, you get married to a Talib and you, lost one on the battlefield there, huh?

So, that happens and then, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, I could write a fucking book about that and most people would so you he gives you the phone though and you is it does he like say you get one call or do you have like some unlimited time to do some damage here uh no i mean i get just a barely call and i i i i don't ask him to give me his phone I asked him I was like

well I could give you the address of my team and you could go and tell them that you know I told you I told you to tell them that to pay for your wedding but they won't believe you so if I just call them and tell them this you know I'm just gonna call them and tell them to to arrange your wedding so and then you also speak in code and tell them i'm safe or i'm alive but well no i tell them i tell my i tell my uh team i was like hey when he comes you know take care of him and also give him a phone because i didn't want to talk on his phone i was like give him a phone so he brings us a phone so you had not the up like a charger charging station too or is he taking care of that so he would come every night give us the

phone and then we would use the phone and in the morning would give it back and no one caught this no they're not coming in there and like patting you down we didn't keep it with us the guard was keeping the phone but at night he's not yeah but at night everybody's sleeping they don't have like a night shift over no so it's like the epstein treatment you just like fall asleep yeah they just like that that was actually very surprising that everybody would just like the whole place would become dead quiet and everybody would go to sleep taliban work ethic i don't know these days not as good not as good as it was so yeah so you're every night are you like trying to run the business and from the cell now too or are you trying to work on your own it's kind of funny the first time i

i was every time i was calling my girlfriend uh I called my girlfriend. I was like, oh, so how's everything going on? He's like, Safi, everybody's busy getting you out. No one is doing the work. Oh my God. So yeah. And I mean, there's, there's a lot that happened in that basement. You know, I continue to talk to my girlfriend, give them, uh, we continue to devise ways of figuring out how to get me out. And then, you know, President Biden got involved and President Biden, like, directed his, um, the special envoy to, you know, negotiate with the Taliban. My family went to Afghanistan. My dad, my mom, my sister, myiban my family went to afghanistan my dad

my mom my sister my my sister-in-law and my brother they all went to afghanistan to basically directly negotiate with the taliban did the us government provide them like the ability to go there under protection no they just went there themselves they just went them themselves because you know they took a flight to afghanistan they took a flight to afghanistan like we're gonna go and fucking deal with the taliban face to face right there now at any point but while all this is going on does the interrogation turn to something else where they get physical or anything like that no you're just i mean i would it's truck month at gmc tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 sierra 1500 pro graphite at zero percent financing for up to 72 months with an available 5.3 liter v8 engine

20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels off-road suspension with available two inch factory installed lift kit plus a towing capacity of up to 13 200 pounds you'll be ready for anything this truck month. Truck month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer for details. I was tortured once, but that was because I got into a fight with them. Well, what the fuck happened there? It was about, I think, day...

Oh, I went on a hunger strike. That's what happened. When did you go on a hunger strike? How many days in? So about 30 some day in, close to almost 40 days, day 40, I went on a hunger strike. But I don't actually exactly remember because we were not counting days but it was late 30s and you know maybe day 40

started hunger strike day 8 they came down and they were like you're gonna break your hunger strike and I was like no I'm not and then wait I thought you said you started day I might have lost you there I thought you said you started day 30 and then you just said day eight so i started day eight i was on my hunger

strike i hunger hunger strike day eight day eight of hunger strike oh oh the eighth day but got it got it yeah eighth day of a hunger strike so you didn't eat food for eight days yeah and then day eight they are like you're gonna eat and i was like no i'm not they're not gonna know you're gonna eat i was like no now how was that experience like like i mean i'm sure it sucked but it's had you ever done anything challenge your body in any way without no not like that not like that um i had not uh what made you make i mean why did you think that was gonna work too i mean it was one to pressure the talbot i was like why am i here if i haven't done anything wrong get me the fuck out of here if i have done something wrong tell me what i've done wrong and they couldn't tell me that and when i I went on hunger strike, some of their most

senior leadership in that department came and were like, you need to eat and you'll be released very soon. You're going to go home. You can't be hunger striking because they were also afraid that if anything happened to me, you know, I was important to the U.S. government. Now, hunger strike, does that include all... Does that include drinking water, too? Yeah, I was drinking water. You were drinking water? For that one.

Okay, for that one. For that one. There were multiple, huh? Yeah. So what do you... Eight day into a hunger strike, they obviously made you eat. Well, they didn't make me eat. So that day about when I said I'm not going to eat,

about 13 of them came down and they were holding me down and they like beat me up and I was still not eating. They're beating you up and you're eight days into a hunger strike. Your body's got to be shot. Yeah. Are you delusional? No. No. Eight days? Yeah. You yeah i was good so i was good no problem yeah eight days fuck it i'll do 20 yeah um so it was

and then um the next day after the beating the they come back and the senior like the chief of the the place comes back comes down to us and they like sit down with us and it's like anything you guys want we'll give you anything you guys want uh any kind of food you want to eat and you want to go upstairs and just walk around uh stretch your feet go in the sun we hadn't seen the sun for like 70 days um you want to go see the sun you want to like anything you want to do uh just break your hunger strike and this is actually when uh they had told my family as well and that's why my family actually came to Afghanistan because they are like,

if he continues to not eat, he's going to die. That's how it works. Yeah. So they also came in. My dad also got on the phone with me. They're like, we're here. We're going to get you out. Start eating.

Start eating. But they beat the shit out of you before this yeah because and they didn't they didn't break me they were like this guy's not gonna break so then they savage yeah then they're like we'll give you everything so then i was like i made a list i was like i want lamb i want like i had a list like a two-page long list, and I gave them, and they brought everything. They brought all of it. They brought all of it. It was, like, fruits and, like, sweets and cake and, like, everything I could think of, everything I wanted to eat, and I wrote that.

So you got room service to this cell. Yeah. And since I hadn't eaten, like, for eight days, I just wanted to eat everything. So they brought all that food. And then, you know, I... It started getting better after that. Like, we could ask for books. We could ask for food.

We could go out you know there was a room upstairs for the guards where they all slept there was a tv there so we would go and sit there and watch tv just chilling with the guards this is bizarre yeah um because we broke them we broke the taliban basically like they were like we just need to make sure that these fuckers stay alive until the they are out of here because if anything happens because one of their most like the the top supreme leader basically called them and was like if anything happens to these guys you guys are so they really treated us like you know royalty after that but in the so you had spoken to your parents who told you to eat yeah and then they came that they were there they came and then they were and then they came and saw you yeah they let you down there to see yeah they came and saw us

and every time like things would they wouldn't listen to us and wouldn't give us something and just like i'm not gonna eat it's just i would just stop eating and then i would they wouldn't listen to us and wouldn't give us something. And just like, I'm not going to eat. I would just stop eating. And then I wouldn't eat like one or two meals. And then they would just, because when they came, they were like, oh no, they can't come in here. They can't see you. And I was like, I'm not eating. So I didn't eat for like two meals. And then the next day they were there.

Wow. And then my dad went to the director and basically sat down with him and was like, hey, you're holding my sons, and basically told him who my dad was. My dad is well-respected in the community. He's an elder of the tribe, and he has a large following in the community. So he went in there and made demands. Yeah, and he's like you're gonna let my children go and he's like i will let them go as as long as a senior american official comes

to take them uh like we'll do a handover to a senior american official in exchange for anything no nothing so your dad yeah your mom and dad anyone else my mom my dad my brother my sister-in-law okay they all get on a plane they fly on their own accord to afghanistan yeah they walk into the office of the directorate they get to visit with you sometimes yeah and then one day your dad walks in there sits down at a desk like this and says, listen, buddy, here's how this is going to go. Yeah. And that's how it goes? Yeah.

You really did have leverage. Holy shit. So, and I mean, my dad basically like explained everything to him is who my dad was. And my dad has like following of hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands? Yeah. Who is your dad? We belong to the largest tribe in Afghanistan. has like following of hundreds of thousands of people hundreds of thousands yeah so who's your dad we belong to the largest tribe in afghanistan and at one point my dad was single-handedly like

you know kicking the russians ass really yeah so all of that history was something that came in in handy i do a podcast with your dad shit yeah yeah he's he's a legend that's amazing um so that is in place and then we we come back and tell the u.s government that that hey this is the deal and they're like oh no that's not how this works. No, you're not allowed out? No, no, they're like, oh, no, that's not how hostage, like, deals work. And it's like, they're not going to let him go just because we make a visit. Oh, they just didn't believe it. They just didn't believe it because... That's fair.

You know, in retrospect, if you look at it, if you look at every hostage situation, every hostage that we have ever gotten out from anywhere, we have released somebody significant in exchange or given them like a significant amount of money. We gave like those. So when Obama got like those hostages out of Iran, he gave like over a billion dollars. So it's just in the bucket. Yeah, exactly. And then when we had Bo bo bergdahl i was

gonna say bo bergdahl was taliban right so they gave him taliban guys yeah they gave him five five of the top top taliban back that they they call him the the five which is the top five taliban in afghanistan right now so that that's what bo bergdahl was released for so when we told the state department that hey this is how it's going to be, they wouldn't believe it because they were like, oh, they have an American citizen. They can ask for so much for it. Why would they just want to visit from an American official and release him? And they were like, oh, yeah, that's not how that works.

And then my girlfriend reached to the senior leadership in the State Department, and she got a meeting with Wendy Sherman, Assistant Secretary of State. Okay. So they have a 45-minute call. When is this now? January, February? This is about five days before I got up. It's March. is this now january this is about five days before i got up it's um march uh yeah it's march uh 24th march 25th um now while this is all going on by the way because i don't remember this i don't remember your story yeah being in the media was this kept quiet absolutely Absolutely. It was on purpose. How did that work?

So we wanted to keep it quiet, and we wanted to resolve it without making it public, because once it becomes public, it becomes much more difficult to actually negotiate, because then more Taliban are going to get involved. They're like, oh, no, we're just not going to just release him. We're going to ask for X, Y, and Z. They have to show strength.

Yeah. So we kept it quiet. And they kept it quiet. Yeah, they kept it quiet as well. Why were they... Were they motivated to keep it quiet for those same reasons of like, you know, we're trying to act like

we could have connections with the West, that type of deal? Yeah. Okay. And I mean, the reason wanted uh senior american officials to visit is because they wanted to the the optics of it ah right that somebody from america came and visited and it meant a lot to them um so wendy sherman gets on the phone call with them it's a 45 minute call and like wendy sherman is making arguments after arguments after arguments about like how it's a bad idea that it's not a deal

and my girlfriend is like no no it's a deal like you guys need to go and so my girlfriend is prepared was wendy worried that they were going to send someone and then the taliban was going to be like look at these idiots they send someone and we're not going to even give them up. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, Wendy Sherman is like making all these documents,

but, but my girlfriend is like, she is, she's no small deal. She's like, um, she is a Stanford and Harvard graduate and is one of the most, you know, successful Broadway director. And she's just a force to reckon with.

And so she goes to this whole scenario with Wendy Sherman but at the end Wendy Sherman is basically like I will take all of your what we talked about I'll take it back to the president I'll talk to the president and I'll see what the president decides but you guys

what you guys are asking for us to even if there's no deal you want us to send an envoy to Afghanistan my girlfriend is like yeah absolutely I'm what you guys are asking for us to, even if there's no deal, you want us to, um, send an envoy to Afghanistan. My girlfriend's like, yeah, absolutely. We want you to send somebody to Afghanistan. And they're like, okay.

And my girlfriend also says that if my girlfriend actually gives them a deadline, it's like, she gives the president a deadline. It's like, if you don't really, if you don't send somebody by this date, we will have a press release. And she wrote a skating press release and sent it to Wendy Sherman's inbox. It's like, this is what we're going to release. And the press release was that because of optics,

President Biden lets an American citizen die in Taliban prison. So that was the title of the press release oh my god um of course that never got released because oh it did now yeah so um she went back to the president and they talked and the president was like he sent the plane so yeah the president sent the plane with uh senior american officials on it who was on it i can't talk you can't say that okay that's fair but some serious people yeah yeah so they come and talk to the taliban and then i get back on that plane and i fly out to Doha, Qatar. Were you in your cell while they were talking with the Taliban or were you a part of that conversation?

Well, no, because the Taliban, the officials, American officials didn't come to the prison. They went to the presidential palace to meet with the senior Taliban leadership. Oh, the place they were taking like the Instagram videos at when they took over yeah oh that's nice yeah so yeah that I came back April 1st of all days now you come back yeah first of all you just did a lot to your body in that ordeal yeah with hunger strikes I mean how are you looking at this point? Better than I've ever looked. A little weight loss in there? Well, you know, I had my choice of whatever I wanted to eat that last. Eventually, yeah. But the hunger strike was not only to put pressure on Taliban,

but also to put pressure on the U.S. government. Because they were telling the us government my family was telling the government that i was on a hunger strike do you looking back on it do you look at this as the us government secured your release or your parents secured your release my parents 100 yeah yeah that's how it seems to me yeah i mean they just send a plane which they do for everybody so yeah and then i came and i'm here now well i i listened to your ted talk right after i connected with you a few weeks ago and you i think at the beginning you said everyone can find this on youtube it's i'll put the link down in the description it's about 10 11 minutes it's great by the way but at the beginning you said i think it was 10 days ago i was sitting in a cell in afghanistan

yeah and now you're already giving a ted talk so you get on the ground back in america on home soil and you're immediately already going to work yeah i'm we're back in work. We're back fully doing everything we were doing. We have permission from the highest ranking Taliban. And we are able to do everything in country. We're doing all of the work that we were doing. We are doing so much more and no one can say anything because one thing that came from this whole ordeal is taliban looked at everything we were doing and they basically decided that we are above board and we can do

all of those things they're cool with this they're cool with it and basically because they at the end uh they at the end basically they realized that everything that the suspicions that they had, they were all false and they felt bad. And now they are basically coming back around. They're like, you guys are were registered NGO in Afghanistan. We don't pay taxes and we can do all operations in Afghanistan, humanitarian, evacuations, everything. It is so bizarre to me, though. Like, I'm just picturing this in my head, and I'm sure people at home are doing the same thing. It's bizarre to me that, like, you are doing this covert mission, right, where you are rescuing people out through all these cars and everything

and getting them from point A to safe house to safe house, all on their soil. You are telling them that you're doing it yeah and yet you still have to do it that way covertly and if you get caught some of their people who are them may kill you yeah and now after 105 days being held hostage by them yeah and let back out you're right back on business. Yeah. This is a, like, psychologically, this... That's what you got to do. I mean, you can't just... I mean, it's, I don't want to, like, it's not that it hasn't affected me.

Every time I close my eyes, it's like, even last night, like, every time I fall asleep, it's like my dreams and my, like, it's always... Sometimes I dream about, like like people just torturing me or sometimes i am back in that prison sometimes um you know i'm around taliban who are trying to arrest me or trying to like take me to prison or like i have those nightmares and those demons um it doesn't affect me in my day-to-day life, but my sleep is not great. Um... I'll bet.

Yeah. So even last night, like, I would... I slept for, like, probably two, three hours, and every, like, 10, 15 minutes, I would wake up, like, shaking. Um, but, you know, that's... that's just life. Um, from being a refugee to coming to the U.S.

to being in the U.S. military to being with one of the most elite special operations unit to doing this work to being in Taliban prison to all of that. It's just part of life. And, you know, it happens and you just have to roll with the punches and you're going to fall.

You have to get up and you just have to roll with the punches and you're going to fall. You have to get up and you just have to be resilient. You know, if the first time I fell and I stayed down there, I wouldn't be here today. I would be in a much worse place. Every time you fall and you get up, you're going to end up in a better place. So it's just the resilience that I have is from so much of the experience I've had in my life. But it's also you must have people who are loyal to you. You must have a team. You must build your tribe.

You must build those people around you who are going to go to bat, who are going to be willing to die for you if the time comes. And you must be ready to do that in return for them because it's not a one-way street. That's right. So that's what it takes to have those people around you have those commitments and continue to do all the work despite all of the challenges. Well, you have an unbelievable perspective, to say the least.

And what really comes across, especially when you're telling the stories, is how fearless you seem to be and how you can even find like i've laughed a few times today when you're talking about some of these serious moments and that's because of something you said you know you you kind of have this dry like okay roll with the punches but you know it's cool to hear you say though that you're still underneath it a human being you know you still yeah people i i don't think you could ever go through any of the shit you've gone through to say nothing of this latest experience and not have some sort of you know trigger to that some sort of deep-rooted you know everyone has their fear of like the what if yeah was something and and you know i i think your

threshold for the what if just happens to be, you know, I think your threshold for the what if just happens to be a lot higher than the average person. I mean, being courageous is not being afraid of things. Courageous is not that you're not afraid of anything. Courageous is you are, you know, courageous is when you are afraid, but despite that fear, you still do what is right. You are scared, but you're going to do it anyway because you believe in it. And that's what you think is the right thing to do.

And that's where it comes. That's the difference between being fearless and being courageous. You know, some people are fearless, they jump from like fucking buildings and go fight with a fucking line or do shit like that. That's because, you know, they may not have fear of certain things, but being courageous is to do the right thing despite knowing the consequences despite knowing despite being scared like it's even me going to the taliban and talking to the taliban sitting with them it didn't mean that i wasn't scared it didn't mean that i didn't have fear it didn't mean that you know i, I was always ready to be detained, be killed, or be like, you know, done worse things to me.

But at the same time, you know, what the end goal was, what that meant for me was worth it. That's a really powerful way to put it, man. It's, and then you look at the actions you've taken in your life, you know, from like we talked about you being at a young age and having to understand realities that the average person never has to understand. And adapting that to kind of become as a kid, you described it as a chameleon. I would describe it even go a step further and say you essentially always had to be some level of spy right and so now you're channeling that putting your life on hold by the way you know putting medical school on hold to pay it back forward to not just like your fellow countrymen over there but also to you know the people here who care about a lot of them and the people who you've served with and and kind of continuing the mission that you did

it's just so cool to me that that all the different tentacles of your life that are tying together in this project is amazing but it's even more amazing that after this whole ordeal you're operating business as usual getting people out yeah i mean there's no other way i guess not but i i mean but speaking But speaking of that, where do things stand? I know we had highlighted earlier, I had mentioned the conversation I had with you before the podcast about how there's estimated to be 160,000 people left behind now. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that you're in detention, if you want to call it that, from december through april 21 to 22 yeah a little something happens in the middle of that in february did you find out about the ukraine invasion in while you were in there or was that afterwards so actually the ukraine invasion was sort of a blessing in disguise for us as well is so so that day i was supposed to receive an award uh for i was chosen to be

the washingtonian of the year um uh for for 2021 and i was supposed to receive the award that day and i was supposed to give a speech there and attend in person but you were still in the cell but i was still in the cell um so what my family and loved ones on this side had decided that they were going to go public with my detention that day but the reason they didn't go public is because all of the news basically everything was occupied by the Ukraine news. So they were like, even if we go public, it's not going to catch any kind of news. So I think that was sort of a blessing in disguise.

But at the same time, you know, I didn't find out for a while. But then again, once we got access to that, you know, the guard room, we were going there and watching news and stuff. So we kind of found out even if it was some sort of a a tailwind to the desperation that is required to help people in need in war zones yeah is there not some sort of i hate to say this but like some sort of negative shift though for you as well in the sense that once Ukraine happened, all the focus went there. Afghanistan, I'm just speaking from broad terms of like American media.

Afghanistan became old news and the primary focus became the Ukrainian people and getting asylum for them. So from a – because you guys are working with the State Department and people and getting asylum for them so from a you know because you guys are working with the state department everything and getting resources like have you seen downstream negative effects because of that yeah i mean absolutely we we do see that afghanistan's been put on the back burner and um there is such a lack of uh resources for afghanistan while while Ukraine is like at the top of every list. That's incredibly frustrating for us and we have to once again compete for resources and try to do the best we can. But that's not going to stop us. We'll continue to work. And there's a lot of things that are in the pipeline coming through which you know it's hard to speak about future things or current operations because uh for you know opsec and security and all of that but uh we continue to you know roll with the punches i mean initially when we i got out

nothing was happening but now we're sort of getting back a little bit on the bandwagon of like trying to at least do the bare minimum that we possibly can. But of course, it's no secret that Ukraine really pushed the Afghanistan need and work to the back burner. And a lot of the people who were actually doing this work with us before, they all had moved on to work on Ukraine. That's, I mean, the world changes very quickly. Narratives change very quick. And it's sad to me that humanity can get lost in the middle of that. You know? that. Yeah, yeah.

But it's our world. We have to keep doing the best we can and hope for the best. We just can't stop because it's not an option. And so the name of your organization is human first coalition human coalition people can find that online and on instagram at human first coalition right yeah okay uh yeah our website is humanfirstcoalition.org and you can find all information on there and you guys are accepting donations there as well yes okay and so right now as far as like mission status on the ground are you are you doing decent volume getting people out of there on a daily

basis or what is the how does it look right now it's very low uh not we don't have a good volume but like i said there's things in the pipeline that will make that happen. And the number one need right now is humanitarian aid because people are dying just because of hunger. Crazy. So, yeah, there's things in pipeline that will make sure that and we're not going to stop. We're going to continue. Like, there's people, there's people in the government that would want us to forget about this and just kind of throw it out the window and not care.

But we're not going to stop. We're going to keep caring, and we're going to keep being an annoyance to them and continue to remind them that Afghanistan is still relevant and there's people still left behind that needs to find their way to safety well i think that's a good spot to stop it man i got a lot of other questions and we'll be here for a long time if we do that but i i do love how in depth you went with not just your life

but also the history of afghanistan and and the importance of it and and also like that whole region over there i just there's such good education in this today but the work you do is absolutely incredible once again people can go to human first coalition on instagram has all the links there and everything to donate and i'm i'm really glad you're here to tell us your story and still with us and still working your ass off it's an amazing thing bro thank you for having me a lot thank you for having me it's a pleasure and uh really happy to be here all right we'll do it again sometime all right thank you all right everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace