The Team House - Special Ops Contractor Training Afghan Partners | Joan Barker | Ep. 168

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Joan Barker is a consultant specializing in military language and culture training. She has worked on educational contracts for U.S. Special Operations Command and overseas as a trainer with partner forces in the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan. From 2017 to 2018 she worked on a defense contract in Kabul teaching English to members of the Afghan air force and Special Mission Wing (SMW). After the fall of Kabul, Barker spent months advocating for the evacuation of Special Immigrant Visa interpreters, as well as vulnerable members of the SMW. She also worked to highlight the issue of moral injury affecting veterans of the war in Afghanistan. This spring, she taught English to Afghan refugees that processed through Fort McCoy, Wis., as part of Operation Allies Welcome. Check out Joan here:👇 https://linktr.ee/joan.e.barker Follow Joan on Twitter:👇 https://twitter.com/jb__tweets?s=21&t=IvfzY7kNSMoZVryCZd_SdA To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month  -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch:  https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #specialoperations #contractorBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, guys, welcome to episode 168 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. D is here producing. You can see the fumes coming out of his ears currently. And we're here with our guest tonight, Joan Barker. Joan is a former so common military contractor doing language training with American and partner forces working in Afghanistan as well. Just a little disclaimer before we jump right into it with Joan.

Our studio is, this is going to sound crazy, but there is an African evangelical church upstairs. and when they get popping, they really get popping. They're worshiping the Lord like there's no tomorrow. And God bless them. But you may hear some of the drum beats over our mic. So I'm just warning you like if it gets really gnarly and the background sound becomes too overwhelming and like it's just really not fair to Joan, we might have to end the episode early and come back with her at another date and finish the interview. So just a heads up.

Hopefully everything goes okay. And Joan, thank you for being a good support with us tonight. So, Joan, first off, let's talk about your origin story. We'd like to hear a little bit about your upbringing and how that took you towards eventually governmental service as a contract. I've been to a Peace Corps recruiter, really by chance. All right. Can you start that over?

You were muted that entire time. So we're going to get you going again. That might have been asked. Yeah. I don't think it's on mute now. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Yeah, we can. Yeah. So yeah, I was just saying that my upbringing in Connecticut and growing up in New England, I never had aspirations of going to work overseas from an early age necessarily, but I knew that I wanted to get out and see the world. And I just happened to bump into a Peace Corps recruiter by chance on my way out of college. And as we'll talk about,

like, the rest of my career was kind of tumbling into different opportunities and seizing them. And so I I ran into this guy at a job fair, and he encouraged me to apply to the Peace Corps because I had studied language in college and it studied French. And so they were looking for some folks to go over to French speaking West Africa. I say that in quotes because I ended up in rural Niger, not using any French. I had to learn Hausa. But so, yeah, after college, I went into the Peace Corps and I was there for two years living and working in rural Niger, totally off the grid in a village in the middle of the next. nowhere with no other Americans around. So that was a crash course or maybe a better metaphor for tonight with what's going on upstairs is baptism by fire getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere

and had to learn language and culture on the fly and just survive out there and be living and working out in a rural area and then came back from that with the desire to continue to go back overseas. And I wanted to be able to teach language and work with adults on literacy skills and things like that. And I can that's kind of like the backstory. Later on, I ended up by chance working on a military base in the UAE and taking a job there. And that's what kind of opened the door to doing military language and culture training. That was much later in like 2011. But there was a little bit more going on. You told this before the show about your father, who was a Vietnam veteran. That was like dead set on making sure that none of his kids joined the

military. Yeah. So I mentioned to you guys that my father came back from Vietnam. He was a he was a corpsman assigned to a combined action platoon in Vietnam. And I knew growing up, like he would tell us war stories and he just had like a really a pretty horrific experience there and lost a lot of his good buddies and came home and and struggle hard as a lot of his friends ended up taking their lives, you know, in the 70s and 80s. And so back in the 80s, when the VA first started acknowledging and treating PTSD, he was he was in that initial way of folks being treated for it. So we knew like my dad used to call up his. buddy Mark every month and that was his therapist you know and he was pretty open about that which

I thought was pretty cool at the time like my dad had no shame and no stigma about um you know PTSD treatment which was was really cool um he ended up being getting treated for PTSD and then going to work for the state of Connecticut as a social worker for Vietnam vets and helping vets um find housing and jobs um so that was his career later in life until he retired um for the state so that was my dad was pretty inspirational to me but i was telling you guys that uh yeah he He didn't want any of us enlisting in the military. He just had had such a traumatic experience. And when I grew up, that was at the end of the Cold War.

I mean, the Gulf War was early 90s, but like I was off in college when 9-11 happened. So like most of my coming of age was, you know, relative peace time. So most people I knew weren't joining up with the military at that time. Post-9-11, I knew a lot of folks that joined in different ways. So, yeah, we just weren't encouraged to enlist. and I told you that he, my father did chase off a military recruiter once I came by our house. I forget which brother he was going for, but I had two brothers and a twin sister. And so yeah, so anyways, but I also had mentioned to you guys that when he did live in Vietnam,

he was living in a village in Vietnam. Like their platoon was out there. And so he made friends with these Vietnamese folks as well. And he tended to the local populace in the same way that he was, a corpsman, a medic tending to, to U.S. soldiers. So he kept in touch with some of those Vietnamese folks after the war. And we'd see him getting letters and gifts from Vietnam in the mail. And he'd make phone calls over there and be like speaking Vietnamese. And I just thought that was so cool. As a little kid, I was just like, I want to, I want to have friends in different countries. And so even though

the military wasn't really an encouraged option for us, I knew I wanted to get out and see the world and be doing things like that. So that was kind of when I met that Peace Corps recruiter, I was like, if you could put me on a plane to a faraway place and I can go, you know, experience something like that, that would be really, really rad. So that was kind of how that worked out. A book we have here actually on the shelf that I've been meaning to read for a long time called The Barking here, the Vietnam Veteran Road. It's supposed to be very, very good. But I was told that when the author brought his book, this novel he wrote about Vietnam back to the village that he worked in with special forces, that the shaman put it up on the, in the shrine.

He had never seen a book before. Yeah. Wow. Fascinating. Yeah, we had a combined action platoon. Past episode, yeah. On the show about a year and a half, two years ago, I think. Yeah.

And a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people aren't aware of what they did and how these Marines and Corman lived in these villages like a special forces team. And, you know, yeah, they had a high. high rate of efficacy and also a high rate of, you know, mortality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he would tell us about ambushes and stuff.

And as a kid, you're just like, dad, like, it doesn't sound like you're supposed to be here. Like, he had so many close calls, like, insane stories. But, yeah. So you joined the Peace Corps. And so you studied French in college. And then what did you say you learned when you were in Nigeria? What's the language official? Okay. So when we, I was part of a cohort about 40 folks and they split us in half.

Niger has two operating languages. Hausa is the more widely spoken one. So most of us were assigned to learn Hausa. And then there was a cohort of folks assigned to learn a language called Zarmah, which is spoken around the capital, Niemma and in western Niger. And so, Dave, you might be more familiar with this, but we had to basically study for two months in the capital city of Nehemi. and get enough language to test out an OPI at a 1-1. So if any of your listeners have taken a DLI foreign language course and have to set for an OPI, we had to hit at least a one. And if you didn't hit a one, you had to stay back

and continue studying the language because essentially in Niger, most of the posts were pretty rural, even the urban posts were still kind of off the grid. So you had to be able to be self-sufficient in language. And our RSO made a pretty big point of reminding us that your safety is totally dependent on you your ability to learn language and culture. That's what's going to save you.

And I had some pretty wild stories where, like, I definitely had to get out of some hairy situations. And my language came in pretty handy. But, yeah, so I studied Houssa for a couple months and then ended up in a village on the border of Nigeria where it was another dialect of Houses. So I had to go to the village and, like, relearn their dialect. That was, like, really intense. Like Arabic, you said you studied the MSA and then you got to go learn it.

All the colloquial. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was so pretty intense. Do you want to share any of those, any of those incidents with us that, that? Well, so the one that people always ask about. And I've shared this one in interviews before. I'll try to give you guys the short version because I know we have like other stuff to move into. But when I first got out there to the village, I did get really sick with something we used to call faux malaria where you don't have malaria, but you have all the symptoms, sweats and muscle pains and. And, and. tightness in the joints and malaria is like obviously very dangerous and deadly and peace corps volunteers have died of it before and so I got that in the beginning and had to kind of explain to the folks that I lived with in the village that I was like really sick and scared. They knew what was going on but I ended up eventually recovering and I was fine and it wasn't malaria. But I just remember that was like the first experience there where I actually did

use my language because the first month you're kind of like this like baby like this helpless infant where like all of these people around you are speaking this language that you can't you can't interact with them you can't even crack jokes or say you're hungry you're tired you're just trying to like listen and get it all in and then after about a few weeks in a month like you can start giving language back and conversing but yeah so like months two or three was when I got the formal area and I had to be saying things like please if I get really sick and die make sure like my body gets back to the capital city um another thing I'm actually in the middle of writing a collection of short stories about this experience because there are so many of these like really vivid stories that I remember.

But my I lived in a mud hut. This is similar to like folks that have been to like Iraq and Afghanistan may have seen like mud yards like concessions with like a mud wall. And in that mud wall, the four walls, there's like little family dwellings. And so rural Niger is actually quite like that. So we lived in the Sahel and so it's like a desert region and a lot of mud structures. So I lived in the like homestead of the village chief and his wife and their kids. But I had my own little hut. But next to my wall was the town cemetery, the village cemetery.

And because I remember when I got there, I was like looking around and I asked like, you know, like what's that out there? There was these little like holes covered in with mud and like little dirt piles. And I didn't know there were graves, but I saw these thorn bushes on them. And I was like, what are those bushes? And they're like, so the animals don't dig up the bodies. And that's when it dawned on me like, oh, yeah, it's a, it's a Muslim village. They're a conservative Muslim village. So as per the custom, somebody dies, they get, you know, wrapped up in the shroud and they get buried the same day.

And then they get the thorns put down in the grave so the animals cannot dig up the bodies and ruin the remains. But I was, had to ask them, like, do you, like, if something happens to be like, are you going to make sure that I go out to the, you go grab the, you go grab the, the Peace Corps people and tell them the girl is sick or am I going to end up in like one of the holes out back with a thorn bush like I really didn't know. But yeah, so like having to have that conversation like in my broken house, which was terrible at the time was entertaining, but the funnier story, so that's kind of a sad, serious story, but about a month later, I get bit by a rabid dog. So all the animals out there,

like the dogs, packs of dogs and cats are just feral. And there was a pack of dogs that would often Rome the village and one day I just happened to be walking over to a group of people that were out under a tree drinking some tea and part of my job was just to go around and talk to people and build rapport and you know gain that cross-cultural understanding and trust so like if we did implement projects that people knew who I was and trusted me and knew my face and so I was just going over to sit with some people and drink tea and as I'm approaching them they're like raising their hands to wave to me and their faces just were like like this look of horror and before I could even turn around to see what they were looking at behind me. I felt this thing like gripped my leg and I felt the teeth

sink in. It was a this huge dog had like bit into the back of my leg and was like pulling my leg. And these people are watching me get attacked. And so I started throwing rocks at him and the dog runs away. But I was bleeding. I still have the scars. There's like four canine holes in the back of my leg. And I had to like limp back to the mud hut. And I had like a first aid kit with like two band-aids and like some rubbing alcohol. But again, I had to explain to folks, like, I need to leave. And the village that I was in was like four and a half miles off the nearest road. So I was nervous. I didn't know, like, did this dog hit an artery?

Like, am I going to bleed out out here? So again, I was like, hey, like, if something happens to me and like, I go right now, like, can you guys, again, please make sure my body goes back to my mom? My mom was like back in the U.S., like, they couldn't talk to me. There was no cell phones. There's no electricity out there. I was just like, depending on these people to, like, take care of me. And they did. They watched out for me. They helped me like limp out of the village and get to the main road where I could like hitchhike and get a car into the city and get back to the Peace Corps medical office where they treated the wound. But that was scary. But yeah, I mean, all as well that ends well. I was fine. But it was just again in the moment having to like use what little language I had to navigate that situation. Because they at first they were like, well, we don't have. any doctors out here but there's a bush doctor and i knew this dude he was a funny guy

he'd like walk around yeah it was a shaman and he had like pouches of snake teeth and he'd like give people blessings and like one of the first weeks that i was there like some little kid came to my hut and he had like his a bone was like protruding through his arm he had like fallen or something and he's like you're you're white you can fix it and i was like oh my god i'm not a doctor like i don't again like i have like a kit here with some bleach and gauze but i couldn't help this little kid somebody had sent him to my house like there's a doctor in town i'm like no i'm not here I'm not here as a doctor, but they didn't really, they're still weren't getting used to me. So this kid had come to my house with his broken arm and the shaman came and treated it,

which was like wrapping it with some leaves and like putting actually putting dirt on it to try to clean the wound. And so I was like, you know, that image was in the back of my mind when I was bleeding out the back of my leg. And the folks that had come in to the hut to see what was wrong, they were like, you know, we can go get him. And I was like, oh, you know what? The Peace Corps, like, there's like a white people doctor that we go to when we get sick. And, like, you know, I mean, that's the language I use. I don't say white people. It was like literally, like, you, that's what you say to refer to, like, the foreigners.

They called us, the word for foreigner was Batura, which is white person. So I was like, I got to go to the Batura doctor. And they got some special medicine for us. So that was kind of funny. But, yeah, I mean, it ended up being fine. But again, like language and culture, like, which is really, really important. What were, you know, you said your dad had these Vietnamese friends and you grew up Connecticut. You went to college.

What was some of the more like culture shock aspects of living in this rural village if there were culture shock? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, there was culture shock from day one. I remember when we landed in YMA, which is their urban center, their capital. there were some volunteers that were like ready to get back on the plane and go home just because I mean you guys it's the same thing when you deploy or travel to a foreign country like when you step off the plane and it's like all the senses are on rapid fire the smells the sounds like we landed at seven o'clock at night in me am a like 2005 July it was like 110 degrees prayer

crawl is going off there's people approaching you trying to take your bags at the airport and you know so it's really really intense like that culture shock I remember in the beginning and just like all the language going on around you, there's no English and you're just like, oh, God, like, am I going to make it? But out in the village for sure, there was so much. I mean, obviously those aspects of living in a remote, rustic area. I didn't have running water. I would go to the well every day and pull my water from the well with the ladies. And we had no electricity. So, you know, I had my lanterns and my headlamp. And I mean, some of that stuff was cool. Like, you're living as one with nature. Like, I went to bed every night. And it was some, sked-o-net looking up at like a gazillion stars and it was like the most incredible thing that

I'd ever seen life and um but as far as like the people uh yeah the the culture shock was was huge because there's just so many things that got I don't even know where to start and I wouldn't want to just go off in a million tangents but I mentioned as I mentioned earlier this was a conservative Muslim village so that was a big shock for me I had not really been grown up around many Muslim folks and so that was my introduction to Islam which was cool it was a cool way to learn it, you know, I mean, I did, well, I did. I tried to do Ramadan, but I sucked. I did like three days and then I was like sneaking granola bars in my hut. But, you know, I learned about Ramadan and Eid and all the holidays. And it was just really, really cool to learn that firsthand and be around that. But it was tough.

I mean, it was, again, off the grid, like if you've lived or worked or deployed to a developing country, you know that there's this pattern of like there's these bigger urban centers, the capital city or regional cities and then everything gets really quick remote from there so like we had two sets of volunteers in the peace corps there were city volunteers and there were bush volunteers and so there's that like like informal rivalry of we call it posh corps and bush corps for the bush volunteers like for us like that was it was um wild to kind of be out like living in in places where there's no schools there's no hospitals there's no clinics there's no access to things that a lot of things that we take for granted here.

You're just learning to like live off the land and really understand like subsistence living. And I think James Laporta talked about this really, really greatly on his interview that he did with you guys, just like bearing witness to people that are just trying to make it day to day. Right. So, you know, a lot of people in international aid or, you know, I was a young naive Peace Corps volunteer. Like a lot of us are just our first big trip out into the world, right? Like we don't really understand like a lot of those cultural nuances going in. So you think like, I'm going to go help people.

You know, like, we know best. And then you get there and you're like, this isn't a choice people are making, right? To live and struggle or have like half their kids die off before the age of five. There are reasons why these things are happening. And it is incumbent upon us as as volunteers who are working towards sustainable development solutions to understand those complexities. Right. So that kind of set. And that's what set me up to to be working in cross-colle.

or training later on, especially with folks that are like embedding with partner forces or host nation forces, you want missions to succeed or like provincial reconstruction in Afghanistan. You want it to succeed, but like why are things falling flat or why does money enter in the wrong hands or why do projects not work? Well, I mean, that was our our assignment. You know, we got to Peace Corps in Niger like in our and I keep mentioning like this specific country because again, like all Peace Corps assignments are different. Somebody doing Peace Corps in Azerbaijan or Macedonia or Fiji is going to have a good. different experience than I had. We lived in one of the most remote places that Peace Corps goes. So, like, those issues were different and deeper. But when you start to understand, like, why these things are happening, then you can find more viable solutions. If you try to skip the why and just say, we're going to build a school and you don't have the teachers or the local folks don't have the buy-in or the ability to support that element, then, like, two months later, there's just a bunch of millet stocks growing up through the cement and there's goats in your school and there's no kids and no teachers. Right. So, like, that kind of stuff happened a lot.

if people don't, don't pay attention to cultural complexities and those deeper things. And so our assignment was basically do not do any work before you've been there for six months. Go live and listen. Drink tea. Hang out. Learn your language. Learn the culture. Understand the power dynamics in the town that you live in.

Understand who's who. Because you could have a key leader on paper, but he's not really the key leader that makes the decisions. You know what I'm saying? Right. Right. So like you have to make sure that you're doing a lot of observation. And when you're getting to know people in the village or the town that you're working in,

you figure out who you can trust, who's got the buy-in, who really wants to work on things with you and things like that. And that takes a long time and a lot of humility and a lot of just sitting back and observing and listening and not trying to do-do right way. No, it's interesting. And, you know, we've talked about it before, but one of the things that Americans don't get often when we go overseas, especially to, you know, African, Southeast Asia and these other places is like tribal identity, you know, family identity, these things that are very political and influence everything they do. Yeah.

And I mean, it's no different. Like we have those things here, right? And so I think sometimes people just make the assumption like, well, they're all the same. It's like a monolith. And if we just say this one thing, like everyone's going to receive it the same way. But like the village I lived in, they had like there was literally they called it East Side and West Side. we had the east side of town, the west side of town. Their leaders did not get along.

There was drama. There was, you know, it was interesting because I was always just to fly in the wall for it all, but it was like, oh my God, like that. Especially at the well, you guys saw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with a Tina Fitt. Right, the woman gossiping down at the well in Afghanistan. Well, I mean, that's where all the gossip was in Niger. So I go to the village well and I just hear these women talking about other women or and it's like, but I'm like taking mental notes like, all right, you know,

because if I decide to work on a project with her, then she's going to be pissed. off and like they're going to think I'm giving money to him and it was just constantly like calculating who not to piss off when you're trying to like work on projects with people how big was this village like how long would it take you to walk from the east side to the west side of the village it was I was probably like around like 1500 people and I was in one of the bigger ones most people I knew a lot of volunteers were like villages of three or 400 people so I was like in the big leagues it was like 1,500 so I could walk around the town if I went all the way across I'd probably be like a like 15, 20 minute walk.

Someone once told me, this was in the Philippines, about how Americans need computer programs like analyst notebook to make link charts of the village and how the village dynamics work. And he said, we do that genetically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and also that like reminds me that I often fail to mention like this town that I was in was one that. There wasn't written language. So most people did not know how to write.

So, yeah, everything is up here, and it's all just, like, spoken word. So word is important. Word is your bond. And, yeah, so, but yeah, everything was invisibly recorded. And it was, like, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together in this invisible way, trying to figure out who's who and what's what. But, yeah, so there was, when you ask about culture shock, I'm like, oh, God, I could go on. I could talk for hours.

I'm not going to, but I hope that gives people a picture. Because that's definitely what landed me in a later role, like working the roles that I did on those SOCOM contracts was digging deep into that kind of background knowledge in that AO to come up with some of the scenario rating that I ended up doing on those SOCOM contracts. Yeah, so tell us about like how that came about. Like what was the next stop after the P score and what led you into working for special operations command? Yeah.

So I took a little detour. I came home from the Peace Corps and I knew that like other folks that I'd known that had gone back overseas and worked teaching English. Like you need to have a master's degree. And I was like, oh, I hate school. Like, but I went back and got a degree in linguistics, which was really, really cool because I found that like that, again, that background knowledge of having learned a language in real time versus sitting and learning a language in a in a schoolhouse somewhere or in middle school or high school or, you know, when you're when you're at like a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's in isolation. but having learned a language like in real time out in the world, I came back and study linguistics. And while I was taking those day classes, getting my grad degree, I was working at night teaching immigrants and refugees in Hartford, Connecticut, which was so fascinating. I was training up refugees to apply for the U.S. citizenship, which was really cool. It's kind of like that full circle element of like conflict zones around the world,

like all these students from Bosnia, Somalia, all the hotspots, you know. This is back in like, I guess, 2007. in 2011. I had Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees. So yeah, it was wild. So that was really cool, too. Again, like having to learn about all those cultures and how those folks learn and learn differently. Again, a lot of those languages and cultures ended up coming back around when I was working on those SOCOM contracts as DLI and SOCOM were still focused on some of those. Arabic always was the mainstay. But yeah, so I finished my degree and as night classes, obviously weren't paying the bills while that was volunteer. So I just went on the job boards and I was like looking at English teaching jobs overseas.

And I just happened to see one in the UAE. And it was on Sheikh Zayed military city. It was a cooperation contract between the U.S. Embassy and the Amrata Air Force. And so I applied and I got the jobs. That was 2011. Went over there and taught for about a year and a half. And they ran the DLI, the Defense Language Institute, ALC, the American Language course, which is their English component. So, like Dave, I don't know if you're familiar with DLILI at Lackland.

So the DLI's foreign language element is at Coronado. I think they have some, I mean, they have classes throughout Socom enterprise around the country. But the DLI American Language Center is headquartered at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. I wasn't aware of that at all. Yeah, it's huge. It's a huge program. It's this huge cooperation between the U.S. and partner forces. And so they've got like all these seats for like, I don't know the exact numbers.

I've never actually worked for DLA, but like let's say, for example, they got like a 100 seats for Saudi students and a hundred seats for Emirati students, Afghans, you name it. Partner forces that we work with that need English language training will often be able to send students to Lackland to take English classes for six months, which is really cool. But this was an element set up over in the UAE to kind of create like a funnel because there are too many students. So we would teach for six months there and then our students would sit for a test. And if they passed the test, then they would get to go on to study at San Antonio at Laughlin, which was pretty cool. And those guys were pilots and air crew.

And some guys were part of the Patriot Missile program at the time. So that was pretty cool. It was my first experience working on a military base and working with military students and absolutely loved it because it's just when you're teaching somebody a skill in real time that's going to empower them to. defend their country, but they're also an ally of ours, and you want to be able to give them the skills to help us do what we need to do in other parts of the world. That just opened my eyes to that whole thing. But I was commuting like an hour and a half from Dubai to this military base in the middle of nowhere. Like every day, it was like an hour off commute out, hour and a half commute back. And I don't know if you guys like transited through Dubai before. Like it's not, it's a hot place. It's hot and humid. And like after a year working in the desert, people kind of taper off. So I did a year and a half. And then time wise just happened to quit at the right time. Like I kind of got sick of it. it and I was like, all right, this has been really fun, but I need to go do something else. And that was just when the company that I was working for in the UAE was a U.S. government contractor,

they were awarded a U.S. OCOM contract to design some language curricula for NSW. So I was like, I quit. I'm leaving. And they were like, well, why don't you come to Arlington? We got an office there. Like, you worked in the UAE. We need an Arabic project manager. So, Dave, you think this is funny.

but they don't actually, you don't need to speak Arabic to get around in Dubai and the UAE. So I didn't really have like that much Arabic, just what my students had taught me. I learned commands to yell at my students like, Shabab, quiet down, you know, like stop talking. But I didn't really know fluent Arabic. But anyways, I got I got brought back on in Arlington to work on some of these language lessons that we're putting together for NSW. NSW is leading the charge at the time on this, what they called LREC curriculum redesign. So LREC is the acronym language, regional expertise, and culture. And so that's what SOCOM was focused on doing as far as different teams that needed to.

I mean, NSW is more direct action. And I went on to work on contracts from MARSAC and didn't need an analysis for AFSC and their teams are much more work in hand-hand-hand with partner forces. But in any event, El-REC was this new thing. And we got to be involved in the curriculum design and development for those teams. And so part of our job as curriculum designers was to get to know the student, gets to know the customer. So it was like deep dive into the psychology of Navy SEALs and the MARSOT teams and the AFSAC folks and getting to know what they do and who they are so that when we put something together for them so they can practice their language and cross-culture skills before they go down range, that is relevant and it's worthwhile. So, yeah, but that was the honor of a lifetime.

I got to go with some really cool teams. And what did you think of that, like going from, you know, the classroom, like the classroom environment, you know, near Dubai? And then, and then this now project management, like bringing this new program to fruition. Yeah, it was really cool to kind of be back of the house doing lesson design. And the coolest part was, so NSW at the time had about, you know, I won't say them all. But like, let's just give a few examples like Arabic, like Pashto and Dari were pretty important at the time. Spanish, Tagalog. So you got these different language teams at our company. And it was mostly they tapped previous Peace Corps volunteers and previous Mormon missionaries because they knew that those folks, we had all lived and worked overseas and worked two years kind of off the grid.

And so we had a good background in language and culture. But we also worked with language and culture smeas from those countries. So on my team, I had two Iraqis, which was really cool. I had one female. I would have grown up in Baghdad and then moved to the U.S. And then a guy who was Iraqi military, his story is so cool. He was trained by some U.S. soldiers and he married. His wife was training him in arms.

And they met on the range and then they fell in love. And then they ended up getting married. So he came back to the U.S. and was looking for a job. And I was like, hey, man, like, you got a military background? We're designing Arabic curriculum for like from U.S. military. So we hired this guy. And so we got to work with folks from all around the world is what I'm getting at. And we had this whole floor of this office building in Arlington, Virginia, with this whole curriculum development team.

We had culture and language to me from around the world. And we also had the floor below me was the AFPAC Hands program. If any of your listeners have ever gone through that program or are familiar with it. It was a whole wing of just Dari and Pashto teachers doing intense culture and language training for folks that were assigned to the AFPAC hands program. I think that was mostly the folks that we got were rangers. but I know there were other AfPAC elements around the country, and I'm not sure who they trained. So we had Rangers coming through,

and we had the AFPAC, these teachers from Afghanistan and Pakistan teaching them, which is so cool because it's like you got all these people from all around the world. So there's always a holiday to celebrate. There's always great food getting brought into the office. And like now Ruse, we celebrated with the Afghans, and they just have this big old party. And so that was so cool. Again, like I mentioned that because it's like you're just ingesting like a sponge,

like more and more culture and language knowledge. But to your point, like going from the classroom where I'm just, you know, teaching, teaching, teaching, to being able to be part of this backend design was really cool. And Socom kind of trusted us to, they gave us the framework. They're like, we want this curriculum to be relevant for operators, right? Like most textbooks for foreign language or apps, like if you've studied using Rosetta Stone or duolingo or you studied a language in high school, your textbook was probably like, chapter one, introduction. talk to other students in your classroom, chapter two, classroom objects, how many pencils are on the page?

Or chapter three, like, let's go to the shopping mall, right? Like, I can see how like a Navy SEAL will probably pick up a lesson like that. I'd be like, what am I going to use this for? Yeah. So our job was to take, you know, even basic language. We were doing an initial acquisition training course, like a basic language course for the SEAL SWIC teams, is to take that basic language and put it in a context that's relevant to them.

Right. Okay, so you're setting up a firing range with your Iraqi counterparts. give them five commands or give them instruction step by step how to clean their weapon whatever you know so it was um basic language but in the context of of an operator or um you know like with marsock i would sit there and go through their entire mission task set and be like all right tell me what you did downrange like when did you use language and culture or when was it irrelevant or when did you wish you had it and i'd make notes on those tasks and then go back and and design lessons around that so it was really cool because it gave me the chance to again like that was my introduction to like what these guys did i

really didn't grow up, like I said, other than my father, who had some crazy war stories. I didn't really have a lot of folks I knew in the military. This is the first time I was around folks that had served. And I just opened my eyes to everything that these guys do, which was so cool because all I knew was like, I mean, some guys from my high school went, you know, enlisted after graduation. It's like Marine infantry. That's all I knew. They went to Afghanistan, did their four years and they were out. Right. Again, like, their war stories. But these guys are like telling me all they do to go build partner force capacity. And I was like, man, that's incredible.

Like I didn't know any of this existed. Or like, what was it, Amy Forsy's interview you guys did a few weeks back? I'm like, I never knew there were, you know, civil affairs teams or like female engagement teams. Like, I wish I had known about that when I was younger. Like I had no idea. It would have been, you know, so cool to be involved in something like that. But that was, again, like the gateway into partner force training, which then opened my eyes to the opportunities that existed. overseas and places like Afghanistan where the affid element was going on over in the special

mission wing in the Afghan Air Force. That's interesting. I mean, it's interesting the concept that you're saying it's still basic language acquisition. It's just relevant. Like they need to know how to say ceasefire, not where is the library. Right. I still like. I still remember being in the language lab.

And there would be like saying like, like, say, like, lethal me. Don't shoot me. We thir moo don't shoot us. Right, but even things like library or school or hospital, like we create activities where it's like, okay, you're going on like a recon mission. You're doing surveillance somewhere in town. Like you got to mark off the relevant buildings. And that's a chance where you can dump in things for different aos like in the middle.

There might not need to know church, but they're going to need to know mosque. Right. Or teaching natural disasters like earthquake, tornado, like those don't always occur in like every AO. So you make it really specific to the AO. or things like seasons, like we're not going to learn seasons in the context of planning a vacation around a season. Right. When you're planning or you're getting ready to go do an insertion or extraction, you're going to need to know the weather, right?

So like put it in the context where they use that language. Again, we don't expect that like a seal or SWIC team is going to go down range and be operating with each other in Arabic. Right. No, absolutely not. I hope they wouldn't because damage their ability. But you're just giving them a lesson. They never get out the gate.

Right. They just got to piss off the Navy SEALs. Well, I mean, it's fair. I mean, other, you know, few special operations teams if they had to operate completely in a foreign language would ever get out the gate. Yeah, I mean, that's just the reality of it. That's, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not crapping on SEALs. I'm just saying that it's, it's not a reality that most teams are fluent in a eighth group. How many guys did we have who were like a 3-3 in their target language, Barabic?

Yeah. I don't know the number, but I bet it's like a dozen. Yeah. you know yeah so yeah yeah i mean like with the afghans too like when i end up i was working overseas like teaching english it's like we don't expect ever when they're when when they've all um got like an all afghan crew on an aircraft i would hope that they're speaking to each other in dari while they're trying to do stuff on the aircraft tower yeah you're gonna you guys need to know how to like tower talk in english but like amongst yourselves in a life or death scenario

like please use dari yeah yeah don't try to do that in english right so um but again it was and And this is how, like, So calm was forward thinking in that, like, they know that they were just like, we want this to be. The word relevancy comes up so much in their literature. They were so committed to making sure that their teams were getting language training and culture training that was relevant so that these guys can see the usefulness. Because, you know, language and culture has a reputation in training pipelines. People don't always see it like a force multiplier. Sometimes they see it as this weird like sideline thing. Like, why do I got to do this? Right. And so if you present them with a language lesson that they don't see as relevant off the bat, they're just going to disqualify. they're just going to dismiss it. Right. And we want them to know like, hey, like, you know, especially for those of us who had,

I mean, I mentioned that dog bite story. I was also on a bus that got hijacked once. Like I ended up in some crazy situations like overseas where, like, I know what it's like to be in a situation and be like on our alone and have to just kind of like make my way using what negotiation skills I have in language and culture. Yeah. So I want these guys to know like, hey, you might need this. Or, you know, when you go into a room and you have an official key leader engagement and like, yeah, you're really. language is a one one or two two and you got this heavy accent like from wherever you're from but it goes so far you guys know this if you you know Dave I hope you got to use your

Arabic at some point I hear these stories people in foreign room but you get into a but you know you know that look in somebody's face when you speak Arabic to them and they're like oh my God like you're speaking my language you know like it just goes so far and it it lays the groundwork for whatever else you're trying to get done um and create such a uh such a bond and such a trust and any training. we talk about training. I can, excuse me, I'll geek out on like pedigodge you,

but like any training or educational element, like when you're working overseas with folks, even if you're doing like some kind of embedded training with partner forces, trust is the key element, right? Because with trust, then you build respect. And if people respect you, then they want to learn from you.

If you try to skip that stuff again and you're just trying to throw information on people, like you might think they're taking it in and they're taking it seriously, but then things fall flat in live trainings. and it's like, why did that go wrong? And those were the kinds of things we were trying to figure out when we would sit and interview teams that had gone down range.

It's just like, you know, when were you in a scenario where, like, you were working with your, with host nation forces or partner forces and, like, something went wrong. Like, you were in a room and, like, the meeting went south and you couldn't really pinpoint why. You know, usually the guys would be like, well, yeah, this one guy made some, like, jackass comment or like, maybe we should have said this or that. Or, like, we don't know what went wrong, but we wish we could, we had the cultural training to figure that out. Yeah.

Because we really wanted to get information from that person or we really needed that meeting to go well. So, you know, again, all the way back in Arlington, Virginia, I'm trying to, like, come up with these scenario prompts to get these guys to practice those kinds of things and envision themselves in those kinds of scenarios and see, like, where this stuff could come in handy downrange. Yeah. And you're right. You're like, you have to, you have to get by and you have to sell it to them because, like, in the beginning of the war, like, what are you going to hear from the standard warfighter? I speak five, five, six, right? like that's and so in order to get them to understand how beneficial these things can be to them yeah yeah no that so did you go was there a learning process for you did did you did you I know

you had already kind of worked with the military prior to that but did you go into them into this situation with any amount I don't want to like any amount of idealism that didn't pan out like did you have did you like in the peace corps you have all these optimistic idealistic you know hopeful people and then you deal with the military all these jaded salty crass was there a transition period for you i mean i think i came out of the peace court pretty cynical did you i mean and i and i also like to like my disclaimer always is like i i am one person and out of all the tens of thousands of peace world and so like my experience was like pretty unique even in that country where i i didn't I ended up not having a good time and not leaving my village in good terms because my,

my village elders wanted me to build a mosque. And at the end of the day, I was like, hey, man, like, U.S. government ain't going to go for that. Like, we don't fund mosques. And it was like this idea that, like, well, if we build the mosque, like, all these other problems you're trying to help us solve, like infant mortality and people dying in childbirth. He's like, those problems will solve themselves.

You don't need to stop trying to build a school. Stop trying to get the women literacy classes. Like, just build the mosque. Big fight. And it wasn't a big fight. I basically just said, like, I can't, like, And it's hard for them to understand. Like we don't get involved in like religious things.

The church and state was not a, we're not talking about that. So I had to have one of my, one of the local Peace Corps staff had to come out and basically have like an intervention with my village elders and say like, she's not here for that. And if you don't want the women to learn how to read and write, we're going to take her out. And so I actually got taken out and reassigned to a bigger city for the last few months of my service. But so I left Peace Corps. I was like, man, like, you know, that was, that was a really intense. exchange of time and but it was it was hard because it's like I don't blame them that's their life that's their world I'm not there to change people's thinking like all I can do is say like hey I'm

here if you need resources and you need help like I had a guy from a local NGO that wanted help funding he had made AIDS awareness pamphlets and he needed some funding to get them printed and like I helped him do that it's like I'm here if you need me but like I'm not going to get in fights with people this is their culture this is their their domain and but you know it was eye opening you're right like people go go overseas and they volunteer for these things and they're just like I've got the answers I know why they're not doing what I think they should be doing because they haven't heard for me and it's like we're 22 like why would anybody listen to us like why are people going to listen to me about family planning in this village where like

they knew I was unmarried which is like big no no number one like who are you you're 22 and you're not married what's wrong with your parents like they were like your parents let you come here unmarried? Who are you people? Like they just said like for them that was so crazy. The girls in my village got married at 15 or have babies at 14. So it was wild for them that I was like older and unmarried. And like so and I wasn't Muslim. Right. So like the things I'm telling them, they're just like, why should we listen to you? And so that was like the like super humbling. And sometimes like I don't think people get to go through that experience of having to humble themselves and say like, I'm not the savior here. Like that's not my job. Like.

you know, if if if if the best I can do is is drink tea with these people and be there for them. I mean, I help people go to the hospital. I'd raise money to to help people pay hospital bills or get their kids checked out at the hospital. Like I had a good relationship with a lot of people, even if the village elders and I, like, didn't see eye to eye. And when I left there, like, I remember taking the OPI and the way out the door and I was like near native fluency. Not now, but it's like definitely languished. But that was cool. Like to me, that was an achievement.

that was like, they taught me that. They taught me that language. They taught me all about their culture. And I think the more that we can do of that in the world, like, you know, this is the naive, the Peace Corps volunteer in me, like, the better world we could be if we all just kind of hung out with each other a little more. But like, those dudes trusted me, like, what I like to think of now. And I'm sorry, I'm going on a little segue here, but a little tangent, but we were on the border in Nigeria. Like I was, I could see Nigeria from my backyard. Like, look over those thorn bushes past the cemetery.

That was Nigeria. Boko Haram was down there at the time and extremist elements were like moving around down there. You sensed the change. Things were becoming more conservative and more extreme. And in 2011, I think it was, 2012, there's a couple of French kids that got kidnapped in the capital. And the rescue op went south on the border of, I think, Burkina Faso, and they were killed. And that's when all the aid organizations in Peace Corps pulled out. So Peace Corps hasn't been there in over a decade, right?

why I say all this is because I'd like to think that where I lived, if somebody came rolling through on a Toyota, with a bed full of guys with AKs and they're trying to recruit people from my village and say, like, well, you should come hang out with us. We want to kidnap some Westerners because we don't like them. They're awful. They're this or that. Well, you know, that invisible buffer is all of us had been there. Right.

Right. Like all these people had been exposed to Americans. It's that soft diplomacy element of, I would like to think people would say, like, actually, like, Joan wasn't like that. You know, like we know Americans and then they're not like that. So screw you, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, again, is that naive? They're probably getting paid money. Who knows? But I would like to think that the impact that we had there isn't just about how many schools you build or how many green banks you build or how many, you know, kids you feed. It's the relationships that you build. And this all comes back to, I know, we'll get to this at some point, that moral injury component of people that left Afghanistan, service members, civilian contractors, defense contractors last year in August 20, 21, who were sitting on their living floors in the United States with broken hearts crying to their families I didn't do my job I left someone behind and I don't know how to deal with that and the only thing I could say to them was like look like your friends see you fighting for them these afghans like they know that their government like folded

i had my interpreter texting me like oh man you see gani getting on the plane like that guy's a piece of i don't know if i can say it on podcast you know but he's a shit you can say anything you right yes if you literally i have the screenshot he was just i was like gani got on the plane he's like he's shit. And I was like, yeah, but they saw us fighting for them. And so the veterans that I worked with, the U.S. veterans that I was working with in these Afghan Evac groups and they were just like, I can't believe that I did this to this guy. I can't get him out. Like I'm a failure. 20 years. What does it all mean? And I'm like, those guys are not the ones that are going to be running to work with the Taliban right now and fly their aircraft for them. Hell no. They're waiting for you to get them out and they

see you fighting for them. And that means a shit ton more, you know, than what they see going on between our governments. Like our government might have let them down and their government might have to let them down, but it's the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that are there over the past two decades that served in uniform and built relationships with those people. That's what they're going to remember. Right. When they come to the United States, like, the first thing they do is like look up their buddy that they work with in Afghanistan, right?

Those refugees that did get out. And those people are looking out for them here. And I think that speaks to the power of, you know, taking seriously, like building rapport and taking culture seriously because that's the invisible buffer right now that still stands in the way of people falling prey to terrorist recruitment. So, you know, whatever, you know, to go back to Niger, like being on that border, remembering hearing stories about Boko Haram, staging attacks across the border and killing Nigerian police officers.

It's like, God damn, you know, like what happens if they come across the border and they swept through this town? Like, who knows? You hear about massacres occurring right now in Mali and Niger. And I'm like, man, like, am I going to get a phone call or message that that's one of the places that we worked? I should hope not, you know, but like all you can. do is be a presence and try to learn from people and learn what's going on in their world.

And I try to do my best at that even at the end of the day. Like I couldn't give these guys a mosque and Allah's still mad at me for that. Dee wants me to ask you about the bus hijacking story. Oh, God. So yeah, so this was a wild story where language and culture could not save me because it was in Ghana and I was not in Niger. But so if any of your viewers are listening, have ever traveled or deployed or worked in in this Sahel region, there's this cool visa that you can get or used to be able to get. It was like five country visa for all the Francophone countries. It was like Mali Niger, Burkina, Benin in Togo. And so at the end of our service, a lot of volunteers would take, like, you would accrue leave time.

So at the end of the two years, a bunch of us would go down and, like, do this little, like, tour of West Africa. You go down to the beach in Togo and, like, you know, have some cold beers. You can only get warm beers in New Year. But so we go out of the coast and you party a little bit and then come back and close out your service. And I was on a bus in Ghana. Ghana, by the way, is a really cool country to go to and visit. And I recommend anyone do it. I give that disclaimer because the story I'm about to tell will probably scare people away. But I think this is just like me being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Ghana was otherwise like a beautiful, beautiful beaches, beautiful rainforest.

You can go walk around and do canopy walk. But I was taking a bus back through Burkina Faso to get back to Niger. And I was on a bus, it was Easter weekend. So there's a lot of traffic on the roads in Ghana, and people were trying to get back home for the Easter holiday. And I was on this main highway on this third version of a Greyhound bus. And there was a road rage incident between our driver and the driver of a van that was ahead of us.

And what happened was, I don't know if they, like, hit each other. They just started yelling at each other. Traffic stop. All the men on the Greyhound bus and the driver got out, and all the guys in the van ahead of us got out. start like fist the cuffs. They're fighting. They're grabbing like steel beams off the side of the road and like hitting each other. And we're all just all in the bus like watching like, oh God, like, what's going on? You know? And I'm again, like, I'm the only American on this bus and everyone around

me is speaking Tui, which is the local language there. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I just see all these people fighting like, man, it sucks. Like, and then I wonder what's going to happen next. Well, one of the young men from the van ahead of us gets on our bus and starts driving the bus away. I'm like, oh, crap. Like, I don't know those kids old enough to drive him. like you can't make this stuff up this guy starts driving he's we've been in and out of these cars and he's driving us like back on the highway and i'm like where is this kid going to take us well like a couple does he know the route does he know the stops yeah no yeah so apparently yeah so apparently we were like a few miles out from the village where like he and the people in the van were from so he like

pulls us up to this like roadside stop in this town gets out of the bus and like a bunch of townspeople had like descended upon our bus. Like, I don't know if he called ahead or they had Nokia cell phones at the time. So like all these people came up to the bus like from the town, other men and they like barricaded the door shut. At this point, the van pulls up with people that had been on our Greyhound bus, including our driver. So like the van is there. The Greyhound bus is there. They start fighting again.

Meanwhile, townspeople are have barricaded us in the bus. I'm us, the women and children on the bus. And they're putting things under the bus like wood and rope. And I'm like, oh God. And meanwhile, they're like throwing things at the side of the bus. So there's like bricks coming at the window. And I was like, what, like, I don't even know what to do. Like I'm in shock.

I'm just like, I guess this might be it. Like, I don't know what's going on right now. I feel like they're. And as they're shoving wood under the bus. I'm like, Jesus, they're going to light this bus on fire. Like, what do I? And it was weird. Like this weird calm came over me because I was like, there's absolutely nothing I can do.

Like, there's nothing we can do. This is kind of escalating quite quickly. And I'm alone. And I'm just like, again, the first thought that comes into my mind is like, I don't think that anybody knows where I am right now. Like, the Peace Corps knows that I'm on vacation. You got to, like, fill out your visa form. Like, they know them.

But if something happened to me right now, like, would anyone know? Like, when my body just be like on the side of a road somewhere? So that's my first thought was like, man, I don't want my, I want my parents to be able to get my body back. And how do I do that? And I ended up, I must have had written down, like, on a piece of paper somewhere, the number for that regional security officer that I mentioned earlier, who was like a big, proponent of language and culture saving your ass. His name was Kabiru. He was a martial arts champion in Niger and I just remember thinking like I got I got to call I got to call Kabir. I got to

know here so they know where to find my body if this if if they take this bus out. And one of the late I didn't have a SIM card that worked like to call Niger or text Niger on my Nokia. So like one of the ladies on the bus I remember this woman like could see the concern in my face and we couldn't communicate because we didn't speak each other's language but she just hands me her phone because I'm like looking out and looking around people are texting their families and I'm like on my Nokia like I can't do anything and she gives me her phone and I called kabiru and it went through like I don't know she had like international minutes but like I called him and he answered and I don't even know how he like answered the phone was like a Sunday and I was like hey man like I don't want to

scare you but I'm on a bus in Ghana and they're attacking it and like there's stuff going into the bus like I think they might light us on fire um I don't know where I am I think we passed Kumasi like 30 minutes ago like just in case you guys need to find me like I you know and I was totally calm I was just like I don't really know what else to tell you I'm sorry I feel like I let you guys down like I shouldn't gotten on this bus but um and I hung up and then um I didn't really know what's going to happen and then eventually eventually the police did show up and um they kind of diffused the situation and it was so weird because they like a policeman then got on the bus broken windows like dense all over the bus and the policeman gets on the bus and like starts driving us.

And again, I don't know what's going on because I don't understand the language. I'm like, this guy going to drive us the rest of the way? Like, what's going on here? Our driver, I don't even know if our driver's alive, they've been fighting out in the woods next to the bus with the other, with the van guys and there's road rage incident has gone totally rogue. This whole town's out now like with pitchforks and and tiki torches. And the cop starts driving us away.

Well, he drove us to the police station, which was a couple miles away and parked the bus, had us all get out and took some statements. and then like and I just remember sitting there like I don't know what I'm going to do the sun's going down like I guess I'm going to sleep in the yard of this police station here like this is wild I'm just glad I'm okay but this is what a situation and then the two drivers come out of the police station like pat each other on the back laughing like chucking it up like they had made up at the police station and I was like are you kidding me like now you guys are BFS without and our driver gets back on the bus and he's like anyone that wants to still come with me like we're taking it. taking off and like three people got back on the bus. The rest of us were like, I'm good. You know? So I'm sitting there at this police station. Like I'm out of money. I'd spent the last of my stipend on this bus ticket to get back to Niger. And I'm like, dude, I'm screwed right now. Like to the high heavens, like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I got hitchhike back to a cry. The policeman comes over to me and he's like, you can come stay with me and my wife

tonight. And I was like, oh, God, no. And so it was just so weird. I was like, I can't deal with all this right now that this guy's trying to take me home with him. Like is I don't know. I turned me down. I'm like, maybe that's the one that got away. Like, I have no idea.

I was so, I was so out of sorts. But, um, he was a nice guy. I just didn't really. I was like, you got a wife, man.

Was it the creepy eyebrow thing he did when he asked? It was that. Yeah, it was definitely. I was like, otherwise, it would have been cool. I would go,

you know, eat some like, um, you know, yams with you guys. But anyways, so I'm sitting there on the side of the road, like this cop wants to take me to home.

And the bus is gone and the sun is going down. and I'm literally about to sleep on the side of the road in Ghana. And like, my head is in my hands and I've never felt so helpless in all my life. And then like out of a movie, I look out into the distance and like out of this dust cloud on the road in the distance, like the white Toyota four by four. Like, you know, all the eight organizations like the white Toyota is like peers out the dust and stops. And this guy leans out the window. He's like, are you, Joe Barker? And I was like, yes.

And he's like, get in the car. And it was the Peace Corps had like, peace corps had like, phone Peace Corps Ghana and said like, you need to go get this girl. Somebody needs to go up and help her. And they had like brought like, I think they had brought like. weapons at the time. They thought I was like endangered, which I guess I was. But, um, so they brought me back to a Crah. And then, um, the Peace Corps folks there helped buy me another ticket. And, um, and the next day I went back and made my way through Burkina back up to share. But like, yeah, the bus story was kind of wild because it was just like I just felt like a helpless little lamb.

And I was like, well, this is it. Like it's been a wild ride. Like I had this has been a cool experience. Like, you know, I don't have any kids or anything. Like if this is my time, this is my time. It was wild. It was definitely. that is insane. I mean, I would be so curious to know like what was going on. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it just, it was just road rage. And like I'd seen other instances where like, even at bus stations in Niger, they would tend to like oversell bus tickets. And so when you went to show up to get on your coach bus to go between cities, like people would be like fighting each other,

elbowing each other to get onto the bus. And like things can quickly escalate in those situations. situations like to like mob mentality that we're not used to here because like I don't want to again go off on a huge tangent but like in our country like things operate you know for better for worse like mostly how they're supposed to this is not name there are rules here yeah it's like well like you know like even just things like banking like if I put money in the bank I'm pretty sure it's going to be there tomorrow like if I buy a ticket for a plane or a bus like pretty sure I'm going to make it on that plane or bus but and in a lot of other places like it's not like that you know it's just kind of day to day and you got to fight for

what you you need and it's it's it's it's it's second. because it's like people shouldn't have to fight to get on a bus or like fight over food but like i saw that and it's like so you know i got it i'd see things escalate very quickly even in the village to like fight level and then like and again the next day they're drinking tea and they're the mosque together like what right it's just the way life is yeah yeah so you know and again it's that like easy somebody i forget the phrase it's like easy to offend easy to forgive or something like that and it's i don't know like i'm italian like we're angry if you cross me like you're dead to me so you guys you guys are like getting these fights and then like the next day it was just like water under the bridge but um

they'll never forget those guys coming out of the police station and like they've got like bandages on their face and they're just like shaking each other's hands and i was like you guys were ready to like light us on fire what like yeah so how uh jumping a little further forward uh how did you end up working with the afghanistan air wing yeah sorry that's we're really supposed to be with this whole interview no no no no we're we're entering our way yeah it's not you so you are getting there my life is a one-year-road that i don't even understand but um but it's brought me to some really cool places and and i'm met some really cool people but yeah so i let's see so that was like at the end of peace course i went and worked in uae and then i i worked for so on those socom contracts um the last thing i

did for socom was a needs analysis with with some assac um afid teams that was really cool but they didn't end up picking up the rest of the contract. So I was laid off in early 2016 and was in D.C. without a job and I was trying to apply to federal jobs. I was like, enough of this contracting. Like, there's no job stability, no financial stability. And I was applying to a bunch of federal jobs and nothing was working out. I told you a producer, only because you guys have had so many, like your guest list is like a lot of CIA and paramilitary, but I'm a CIA reject. I was waiting for an interview with the CIA in 2017. And I went in. And I went in. and they didn't take me.

So like when that didn't work out, it was actually perfect timing because there was a contract that was awarded to a small defense firm in Afghanistan that needed English teachers. And I applied to that and got on that. And it was, I wouldn't have been in that position if I hadn't been holding out for that whole application process that took like almost a year. Just to get a letter in the mail from them and like one of those like shady unmarked envelopes that was like, good luck in your future endeavors.

And I was like, well, I guess they don't want me. And then I like literally called out my friend in Afghanistan and like, if you want to get a plane, again, on a plane to come over here, like, yeah, we need English teachers. And so it worked out really well, timing-wise. But yeah, that was a funny, that was a funny interview process. But I'm glad that I ended up where I did in Afghanistan. I was back in the teacher's seats. And my students were so, so incredible. I got to work with Afghan pilots, Afghan crew chiefs, all the back shops and those hangers, avionics guys, engine and body mechanics, sheet metal dudes, and had a blast basically creating curriculum for them.

So that was the summer of 2017 when I got on the plane, had to go through CERC for a bliss. Never again. That was in Fort Blitz. Oh, you had to go through CRC. I had to go through CRC to get a pretty clean up, and I'm like, it's just a memory. I don't ever want to relive.

Yeah, yeah. CRC is horrible. Yeah. So bad. You guys don't know. So CRC is something civilians have to go through when they're deploying overseas where they dump like they give you all your military gear they try to give you like it's they do like briefings where they put like the VHS tape into the into the television like this is how to stay safe while you're abroad

you have to take so many all the trainings all the trainings like um I forget them all know but it's like the anti-terrorism training and like sharp trainings that are pretty standard but it's so embarrassing like as a civilian because they give you like your this, like you got your helmet and your vest and I'm like, I've never put these things on. I look like such a dork, like, this is so silly. But yeah, you have to get your gear and and pass medical Monday and everything like that, which is like, oh, you had like a paper coat when you were three. You need to go back to the doctor and get a signature for that. You're like, oh, my God, like shoot me now. But yeah, so when you get through CRC, then you get on the plane and, yep. So that was August of 2017. I worked on the special mission wing on H. Kaya for the first

few months that I was there working with the Afghan crew chiefs. And that was, so that was the, I don't know if you guys are familiar with like the SOAG or the SOAT teams, the US military side, the special operations aviation teams. So there were like uniform like service members on the special mission wing and some defense contractors working over there with those SMW commandos and their air crew. And then I also did a stint on the Afghan Air Force, which is for folks that aren't in the know it's more like they're conventional forces. So those were most of the mechanics. that I was working with in the back shops. And so that was, there was no American military, like,

uniformed as part of that training, but that was more, like, defense contractors. And, like, I think I mentioned to you guys, there was a bunch of Ukrainians there because those MI17s were Ukrainian made, I'll call them Russian helicopters, but the MI17 training facility that a lot of the American contractors went through is in Kremlinchuk, Ukraine. So, I mean, I'm happy to talk about, like, any of that training. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to hear a little bit about the two different programs that there's a sort of a special

mission wing and a. conventional side to Afghan aviation. I mean, even kind of like a broad overview of like aviation foreign internal defense in Afghanistan, it's not something that we've really focused on on the show before. Yeah, I mean, there's so there have been some really cool analyses done. I can give you guys the links to. I think it's the, the modern war institute. Is that the one at West Point? An article just came out about Afin and Afghanistan. There's been some really great articles that folks that I work actually like colonels that I work with over in Afghanistan have written about AFID from their perspective. And I think so they're like I say like

they're the smeeze on like AFID in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they've written some really good analyses of like obviously we know that I don't want to say we got in over our heads, but like, you know, just trying to train people like you train Americans when you're again working in another culture in another country that have different resource limitations and culture and tribal identities. We saw that every day. Like, for example, a lot of the colonels and generals and leadership on the SMW on the special mission wing area of H. Kaya, like, those guys were from the Panshear province. And they were a lot of the pilots that were older that had been flying those MI-17s back when the SMW was a narcotics interdiction unit. And so they kind of like

lorded over the SMW. But they were good at like getting stuff done. And so those guys were kind of in charge on that side on the SMW side. And that was like a very like efficient training pipeline that they had where it was like we have these guys in their specific MOS and they're going to go through classroom training with American defense contractors like former maintainers and former pilots. And then when they passed that classroom training, that we were part of that, the English was attached to that. If they passed that, then they go to OJT on the job training on the flight line. And so then they're working with like on the aircraft with American mentors or trainers that. that might be U.S. military personnel still uniform or a form of veterans that have come back to contract,

teaching people how to turn wrenches on the PC12s and the MI17s. So the special mission wing, that was their fleet, was the PC12 planes and the fixed wing, and then they had the MI17 for the rotary wing. Blackhawks were coming in when I was leaving. I think those went down to Kandahar first, but which is, I'm going to roll my eyes. I just, that still makes me angry. That was kind of ridiculous. Notion of giving American helicopters to Afghan partners.

I mean, I'm from Connecticut. Like I remember that sale going through that was like, Skorsky, you know, my grandma used to work for Skorsky like way back in the 50s and 60s on helicopters way back when. But even I, like as a resident of Connecticut, like learning that our entire congressional delegation was part of that sale was just like they didn't need that. That wasn't going to be helpful to them like in that geography and that terrain. And if we're anybody that was part of the MI-70. training pipeline, like even as an English teacher with no background in aviation, like I see the struggles of these guys trying to maintain this aircraft without, they don't have their own maintenance

and supply logistics pipeline in their own country. They're fully dependent on foreigners for those pipelines and for resupply and for maintenance. I mean, again, that's why the Ukrainians were there. We had Colombians on those flight lines that had flown these helicopters or worked on them back in central and South America. So, you know, like the SMW, the SMW, and the AAF were very dependent on contractors in the U.S. military being and staying there, which is why a lot of us were just completely furious with the narrative that was trying to be put out last summer, which is like, we've given them everything and they're fine, they're ready to go, they don't need us. It's like, why would you have maintenance contracts to the tune of

billions of dollars still being doled out to American defense contractors? And I say that, you know, as a defense contractor, you know, people were there right up into the end, like making that money, providing that service. So it's kind of disingenuous for anybody to say, like these Afghans should have and could have been ready to do that on their own. They couldn't do it with these Russian aircraft, which, like, were, you know, if you think about, like, a Black Hawk and, like, for example, like the avionic suite on a Black Hawk, you know, versus the MI17, like, if they can't maintain and fly these aircraft without us, like these Russian helicopters that they've had for decades, then why are we bringing in this new shiny toy? Everybody likes new shiny toy. We've seen that. I mean, they've just crashed that Black Hawk. Oh, yeah.

I think they've crashed a number. That was hilarious because all the Afghan pilots that made it here, like we're sending me that video and they know exactly what they did wrong. Like they don't even know how to like... And I've... What you're bringing up is like a really important point and an important issue when we work with partner forces. And like I've seen it from Iraq to the Philippines to elsewhere.

We train guys and we make them procure American military immaterial. But what we don't do is train them or teach them or enable them to maintain. So the second, we're not around, like we might pull back from some of these countries for our own political reasons or whatever the case may be, their night vision starts breaking down, their guns start breaking down, their vehicles start breaking down, they start having all of these problems. So like whenever we talk about, you know, sending special forces teams to train and build, quote unquote, build capacity, that has to come with the requisite logistics and maintenance features. If we want them, if we do genuinely want them to be a, you know, indigenous counterterrorism unit or whatever the case may be. Yeah, self-sustaining. I mean, just even looking at the M4 or M-16, you introduce a 5-5-6 weapon into a 760 world. And how are they going to pick up, you can't just run down the store and pick up 556.

Now, now the question is McAvelyan, do we want them to be able to do? do that. And some partners, I think, are trusted enough that we should be doing that in certain places. I mean, look, I mean, I'm pretty happy that the Taliban are crashing black clocks and not maintaining them. So there's that. Yeah.

But I mean, even with the Afghan forces that we were training, it's like, do you, at the end of the day, all of us should be training ourselves out of a job. And if we're not doing it, right, right. You know, then like, we don't belong here because we're using them to, like, keep this war machine going and and you know i don't know if we want to have that discussion right now but i mean there's the profits people talk about two trillion dollars being wasted how can people leave all this equipment there it's like that two trillion dollars isn't wasted honey that's in pockets in crystal right yeah come on now you know yeah again i'm not naive like you know you know there's a great

documentary that came out around like 2005 that was like oh was eugene jerke when when i um talking about the war in iraq mostly but he touched us on afghanistan too and it was about that whole like the buildup of all these defense contractors around pentagon city and like come on like people open your eyes and and that's i think another thing that that a lot of veterans struggle with is like coming back from these wars and realizing like oh god you know like i want to fight for something that i believe in and especially teams that are committed to like working and training partner forces and you get to know people on a human level and then you're like man you know and this is nothing new i mean you can go back to smedley butler during the you know writing his book war is a racket you

You know, after an illustrious career in the Marine Corps. Yeah. You know, that's, what's it? That documentary starts off with a farewell address from Eisenhower, who specifically used that term military industrial complex. Like we, I mean, it's a general, World War II generally, you know, like saying, hey guys, be careful. We don't want to become this war machine.

Right. So, I mean, we have a lot. In one sense, like, we do have a lot of power to do a lot of good in the world and use these skill sets to train other people to help us in our own mission. to secure certain parts of the world, but also help them to fight for their own freedom. And like, you know, but yeah, like ethical wines are crossed all the time. And it's kind of a shame when like, you know, lives are lost on both sides. And those people don't get answers, you know.

So what was your experience like working with these two different aviation partners in Afghanistan? Yeah. So I mean, like the SMW versus the AAF? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, again, the SMW, just because like the, the U.S. military was such a presence on that flight line, right? Like we worked, we're all, hold on a second.

I told you guys, like, I'm a geriatric millennial, but I wonder if I can show you. Oh, no, I can't do it. You can share your screen if you have a photo. You can share your screen. Yeah, I had this, let's see. I don't know if I can get into like settings, though. While she's sharing the screen real quick, everybody, we want to introduce you to our patron if you're not already a member. The link is down below.

You'll be supporting us. You'll be supporting our drinking habit. You'll be supporting the church above us. Not really. but you will get you'll get ad free episodes if you subscribe and if you subscribe at our highest level you may get a little invitation to our Christmas party

at the end of the year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just giving those out there. Sorry, that went to my spam. You're invited to, Joan, by the way, like all of our guests. Your invitation went to my spam mail. It wasn't ignoring you. It was spam.

Like, we've been sending it out just everybody all the time. Oh, so it was good. Can you guys? Did the background change? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's the, this is welcome to the S&W flight line. This is Rant 5 on H-Kaya. So like this is where we work.

We work on hangers like with these, the helicopters out on the flight line. And I also worked in classrooms and trailers like along the flight line, but most of the work that, that U.S. defense contractors and uniform military personnel we're doing were in all these buildings like along this flight line so this is like our daily view from the office and um i think the smw uh was so successful at what it did is because the u.s was working like in tandem with the afghans every day like leadership was working with leadership and

all of us at the mentorship level were working like with afghans also so i was teaching afghan crew chiefs and i had some pilots in my class teaching them english in the beginning um the first few months i was there on the smw but i also had um interpreters working with me so we were all assigned interpreters or in classes in case we needed them or in case there was like a security situation or sometimes just explaining the logistics of what was going to be happening in the classes that day. So that's how we got to know so many of the translator interpreters that worked on that base that we ended up trying to get out at the end. So we worked hand in hand with the interpreters and we taught the Afghan students.

And the SMW had a pretty successful training pipeline. It was really, really awesome to work over there. just all these Americans and Afghans around each other every day. I paint that picture and give that detail because on the AAF, which I move out of the way, on the other side of that flight line, you'd see the hangers for the MI17 hangers on the Afghan Air Force side. And so again, like, that's their conventional force. On that side, the Americans and the Afghans were working rather separately, and that's not by accident. So I think it was in 2013 where there was that attack where an Afghan colonel killed, I think it was like nine Americans.

And bullet holes are still in those hangars. But so the Afghan Air Force was being advised by an element called TAC Air, which was the U.S. Air Force's element that was going over to advise the Afghan Air Force. So on the SMW side, you had the SOAG, which is a special operations aviation group. And then on the AAF, you had TAC Air, which was like trained, advise, assist. command, I believe. So each other own acronyms. But we had so like special operations,

uh, folks in the U.S. working with special operations, Afghans on the S&W and then you have conventional U.S. Air Force folks working with Afghan conventional forces on the AAF. That makes sense. Um, sorry I'm Italian. I talk with my hands.

Yeah, no, the hands are like disembodied hands now that are like coming straight at us. I still love all my fingers. I'm sorry. I'm scaring guys. It's spooky season. I can get rid of this background.

But, um, so anyways. On the AAF side, because of that incident that occurred in 2013, the TAC Air Element, the U.S. Air Force, ended up building their own compound on that part of base. So they had this secure compound where they worked out of, and they'd go to like high-level meetings with the Afghan Air Force colonels. But it was like, you go out to a meeting, you go back to the compound and you're secure, only because that had been such a horrible incident. And again, the after-action report is that it was a cultural misunderstanding. An Afghan colonel had done something that a U.S. colonel, it was not something inappropriate happened. I forget like what the incident was if the guy like didn't run like didn't run something right or there was some kind of like maybe supposed like corruption or some wrongdoing and the US kind of like called him out in front of other people. And we all know that you don't in a face saving culture, you don't shame people. I mean, we're used to that. If we do something wrong like of course our superior is going to shame us and

that's how we're going to learn not to do that thing in the future, especially like US military training, right? But that's not how. how it works in Afghanistan. So this US colonel thought he was doing the right thing by shaming this Afghan colonel and Afghan colonel showed back up and there was an incident. So yeah, I mean, there was another story I think about a contractor that had pissed off in Afghan. They were like making fun of his mush desk or something and that guy came back and killed some people. So like there were incidences on that side of base that we had heard about and that's why the security. I one time got to fly with the Iraqi Air Force and the American Huey pilot that was

working with the Iraqi Huey pilot. Those guys were bros. They'd be holding hands and stuff. There was no friendly fire going on in that flight crew. They were boys. Yeah. So that's like the flight training on the SMW is like American, either uniformed military personnel or defense contractors like pilots training their pilots and an air crew

training their air crew. So like the culture, the trust building was still there. And like all that was happening on an everyday basis. And on the AAF side, like it was like a ghost town. And we were English teachers, a little team of us that would go around to the maintenance back shops in the back of the MI17 hangar. But we were the only Americans around. Like we didn't have weapons. I didn't have a guardian angel assigned to me.

Like it was my Afghan interpreter was like my own official bodyguard. And he would just walk with me. And it was just weird because having worked in the SMW, you're seeing uniform personnel around you all the time. It just gives you the, it makes you feel safe. And it makes the Afghans feel like, well, they trust us. They don't think we're going to do anything wrong. Like you said, like they're our bros. So there's that element of trust.

And it was just calmer. And the AAF side was always like tense. Like something's going to go down or, you know, no. When that trust is broken, it's really, really hard to rebuild. And the U.S. military just decided it was safer to keep their Air Force, their attack air element in a guarded compound. And there's probably the right move at the time. But it's so much harder to get things done. Like the anecdote that I always like to share is this one back shop team lead.

So this Afghan dude who was running the sheet metal shop. And they needed this like, I don't know what gas it is. They had this like empty gas tank, like a nitrogen or oxygen gas tank. I don't know. I forget which one it was or what it was. But it fed their welding machine. And it was empty. And he's like, we haven't been able to use this machine in like years.

It's like a welding machine to weld the sheet metal for the helicopter. And he's like, we can't use this? Can you help me? And I was like, dude, I'm an English teacher. Like, what do you want me to do? And he's like, can you go talk to someone? So I went over to the compound and met with the American advisors. And I was like, hey, man, like, can anybody help this guy get his tank refilled?

Like, who does that? Is that U.S. military? Is that a contractor's job? Like, who's in charge of that? Like, who's in charge of that? And they were just like, yeah, man, that was like a contractor that left in, like, 2015. And when the new contract was written, like, it wasn't written into a new contract. So, like, that's not our job.

And so this guy just never, never got his tank filled. And they can't use that welding machine. And it's like, I mean, another. This is one anecdote. I'm sure you could find, like, a million of these of, like, that they don't have that capacity anymore. It just died with a contract rewrite. And I had to go back to this guy and I'm like, hey, man, like, they're not, they're not giving you another tank. Like, sorry. I don't know. I don't know what you're going to do.

So, you know, the AAF side, there was a certain element of like the mechanics over there were like older. They were like all these like old dudes who had like fought the Soviets and they were like just like hardened dudes who just like chain smoke all day in the hangers and they'd be like, you know, bang and shit in the sheet metal shop or like, you know, crawling on top of the MI17 to take the bull. blades off and wash them and there just seemed like, like cogs in a machine. The SMW is so vibrant and you're doing like flight training. You're going up in the MI17. I got to go up on a few flights. That's like the picture of me in that silly vest and like standing in front of the helicopter. But I got to go hook in and like listen to comms and be teaching English to help those aircrew operate. And on the AAF side, it was mostly just like working with dudes that were fixing the, fixing the aircraft and trying to give them some language where if they did work with an advisor, they could communicate

problems and needs. But yeah, it was really, it was a totally different vibe on the AAF side. It was, it's a shame. It's a shame, you know, when things go south or when things go sour. And I don't know that the AAF ever recuperated from that incident in the way that folks hope they would. But they were still training. I mean, pilots were being trained on the AAF. And those air advisors were doing a very important job. And the Afghan colonels were, were, they had training pipelines in place. It just was a totally different vibe than the SMW where you have, again, American personnel and contractors working with the Afghans every day. And I think that speaks to being able to build that element of trust and keep it, keep it intact. And enabled that flight line to operate like it did.

How did your time on this contract end up winding down? Was that part of like the overall like brought down in Afghanistan or was it just like the company lost the contract? I mean, how did that come about? So mine was, sorry, I'm trying to like get this. I'm going to shut this background. off because it's just bothering me. I keep disappearing like coming back. But yeah, it was a rather unceremonious ending to my contract. Okay. So I worked in the SMW from August to December. I was going on my first rotation of leave and I quit my job there just because the contractor I was working for it. We just had differences of opinion. I wanted to be teaching people useful life skills, English for crew chiefs and pilots. And they wanted me teaching a standardized curriculum

from DLI. And it wasn't really working for the Afghans or, I think, for our students. And so, but yeah, I heard that if you worked over on the AAF, you got to work in the backshops and be part of what they called a vocational English mentoring team. And we were doing really hands-on technical maintenance English. So I did that from about January, 2018 to July 2018. And then the company that I worked for, I will not name names, but they just laid us off one day. And it was a Friday. And they're like, you got to get your bags pack. You're out of here on Tuesday. You got to get up to Boggroom. And it was just a program management difference. Folks weren't getting along on the contract. And they, our boss was on someone's shit list.

And they fired her and fired her team under her, which was us. And so it was kind of like, then it replaced us with some mechanics that the English program died, is what I'm saying. So I was kind of a bummer. So I got into plane August 2018, did like an exactly year. But it was a very rushed exit. We didn't get to say goodbye to the Afghans. It was just, just like you're done, get on a plane, like, who needs English? You guys were a joke anyways. And so, which is, I say that. I mean, that's what the message was from a lot of the U.S. maintainers and defense contractors

we worked with. They really didn't understand what we were doing or why it was important. Yet they would still come to us at the end of the day and be like, I need you to work with this pilot or this crew chief because he needs to pass his OJT. He needs English. But most of the time, they just really didn't see the relevancy in what we were doing, which is a shame. I mean, U.S. commanders did and the Afghans did.

but the defense contractor program managers who are often former maintainers or former pilots just they didn't understand a lot of them never like dave you got to go through that language training experience with dali if people haven't gone through a foreign language training pipeline i think it's hard for them sometimes to wrap their head around this invisible element that's really abstract if you've never been through language and cultural training so yeah um we were cut pretty quick and they just were like well it's we can charge the government more to have mechanics over here so right fun back less and that was that was a that was a huge bummer. What was your impression over how the Afghan Air Force did over this subsequent couple

years? Do you have any sense of like what the future was for the, or how it kind of unfolded over the next couple of years for these units? So I mean, when I went home, I wasn't keeping in touch as much with the students that I had worked with like the crew chiefs and the pilots. I did get some updates here and there, but it was mostly bad news. It's like, oh, did you hear about like, you know, Captain Omar, his helicopter got shut down and shot down and they all died. And, you know, it was mostly updates when somebody got hurt, killed in action from the SMW. So that was kind of a bummer.

But I knew, like, there were other English training programs on those flight lines and on H. Kaya. And so I kept in touch with those English teachers. And things seemed to be going pretty well, like in 2019, but then COVID hit. And so a lot of that training stopped during COVID. I heard about that. And then, I mean, I heard the Black Hawk program. too was going pretty well down in CAF, like down in Kandahar, like the pilots were going through

their training pipelines and they'd all be taking selfies with the Blackhawks and they loved him, the students that were going through those training pipelines. But yeah, it was pretty quick that 2021 came along. And even early at 2021, everyone saw the writing on the wall. And at that time, I guess it must have been around like April or May. That's when we started hearing from contractors, whether it was like the English teachers I knew or the American crew chief defense contractors that they knew were like, man, like, stuff's not looking good. They want us to pack up and pack up for Mez and CAF and get back to H. Kaya and get out of here.

And they don't want us to stick about the Afghans. They just want us to pack our bags and get out. And it was like, man. So it happened really fast in May. And then June, like, Bogram went lights out. And it was like, oh, God. And that's when we started hearing from the Afghan interpreters that we had worked with across both of those flight lines. So these are guys that had worked for the U.S. companies that we worked for.

Again, the English components were usually tucked into these huge large maintenance and logistics contracts. So we were like a tiny, tiny component. There was huge, huge companies over there, Raytheon, Lytos, the big, big companies. And so they hired a lot of Afghans to work in their offices as translators, interpreters, running HR, talking with the Afghan pilots and crew chiefs to organize those pipelines, heavily dependent on these interpreters. I say that because a lot of people are like, well, you know, they weren't combat interpreters, you know, embedded out with a team of Green Berets.

but like these guys commuted every day from Kabul from their houses in Kabul to Hkaya people saw them going in a base and I had guys no secrets yeah yeah no the Afghans I work with some of them with like wear disguises coming to another basis but people the people knew who they were and and um and I knew several of them that had applied to the special immigrant visa program while I was still in Afghanistan when I went home I'd monitor their cases and like I had to write letters of recommendation for these guys and like vouch for them and they'd send me the death threats that they would get. So I could include that in the letter.

Like this guy's legitimately, his life is on the line. He's been threatened by the Taliban on his way home from work in Kabul. So those guys were contacting us in the summer of 2021, like June, July. And they're like, hey, man, there's rumors that the State Department might get us flights out. And so, I mean, I don't know how much time we have left, but this is where I usually start talking about, like, you know, the fall of Kabul and what happened to these interpreters and, like, what our role in advocacy and that was, like, with the dead. digital Dunkirk and Afghan Evac, but the tragedy and all of it, like the buildup to that wasn't just like all these guys couldn't get out. These guys could have gotten out. They could have gotten out in the summer in 2021.

They knew, they knew. I mean, everybody that was paying attention and had ground knowledge knew that the Taliban was like rapidly taking over provinces. I mean, the State Department had that cable that went up the chain and they decided to ignore it because we'll not ignore it. But they decided not to act on it and evacuate into those interpreters early or closed down the embassy because the United States didn't want to look like they had a loss of face. in the Afghan government. So the embassy stayed open. H. Kaya was operating. The interpreters that we knew were like, I could leave.

I could leave Afghanistan and then my visa gets canceled. I can go sneak into Pakistan, but how am I going to make a living? I don't speak Urdu. I don't have family there. I have to stay here because if I leave, the U.S. Embassy Kabul is going to cancel my visa. So they stayed in Afghanistan based on this rumor that the U.S. embassy or the State Department may or may not have flights for them out in July of

2021 and they're waiting and they're waiting and the flights aren't happening. It's like August. And they're like, man, like, I don't know if it's going to happen or not, but I can't leave. I leave. It's like they're in this horrible situation where like they could flee to a third country where they just live in poverty for the rest of their life as beggars or they could hold out and think that the U.S. is going to come through for them and get them on a plane and get them out. These guys were at the finish line of that 14 step SIVE process. They waited for years for these visas to come through. My guy, I'm closest guy to me, the interpreter I knew, like he was ready for his final interview in September of 2021. He would have been interviewing with the

embassy to come over. He had waited for like three years. And so they waited. They were like, we're going to risk it. We're going to stay. And we're going to, US State Department is saying they might have flights for us. And then August 15th happened. And I, you know, I got to text Saturday, August 14th, in the middle of the night going into this Sunday, August 15th for my interpreter, like, what do I do? And then it wasn't just me. This is when everybody started getting text messages, U.S. service members, U. U.S. veterans, anybody that had worked in Afghanistan, Afghan Americans who are talking to their family back home, everybody's realizing Sunday when you see Mez on fire and people like Taliban over in the streets of Kandahar and the president getting on the plane Sunday morning and then boom flags coming down at

the embassy and the Chinooks are flying people to the airport and my guy's like am I going to have my interview and I was like Mo I'm texting him I'm like there is no interview there's no embassy the US is gone buddy like you need to go to the airport now um by the time they get to the airport you know it was secured and people couldn't get in so you uh do you recall a kind of contractor, one of the American contractors training Afghan helicopter pilots, a dude named Travis. Peterson? I can't remember the guy's last name off the top of my head. I spoke to him for an article I wrote about the trainees he had who got their families,

loaded him into Blackhawks and flew to like Uzbekistan. Is he, was he a, do you know who, well, I don't want to, like, give too much personal information about him, but he had worked on the SMW, and I know who you're talking about. And I worked very closely with him during the Afghan eback. Okay. And yeah. So I'm pretty sure I know who you're talking about. But yeah, like, so we had worked with all those S&W guys.

So I just talked to you guys about the interpreters, but we're also getting text messages from like our crew chiefs and our pilots that we had worked with. And they're like, oh my God, like Ms. Joan, like I'm outside of H-Kaya and I can't get back in. So like the SMW, those guys were at work that night. A lot of them, some of them had gone home. Some of them lived in Kabul. So they could go home if they wanted to, if they weren't on duty. the Afghans that were on HKaya, the night that before Kabul fell, there was a whole element of them on both the AAF and the SMW that got an aircraft and flew to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

And yeah, so we knew some of those people that got on those M.I.17s and flew out. And, you know, rumor has it that they thought, like, okay, let's secure these aircraft, get as many people as we can tonight. And then we'll come back tomorrow and we'll get our families. Like, we'll just get the aircraft out and, like, get people out. and not let the Taliban like seize these aircraft and we'll come back in we can fight like they didn't know the government was going to fall and everything was going to fall apart they were just like and and and these guys like Travis and other you know US military personnel and veterans were like getting these phone calls from like high level Afghan commanders like what do we do like they're present I can't I try to when people start criticizing the Afghans for what happened like these guys are like the salt of the earth these SMW colonels and generals and these guys like they flew dangerous missions they fought and died for Afghanistan. These weren't people that wanted to lay down on their arms and leave. But when I can't, I try to tell Americans, like, imagine putting yourself in their shoes. And our president ever got in a plane and flew out of our country. And our top generals had no one flying the plane. And that there were terrorists in like 98% in the country who were out for blood for them.

Like, I understand why these guys were thinking what they were thinking. And I understand they were asking the questions they were asking. If I were a man in Afghanistan with a wife and kids and the Taliban coming at me, all I'm thinking is, I'm not leaving them alone and alive when I'm dead in this country. So they were trying to find a way to get the families out. And Travis and his organization, there were several organizations that were dedicated to these special mission commandos and aircrew and their families and getting them out.

Operation Sacred Promise was a big org. I don't know if you talk to them, but they were really dedicated to those folks because they didn't fall into qualifying for the special immigration visa program. These were Afghan soldiers. They don't qualify. The only people that qualified, qualify to apply to the special immigrant visa program are interpreter translators.

So people that may have embedded as combat interpreters or worked on H. Kaya or bases in Mez, Kaff, and Herat for U.S. contractors. So these soldiers were just like, shit out of luck. They didn't qualify to get a visa and they had nobody advocating to get them out. So a lot of those U.S. veterans who had worked on the SNW were like, we're going to set up an NGO to try to advocate for you guys, which I can, when we do talk about the Afghan adjustment acts, which I will plug before we, we go. So those guys had a huge effect on Congress, including SMW soldiers, if the Afghan Adjustment Act is to pass in Congress.

They would be included in the category of people that do qualify to apply for special immigrant visas because of their allegiance to the U.S. And I mean, people forget, like, Afghans weren't just fighting to build their own country. They were there because we went there and said, we want to secure this country. So it's not a hotbed of terrorism. So anybody that was fighting for a better Afghanistan and a safer Afghanistan was fighting for a better America and a safer America. And these guys, these Afghan criminals and these Afghan generals on the SMW, like, again, salt to the earth dudes that, like, it was an honor and privilege to know. And the ones that got out were thankful that they did. And they're going to make America a better place by being here and using their skill set here as well.

So what is what is the Afghanistan Adjustment Act? Yes. I am glad you asked now that I plugged it myself. But, okay. So fast forward from like August 15th, Kabul Falls, the evacuation is going on. at the end of August evacuation stops. Whoever gets out gets out, whoever didn't, didn't. But a lot of these organizations and NGOs that had been trying to get Afghans out

that weren't able to before those last C-17s took off at the end of August, they kind of pivoted in September and October, November of last year, to trying to find other ways to support Afghans. Like if we can't get you out of Afghanistan, we're still going to find ways to advocate to get you out and find pathways to the United States. That's number one. Number two is for the Afghans that did get here, it's really important that we make sure that they land on a solid foot.

The United States took an 80,000 Afghan refugees last year. That's more than the United States usually takes in a year from all countries in the world. So it's a huge strain on our federal resources that are allotted to resettlement agencies and caseworkers that are supporting all these Afghans. A lot of Afghans lived in hotels for months last year, waiting to get permanent housing and things like financial support and job training and things like that. So I say all that is the Afghan Adjustment Act with a product of ad hoc organizations coming together, all these volunteers, mostly combat veterans or civilian volunteers that have worked to try to get Afghans out of Afghanistan last year and were not successful, did not give up the fight. They turned it around and they went to Capitol Hill and they said, we're going to write some legislation and we're going to advocate for those legislation. And what we're going to do is we're going to make sure that we continue to fund, like advocate for the funding of these resettlement agencies here for the Afghans that did make it. also make sure the folks that are still stuck in Afghanistan that there are pathways to get here,

expanding the categories of special immigrant visa applicants so that more people can apply, making sure that program is still operational. So the Afghan Adjustment Act was like it's kind of like the continuation of the evacuation, and it didn't end when the last C-17s took off. There are still Afghans that, you know, we're trying to get out of Afghanistan. And for the ones that made it here, we want to give them a fair shot. The other thing that the Afghan Adjustment Act does, like it's pretty quick. It's like a one page or if you Google it, Afghan Adjustment Act, like, it's just a few bullet points.

And it's basically like expanding those categories of who can apply to the special immigration visa program based on who was our ally over there, whether your soldiers or interpreters. But number two, making sure the folks that did get here have permanent legal status in the United States. Most of those Afghan refugees that we saw come over last year, the 80,000 that process throughout the military bases, Fort Dix, Fort McCoy. I worked up at Fort McCoy for a time. He's a bracelet, a little Afghan girl gave me in my English class at 4 McCoy. Those folks, they were given what's called a humanitarian parole visa. It's the quickest thing that the DHS and State Department can issue to a refugee. And so they were all, we call it, we say paroled into the United States.

So they could be here on some kind of legal status. But parolee status is only good for two years. Once that expires, those folks have no legal standing here. So the Afghan Adjustment Act, like the Cuban Adjustment Act and the Vietnamese Adjustment Act, before it is basically an act that would grant these folks immediate permanent status if it passed. Right. So like when the Cubans and Vietnamese refugees came over here, again, it was like they don't necessarily qualify it all for asylum, but we're not going to send them back to the country. We're not going to send these Afghans back next year when their legal status expires.

We need to have some kind of on paper legal status for them. So the Afghan Adjustment Act's passed. Two big takeaways are the Afghans that are here are safe and permanent legal residence. And number two, the people that are left behind in Afghanistan have a better shot of getting here. That's why it's really important that people call their senators and their representatives and ask for the passage of this act. You don't need to know much about it. You don't have to have been to Afghanistan. But you can tell people that it's important that we honor commitments to our allies. We make sure that people that are here have a fair shot and making their life in America.

We are better that they are here with us now. You know, pilots that are flying, fighting fires and the West Coast, you know, like, I mean, these people have a lot to offer, especially the guys that worked in the military. So if that act passes, like, it will make a lot of us and a lot of Afghans very happy. Yeah. we had a question but actually you answered it so uh yeah um so tell us so you i mean fairly quickly after the withdrawal on august 24th you had an article public right yeah and how did that come about so um yeah thanks for asking that question um because i do i would like to touch on moral injury too and that kind of came about with the writing that I did. So you mentioned Travis earlier. So on August 15th,

when we started getting all those texts from those Afghans, like all of us at home in America, like around the country, we're like forming impromptu Facebook chat groups, WhatsApp chat group, signal chat groups, like all trying to come together and be like, hey, we've got all these guys texting. It's like, let's all try to work together in a singular fashion to organize their visas, their paperwork, and try to get them into the airport so they can get out. lot of it came down to veterans like using a leverage they had or trying to pull strings and like get some of these Afghans out based on who they knew that was down at the airfield on H. Kaya and so like we were in these groups. I got pulled in only as an English teacher because it was

kind of funny. So most of the groups are like, you know, combat veterans or the guys that had flown with the S&W fleet and, you know, there was a lot of service members and veterans. But I got a call from a guy. He's like, you taught English classes. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, hey, man, we got like all these guys trying to get into the airport. And they got like the lists of names, right? Afghan names are three. Like your first name, your father's name, your family name. And I had had to memorize all these rosters when I was an English teacher. And they're like, hey, we just need help people look at these rosters and say like, did this guy work for the SMW or is he full of shit? Because there were a lot of people trying to get out at the same time. And claiming to have worked on the SMW and claiming to have been an Afghan ally. And so like, you know, can you comb through these lists and help us sift through. So that's how I I got pulled into Digital Dunkirk was like trying to help organize these rosters and in flight manifests and things like that. And so what I quickly realized like after we finished doing that was like I don't have any pull on H. Kaya. Like I can't, I don't have me like I'm not friends with the, you know, commander of the 82nd. But you know, people were making phone call down to the airfield. You got to get my guy and got to get my guy. And I was like, look, guys, that's not my skill set.

But when I get feisty and I get angry, like I speak out. So I'm going to go write some opeds. And like I'll circle back with you guys. And what I thought I could do. was a lot of people were going to the press at the time to write op-eds and to go on, you know, CNN and Fox News and try to elevate awareness of what was going on. And so I was like, look, I'm just going to try to focus on writing right now because I think that that's how I can be most affected. I really can't help you guys out. Like, I don't have military connections. But if you guys want to go work those avenues, I'm going to go do this. And the important thing for us was that the American people knew the truth. Because at the time, like, the administration was obviously

going on like a big public relations binge of like this is a really awful way to withdraw and leave Afghanistan but like you know blaming on the Afghans or saying these guys didn't matter they didn't want to fight for their country I mean the press secretary like giggling at the podium like you know being all smirky like these Afghans just didn't want to pray for their country I'll never forget that look on her face and I that's what I wanted to throw a brick through my TV watching that press conference because you know who's watching the press conferences on CNN and Fox News the Afghans and they're interpreters so English is really good so they know when they're being insulted and they know when people are lying about them these are guys that tried to get

through taliban checkpoints during that evacuation and got shot at so people die in the streets walk through sewage ditches to get up to those gates and get turned away be told we don't care you don't have an american passport we can't let you in and it's no fault of the marines guarding that airport they had to secure that airfield but these guys are like you know what the hell i worked on that base that's that's my office for you guys we work for you and now you won't let us in and we have to stand at gunpoint while other people who have no allegiance to the U.S., like, you know, bribe off NDS and get on those C-17s. Like it was this humiliation, like, totally undignified experience.

And I say all that because, like, this was the anger building me was like, people are getting on TV, Pentagon, White House, Department of State spokespersons and saying, like, these guys, like, this is just war. This is the Afghans just didn't want it. And it's like, or they're not trying to go to the airport. If somebody needs, if somebody is an ally, they can just go to the airport and get in. And I'm like, dude, my friends on WhatsApp, I have a text from this Afghan who's, his kids just saw a woman get shot and killed,

and he can't get into the airport. So I was obviously like I'm still pretty, I can get pretty amped about it. But I was so angry. And like I'm watching, we're all watching these press conferences like us in these volunteer groups, the Afghan Evac groups, the digital Dunkirk. And we're texting each other like, can you believe they just said that on TV? Like, do you think the American people think that the Afghans didn't want to fight? We need to tell them the truth.

So like, that's why I started writing the op-eds, that first one that was like breaking hearts and minds. I think that was the one that came out on the 24th. And it was just like, man, like, we have the chance to do right by these guys. We're not out yet. Like, let's not squirm over. Like, I can't believe this is how we're going to treat people that stood by us and risked their lives for us. And, like, what are they going to think if we leave? And then that turned into, like, Mother Jones called up.

And I did a, I sat for an interview with them. And then CNN called up. I was like, I'm not going to go on the air. Like, because, like, they called for an interview. And I had not slept or, like, eaten for, like, two weeks. And I was like, a hot mess. because I just was, I mean, we were not sleeping. We were trying to answer every text.

The daytime for us was nighttime cobble. But then at like midnight American time, all the Atkins are texting. Like they just woke up like, all right, should I go to the airport? What's going on? So we did not sleep. But CNN called up and they were like, hey, do you want to come on and talk about the SIVs? And I was like, I can't be on TV right now.

Like, I can't even like eat food. I'm like a mess. But will you interview my interpreters? I think the American people should hear from them. So they did. Like it was really cool. They anonymously like interviewed them and had them on the air. You know, so like we got, we gained some exposure and, and I don't know, not just myself.

I mean, there were like thousands of Americans like writing op ads, going on TV, going in the media, saying like, hold on a second, like these Afghans like stood by us and we need to do right by them. Like, yes, this is a cluster fuck. It's not going to look good for the administration. But like to hell with it. Like if we're the American people, we expect people to think of us as the moracle ethical beacon in the world. We need to do right by these people. And enough people were like sounding that or, you know, trying to counter that.

narrative that the Afghans just didn't care to fight for their country. And I think why I keep talking about this and why I think it's important is that the fact that there are still flights for special immigrant visa holders and the fact that the State Department is still trying to evacuate them is a testament to the people that did speak out of the time and said, like, no, we're not going to let this die. You didn't send us to work for two decades to go build rapport with partner forces and build really deep human relationships to tell us to just trash it because, like, it's going to look bad for you guys. No, absolutely not. So, you know, I, I, I, kudos to everybody that's that stayed in that fight.

It was a, it was a grueling four months. Like, people were like, like, losing marriages, losing jobs just to stay up and try to save one more Afghan family. Like, people really, like, really, really struggled. And, and that's why, like, I transitioned. Well, when the Afghans couldn't get out and the evacuation ended, I was like, well, I don't know what else I have to yell about, but I did. I mean, I scorched Congress held these, like, ridiculous hearings on the Afghanistan

withdrawal. and nothing came from that either. So I wrote some op-eds about that. And then finally transitioned into like, hey, like, I'm working with all these U.S. veterans and service members here who are, like, absolutely devastated. And nobody's talking to them. Nobody's talking to them about this shit that they're dealing with.

And so that was the impetus for writing about moral injury. So the first few articles I wrote last year were all about, like, you know, honor our commitments to our allies. Oh, you didn't want to do that? Well, you're going to have to sit here and look at your troops in the face and say something to them. So I wrote an article that was geared towards military leadership. doubt, I don't know, military leadership read it, but that was, I got one article published that was

basically just trying to highlight what moral injury is and what all these troops were struggling with. Again, like I talked to you guys before the interview, you take an oath to say you're never going to leave anyone behind. And then your leadership is saying, we want you to leave them behind and not talk about it. Right. And so that was a deep reckoning that a lot of people were going through. And so that was a, that got, I think Stars and Stripes ran that in July, that article. And then I wrote a little follow-up on a couple months later on the year anniversary just to circle back with some of those veterans that I worked with, see how they were doing.

And like I told you guys, I think people are now in a much different place than they were last year. Last year, it was like, if I don't get this Afghan out, like, I don't even want to live. Like, I feel like such a failure. Like, what was this war for and questioning everything? The war of their identity and their character. And it was like, man, you guys are good people. Like, it pained me to see people asking those questions. Right.

And I mean, I think that a lot of people, for a lot of people, for a lot of civilians, they look, and they go, oh, well, you know, the veterans are upset that the war is over or that America lost the war and they felt like they fought for all these, this time for nothing. And that might be part of it, but a lot of it was because in this war, so many veterans did have such close relationship with the indigenous, you know, you know. Shoulder to shoulder, you know, fought and died together. and that's what and yeah i jack i'll have to go back and read what you wrote when you talk to Travis but i mean he's one of those guys that was saying you know like some of them buried more afghans than americans you know those are their brothers in arms and um i mean they were out like fighting with them like yeah i thought english was some guys and like flew around on some

helicopter training flights but these guys were like fighting with these guys and they had their backs and like so yeah it's really hard shoulder to shoulder by with and through and then and then as this was all going on on TV, it was just like, those things don't matter right now. And then for them to be painted as, oh, you know, they don't want to fight because the Americans are gone. It's like, that's not how this worked at all. Can you? I mean, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just going to ask, can you tell us what, what is moral injury? That's not a firm that's bandied about much and people don't use it that often. Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that because I did kind of gloss over that. But so we like to make the distinction between PTSD and moral injury because

they're two different things. And folks can struggle with both or one or the other. But unlike PTSD, which is endurance or witness to a traumatic event that impacts psychologically, moral injury is something that impacts on somebody's character or identity. And so it's usually when a transgression has occurred in regards to who somebody feels like they are. and what they stand for, right? So with Afghanistan and the withdrawal, again, it was that a lot of people felt like they were being asked to abandon people in real time. So I took an oath not to leave anybody behind, but now I'm being asked to do it and not really explicitly asked to do it, but just expected to do it by military leadership who's not really taking accountability for that. And when I spoke to

U.S. veterans and the groups that I was working with, and I was like, what do you feel like, what would you like leadership to say. And it's like, they're like, just acknowledge it. Nobody, there's no national will to have this conversation for leadership to step up and say, we understand what we're asking you to do and the pain that you're feeling. They don't have to use the word loss. Military doesn't use that term. We didn't lose this war. I don't know if anyone like got up and said that, but at least acknowledge what people are going through. Oh, you can use whatever semantics you need to, but acknowledge it. I think what hurt a lot of veterans was nobody wanted to acknowledge it. And not only that, but like, you got to remember, like, these Afghans that fought alongside U.S. service members, like,

they don't have the WhatsApp number for John Kirby at the Pentagon or, you know, Jake Sullivan at the State Department or, you know, Mark Millie or Joe Biden. They have the phone numbers for us and for these veterans and for the guys they worked with and fought with. So they're texting them, like, am I getting out? Can you help me? And so these veterans were having to send the text messages, like, and they avoided it for months. we kept trying to say, like, we're still working, we're going to get you out.

Maybe there's a way. Maybe we can. And then finally, like October, November, we started having to send the text. And I had to, I had to take the phone from some people and write the text. You're not getting out. It's over. Imagine what that does to, like, a U.S. service member having to type that text or make that phone call to their Afghan buddy who they fought with and say, like, I can't get you out.

It's over. That was so devastating for so many of them. And that's what causes the moral injury. Like, I'm doing something that I said I would never do. Does that make me a bad person? you know, Afghanistan was my life. I deployed six times. It's, this is who I am. And so they're having this like identity crisis and having to reckon with that. Meanwhile, leadership's not acknowledging what they're asking them to do. And they're having to sit there in the middle of the night after three

months of like not sleeping and text their Afghan and say like, you might die and I can't do anything to help you. And so that was like just a huge ask, I think, of military leadership to put people in that position and not really acknowledge it in any tangible open big way. And I talked about that in that article, you know, like it's just it left people in the dark to handle it by themselves. And then it's like Veterans Day rolled around in November. And I remember the, you know, the president saying like, well, you know, this is a really tough time for veterans. Like talk to your battle buddy. And it's not just him. People ought. It's, you know, Biden saying that. But like, you know, time eternal. What do military leaders say? Like, reach out for help. Talk to your battle buddy.

It's like, hey, this is this moral injury in the case of Afghanistan was partially caused by military leadership's failure to acknowledge the position they put U.S. troops and veterans in. So it's incumbent upon military leadership to step forward and acknowledge that. It doesn't have to be, the Pentagon's not going to do it. You can still do it at like the team level, unit level. So many of these guys were struggling, you know, in these teams and these units, there was an article in military times about, I think, first group at Fort Bragg. And like, these guys had a terrible time of it. You know, and then that group guys,

I think who they were like sleeping on cops inside the office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Yep. There was a picture of that. And they brought in a psychologist and they had like a record number of guys sign up for, for sessions because it was just like these guys are struggling like,

and they should be. I mean, what was it? The one boat in there when the guy was like, you know, like my job was to liberate the oppressed, not too oppressed the liberated. Like I feel like I just undid 20 years.

And I can't imagine what that must be like for somebody like that. Right. Right. So, um, I still think that. Is it going to make all that pain go away? if somebody were to like acknowledge it, maybe not, but it's not, it can't make it worse.

And I just think it speaks to leadership. When you're going forward now, we're pivoting from like counterterrorism to great power, you know, and it's still going to be allegiance and allieships. And if you want these guys who you tasked with being the leaders of, you know, indigenous approach or building partner force capacity, like you're going to go back to some of these groups that deployed to Afghanistan. They need to trust you that you're going to have their back from start to finish. And I feel like the finish here, they didn't have their back.

It also affects, it also affects potential future partner forces in the sense of, well, we saw what they just did with, to somebody who fought with them for 20 years. Why are we going to put our faith in the American is to take care of us when all this is over or to be there? I don't want to say I disagree with what you're saying, but I'm also a bit pessimistic. I'm a bit cynical. I have never known a beleaguered people to turn down F-16 airstrikes or American Web. I agree with that. But I think you're right that it does cause damage. But I think that there's something even sad in maybe the statement I just made.

No, I agree with you in this sense. We will still get those partner forces. But there's a difference between your partner force being there to the last bullet, when things aren't going well and your partner force turn tailing because they don't like they don't have faith. I think what you're also speaking to there is like on the tactical level. Yeah. Versus, you know, maybe some of the big picture like geo strategic level of it that, you know, exactly what we've been talking about here.

Like it's of course that affects soldiers on the ground, be the American or partner forces. Right. And I think, you know, I think one of the challenges with the situation is we say American forces and Afghan force. know, Americans are upset because we left Afghan forces behind. I don't know that that really resonates with the American public. The simple fact is Americans left friends and brothers in arms behind. You know, they, that's what they left behind. And, you know, and they had those relationships. They had fought together, bled together. And, and so for it just to be painted, like, it was, it was a vacation. And we left

Like we left these people behind that we met on this vacation that, you know, that's not the case. They left friends behind. Right. And that's what like we, we tried to keep it as. I mean, it's not our job as the American military to like scoop up foreign military when things go south and it doesn't work out. But I think like our, my personal issue and a lot of our issue was like with the messaging

that was going on. Like for sure, there are like A&A units that did like hand their weapons to the Taliban. But sure. I mean, there's only total evidence like both ways of like people that full. and the people that didn't, but, you know, to go back to what we were saying earlier about, like, U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan, like, why did that happen? It's not that these people, I don't, I don't think I met anybody in Afghanistan that was in uniform, like Afghan military that was like, I don't care if my country falls. Like, none of them wanted that. Right. But there are reasons why,

like, I highlighted in one of my articles that, like, in the summer, I think it was a group of Afghan special commandos got rounded up on video and shot live. This is who your enemy is. They're not off. most of the enemies we fight as Americans are across the oceans like far far away. These people were dealing with it, you know, it's counterinsurgency. They're in their streets at their back door, ready to kill them and their families. So I think they were making different calculations. And, you know, the Afghan military wasn't even paying some of its soldiers. So, you know, there's.

Yeah, there are people who put down their arms and didn't want to fight the Taliban. But we also knew people that did. So, right. I saw it with the with the Iraqis that I trained. And, hey, if your government isn't resupplying you with. bullets and food and water and gasoline. You can, I mean, it's just you can only fight so long. Right.

You have to run. Yeah. And that's just the reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But to your point earlier about like, you know, people's allegiance to us in the future, there was a great, a war on the rocks ran an article like right around the time of

Kabul falling about this, you know, do we have to worry about people wanting to align with us in the future? And it was basically this author arguing like exactly what you said, Jack, which was like, people are still going to work with us. Like, we don't need to worry about that. at the time reading it i was like how dare you like no one's ever going to want to work with america again but i reread it and i was like yeah no there's some truth to that like this was a a devastating but unique circumstance and i do think depending on um well yeah it's it's sad i mean

after we've been down this road uh you know south vietnam and the kurds a handful of times and the afghans um the the the sadder narrative is that in fact yes we can do it all all over again. And all of the people, whether there are Montagnards or Kurds or Afghans who get rounded up and killed in the aftermath of that are really just the collateral damage of, you know, political decisions that are made way above all of our heads. And in that sense, you know, as bad as it sounds in the big picture, no one really cares. Like they don't really matter. And that's why you mean that they like executive. And that's why in Vietnam, it was people like Jim Morris, you know,

like SF guys who got the Montan Yards brought back here. In this case, was people like Joan and Travis that got Afghans brought back to America and picked up the slack where our government, you know, failed to do the right thing. And that's, to me, that's an even sadder narrative.

That would, in fact, we can keep doing this over and over again when we know we shouldn't. Yeah. Joan, there's a couple questions in here for you. How many Afghans are still trying to get out of Afghanistan? And how can we help out with the effort out, how can we help out with the effort to get them out, be it volunteering or donating or anything like that? That's a really great question. I mean, there's just like hundreds of thousands of Afghans that want to leave.

Specifically to the SIV program, there's tens of thousands of folks in the queue. So again, I mentioned earlier, if folks really want to help out calling your congressional representation and advocacy, for the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act would make sure that those flights out of Afghanistan still continue and that we're able to evacuate interpreters that work for the U.S. mission. So that's one way. There are NGOs that are at work in Afghanistan. Like the World Food Program is still over there doing great work. They're always raising money.

So, you know, you can donate to international organizations that are providing food and shelter for Afghans. And then stateside, I always tell people there's such. in need even a year out from a lot of these Afghan refugees resettling in the U.S. People need help all the time. So I mentioned way in the beginning of this podcast that I had worked in refugee resettlement prior. And most of those organizations rely heavily on volunteers. So what we saw a lot of Americans do last fall and through the winter from all walks of life, political parties, Americans came together in overwhelming numbers to like basically volunteer

to help Afghans resettle. Some people adopted Afghan families. You can Google, like in your, wherever you're from, you can Google your local refugee resettlement agency if you just type in like refugee resettlement Chicago or refugee resettlement New York. Like a bunch of orgs will pop up. I think I think New York is IRC. There's like three big orgs like the IRC, Catholic Charities and Lutheran services. There are a bunch of organizations that are federally contracted to provide resettlement services to refugees. And so when the refugees come through, they get assigned like a caseworker at those.

agencies and they get job training and English training but a lot of that again is done by volunteers in the local community so it's people literally like picking up the phone or emailing those agencies and saying like hey I got a few hours a week to to come hang out and you could I mean that's how started my English teaching career was volunteering to teach those refugees English and citizenship and it was I can promise you the most rewarding experience of your life part of my job also is sometimes to just go sit with refugees in their apartments and like drink tea I know you guys got the Ethiopian worship service upstairs some of my favorite students to go visit we're in Ethiopia and Asylees and refugees because they'd make you the best

coffee. But sometimes just sitting with refugees and making them feel not alone, depression is a huge problem for refugees that come over here. It's really tough. Again, when you don't have a language and you're in a new country and trying to get your feet on the ground, a lot of people can feel very isolated, especially going through the trauma of your country, falling to a terrorist regime and leaving half your family behind. And now you're in a country where you don't have a job or speak the language. I'm trying to say there's such a need for volunteers to continue to continue to support the Afghan families that did make it here. So whether that's you want to help teach them

or give them rides to doctors appointments or go sit with them and just listen to them, you know, tell you about their, tell you about their culture, tell you about a good memory from home and make them feel like they're welcome here. Those resettlement agencies would be more than happy to have your volunteer support.

And again, those agencies, even if you don't have time to volunteer or you're like, I don't know if I could do that, you can donate to them. So they're always taking donations, clothing donations, food donations, financial donations. So there are so many, so many ways to help. Afghanevac.org also has a lot of this stuff spelled out for people that are interested in advocating

for the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act or continuing to work to support Afghan refugees here. So Afghanevac.org is a great link that I like to send people to. That was like this umbrella organization of all those NGOs last year that were the Afghans out, like veteran run and operated NGOs. A lot of them came together and coalesced under this coalition called the Afghan EVVAT coalition and those folks have done wonderful, wonderful work getting that APK and adjustment act written and hopefully we can get it passed, but they also have a lot of resources for folks that did make it over here. No one left behind is another great organization and no one left behind.org. They work specifically more focused on the SIV, the

Immigrant Visa folks that came through, but they do a lot of work in resettlement as well. So thanks for letting me list all that stuff. Of course, Ben, D. You said that all that is going to is in the links. And links in the description. Another question we got, is there an effort to ensure parolees are extended and identify accessible visa options for parolees while the Afghan Adjustment Act is pending? Oh, that's such a good question. This is like geeking out on legalese.

So a lot of Afghan parolees, when they first realized that they might not have permanent legal status, wanted to go down the Asylee route, which is applying for asylum, which they can do. but asylum cases are backlogged months in this country too, and it usually involves getting an immigration lawyer involved, and I don't know. It's such a case-by-case basis. Some resettlement agencies are working with Afghans, and they have local immigration attorneys

that might do pro bono work to try to help people apply for asylum. I've heard other cases of Afghans, like I have a friend in Florida, for example, a crew chief that had flown on the SMW. you, but he, like, nobody's helping him at all. And he can't seem to get any help. And he's like, should I pay an immigration lawyer to get me an asylum case or try to get me an SIV case? And I was like, look, buddy, like, we're going to advocate for the passage of this act. And those Afghans started calling Congress too, started passing that because, like, they want this legal status. So I think

I don't want to, I can't give people legal advice, but I would just be cautious if you're paying an immigration attorney that's a private service and they might promise the world and then not be able to get somebody an asylum, like an asylum approval, which would basically, asylum isn't like a permanent legal status either. You still have to like within your year of asylum status apply for a legal permanent residence green card. So I think it's more importantly we all focus on getting this act passed and making sure the like Congress understands the importance of passing this act. But in the meanwhile, I would say that redirect folks back to like if this person, it sounds like this person might know an Afghan like in the situation that might need some some legal

advice or legal help it's always first step is to go back to the resettlement agency and the caseworker and explain your problem a lot of Afghans that I know that I've resettled here like even if it's I need food or money like are afraid to ask their caseworker again it's a face saving culture and there's a lot of shame in asking for help and so for a lot of them it's been coaching them on you can ask this is your right to ask for this this is the U.S. has this federal resettlement program place to get you on your feet if you need something. Here's how you ask for it. So I'd say first talk to the caseworker and the resettlement agency and then there might be immigration attorneys locally who do pro bono work. And if they want to help an Afghan out great. But I just always cautioned people

to be careful. Unfortunately, there are bad actors in the world and there are a lot of people trying to like help Afghans and give me this much money and I'll get you a visa and it's like, no, that's not how it works. And the Afghans can find out the hard way. The little money they have, you're going to dump into an attorney that might not. be able to help them. So I, yeah. I was just going to say, and the problem is, is it, I mean, we all fall for stuff like that. We, we had all the COVID fraud stuff, but particularly coming from a country like Afghanistan, where you do pay those bribes and or that money to get things done. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't seem outside the norm for for them. Yeah. Yeah. And then somebody is like,

I'm here to help you. They're like, oh, okay, like maybe you're with the agency, like the resettlement agency and they just don't know and I so I mean they're going through their own culture shock right now yeah yeah yeah well I'm happy when like the afghans I know like reach out and they're like somebody emailed me this and I'm like do that's a scam like no or you know please don't call that person back like they're not going to help you I'd rather have give them the skills they need to navigate the resettlement agency and there's so many free resources in the community dedicated to refugee resettlement I'm like you don't have to pay for most of this stuff right somebody's trying to money from you like right yeah joan uh i know we've kind of kept you for quite a while

here are there any i mean where can people find you are there any like final thoughts that you want to address or sum up or anything that you want to get out there um where can they find me i don't even know where i am these days but um i online um i do have uh i'm on twitter and i have my link tree there with uh last year i posted a bunch of those articles on there on there and i i posted a bunch of those articles on there about the Afghan special immigration visa interpreters and moral injuries. So that stuff is online there. But yeah, like I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram.

I'm on LinkedIn. I'll continue to advocate for these issues and write about them. So if folks have questions, they can definitely reach out on there. And I can answer what questions I can. And if not, I know plenty of people in this scene trying to support these Afghans that I can, I can connect them with. So I'd be more than happy to do that. as for final notes a note of good news that came in between when you guys invited me in the show

and tonight is that my interpreter is in Doha safe with his family and made it out of Kabul about two weeks ago that's fantastic right yeah yeah so I got that I got that text like I'm down here in Florida I'm helping my mom out right now and Hurricane came through and we were like about to lose power and I got this signal message on signal it was a selfie I told him I was like when you get on that plane in Kabul I want a selfie with you and your family because we were like we're like we're been waiting a year for that for that call and he uh state department got him out so he's safe and and hopefully in the next few months he will be here um he's processing in doha right now but oh don't lose hope guys anyone out there with a bit and still in Kabul like it's it's the long game for sure but um

but but there's hope and there's people working in the shadows right now like there's a lot of really good people veterans and and civilian volunteers working in silent service and and ultimate quiet professionals out there doing the Lord's work in the shadows and and trying to make sure that we honor our word and i'm very proud of them yes i'm okay any of that folks Joan thank you so much for doing this really appreciate what you are doing and and what everyone else is doing on this um actually i think in December we're going to have got man on to talk about operation pineapple and all that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i haven't i haven't gotten that book but um but i've read some of the excerpts and uh yeah they were i mean those those guys were

really in it. So it's really fascinating. On Friday, this Friday, we're going to have John Fox and Baz, Dr. Baz, on the show. They are the authors of America's war in Syria fighting with Kurdish

anti-IS forces. So Baz was academic and John is a former Marine. These were two guys who volunteered with the YPG in Syria to fight ISIS. So we're going to have, John will be here in studio. Bazz will be remote. I hear he's not really allowed to enter the United States because of some activities.

But he will be remote. So we will be talking to both of those gents on Friday. And I hope to see some of you guys there. So again, thank you, Joan. Thank you so much. Yeah. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. At least time. Yeah. And look, you've got stamina. We outlasted the revival. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was kind of hoping things that like kick up when we get to join in. Yeah. Well, yeah. Come up, come up, come visit us in New York next time and get the full experience. I'm glad we get to do this. I'm glad we didn't get drowned out by, uh, by this, by the spirit. Yeah, yeah. Dee, are you still pissed? Okay. All right, good. I'm glad.

His face isn't red anymore. All right. Get that backup beer for Dee. All right. Thank you, Dee. Thank you, Joan. And we'll see you guys. Thanks, everybody.