Chad Robichaux joins the podcast this week as we examine the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and consider how an independent rescue mission led to the successful evacuation of 17,000 people from the Taliban’s terrorist regime. Chad led this daring operation, and is the author of the book Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban. We also discuss the resilience of Afghanistan and its people, his direct interaction with the Taliban, and what we can learn from this twenty-year war.
Chad Robichaux is a former Force Recon Marine and DOD Contractor with eight deployments to Afghanistan and is the co-founder of Save Our Allies, which evacuated more than 17,000 people from Afghanistan in 2021. After overcoming his personal battles with PTSD and nearly becoming a veteran suicide statistic, Chad founded the Mighty Oaks Foundation, a leading non-profit serving the active duty, military veteran and first responder communities with highly successful faith-based combat trauma and resiliency programs. Chad has become a go-to resource and a subject matter expert on faith-based solutions to PTSD, having advised the former presidential administration, Congress, the VA, the DOD, and was appointed to serve as the Chairman of a White House Veterans Coalition.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode we look back at the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and how an independent rescue mission led to evacuating 17,000 people from the Taliban’s terrorist regime. It’s a heavy topic and it’s an important topic. Chad Robichaux joins us, who led this daring operation, and he’s the author of the new book called “Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban.” He’ll talk with us about the resilience of the Afghanistan people, his direct interaction with the Taliban, and what we can learn from this 20-year war.
Before we bring him on, a little bit more about him. Chad Robichaux is a former Force Recon Marine and DOD contractor with eight deployments to Afghanistan, and is the co-founder of Save Our Allies, which evacuated more than 17,000 people from Afghanistan in 2021. And after overcoming those personal battles with PTSD and nearly becoming a veteran of suicide, he founded the Mighty Oaks Foundation, a leading non-profit serving the active duty, military veteran, and first responder communities with highly successful faith-based combat trauma and resiliency programs. It’s a wonderful program that you should check out. Chad, thank you so much for joining us on She Thinks today.
Chad Robichaux:
Thanks for having me on.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I would like to also say on behalf of everybody listening, we thank you also for your service.
Chad Robichaux:
Thank you.
Beverly Hallberg:
It is pretty impressive that you’ve had eight deployments to Afghanistan. Before we get into the situation that we found ourselves in in the summer of 2021, I know this is a big question, but can you tell me briefly about your time on these deployments and your interaction with the Afghan people?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, and my service is a little bit unique in where I really had a lot of interaction with the Afghan people. I was a Force Recon Marine, which is special operations in the Marine Corps, and then I was selected to be part of a JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command task force, and serve with one of the premier special operations units in the world, and my job specifically, at that unit, was called an AFO, Advanced Force Operator.
That means I went out in a single team capacity, by myself, in this more like undercover cop, maybe, to blend in with the local nationals, live with the local nationals, and my job was to go ahead of our unit to do all the clandestine infrastructure to actually put our soldiers on target to capture or kill bad guys.
And so, the nature of my job, working independently, meant I had to be working with local nationals, and that gave me a huge exposure in the culture of Afghanistan. I was assigned one interpreter, and for the continuity of operations, I had that same interpreter for all eight of my deployments. His name was Aziz. Aziz not only was my interpreter, but he became my sole teammate, which trained, vetted information that I had access to, and he and I went to the mountains of Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan, and did hundreds of missions to put our soldiers on target and go after the bad guys. And so-
Beverly Hallberg:
And what- Go ahead.
Chad Robichaux:
I was just saying in doing that, when you spend that much time with someone, you’re either going to really not like them or you’re really going to like them, and with Aziz, he’s became one of my most dear friends in my life, and he’s saved my life multiple times, and when we’d come back from an operation, I didn’t go back to base and he went home. I went to his home. His wife, Hatra, that was the first warm meal we got back from coming out of those mountains, and I was there when his oldest son, Bashid and Mashuda were born. I held them as babies, so he’s family to me.
Beverly Hallberg:
And we’re talking about a year that’s over 20 years. Any insight that you can give us, and I want to talk about your relationship with Aziz, but any insight you can give us on how the Afghan people treated the US soldiers that were there? Also the fact that there is the US base there, were they happy that the Taliban was pushed out? Was it mixed? How did they view this time in society for them?
Chad Robichaux:
No. It wasn’t mixed at all. Look, the Taliban was brutal before we went there, and then September 11th. We went there because of September 11th and the attacks on our World Trade Centers, but really, my heart turned to the Afghan people learning who they were, their culture that they have there, and the oppression they were under from the Taliban. Women were living under Shariah law and these crazy ideologies where women were not allowed to be educated. They weren’t allowed to show themselves in public.
They were not allowed, really, to go outside their homes, and the consequences was either brutal beatings or even executions, and so the women’s rights there, the oppression of these people, and really, the sexual molestation and the deviant things that we saw with women and children, especially little boys and little girls, was just a thing that was just so grotesque and something that I think the Afghan people were just so happy that the US came in and was able to eradicate the Taliban out so quickly.
And then now they had resources coming back in with communication and electricity, and school, and a right to go to school and be educated, and medical supplies and resources, and access to the rest of the world. The people were very happy, and one of the stories I can share that kind of puts the exclamation point on that was in 2004, I was at Aziz’s home, and they had this big party for the 2004 presidential election. I remember being so why would they care about a US presidential election?
I mean, this was like Super Bowl parties, food, people wall to wall, and they were so scared that if President Carey got elected, that he was going to pull out the US troops and the Taliban would come back. So they were glued to the television watching the results and cheering when President Bush had won the election. And it really opened my eyes to how much of an impact America has in a world that we don’t even know of. I mean, I didn’t know about Afghanistan before I went there, and just how much of an impact America has on the world. The Taliban being gone from Afghanistan just allowed so much opportunity for the Afghan people over the 20 years that we were there.
Beverly Hallberg:
And when you think about Aziz, who was your interpreter, and we know that there were many other interpreters. There are many Afghans who worked with the US military and the US government. What was the risk that they were putting on the line for that? Obviously we know the Taliban is brutal. What was the likelihood that something bad would happen to them and were some hesitant to work with the US military and government?
Chad Robichaux:
Of course. I mean, they put their lives on the risk because as soon as they work with the US military, they’re identified as infidels and it’s a Taliban law. They are to be killed, and it’s not just them. It’s their wives and their children will be either killed or beaten or sexually enslaved, so it’s a huge risk, but people like Aziz, I remember Aziz just talking about freedom and democracy. And this is a guy who’d never even seen freedom and democracy before, but he wanted it for his children, especially for his daughters, to be able to be educated and not be forced into marriage. He wanted that. He was willing to fight for it, and so many Afghans felt the same way.
A lot of people don’t know, and it was one of the comments we got during the evacuation, was why are we going to fight for people that won’t fight for themselves? And that’s just not true. I mean, 60,000 Afghans died, 60,000 Afghan soldiers died in the last 20 years fighting for freedom for their fellow Afghans, fighting for freedom for their daughters to be able to be educated in schools, fighting for freedom for them to have a chance and to have healthcare and education. And in addition to the soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Afghans died standing up against the Taliban in that fight, so these were people that were willing to fight for freedom, and it wasn’t them that quit on it when we left. I could go into that, but it was definitely us that pulled the rug out from under them.
Beverly Hallberg:
Yeah, and so I want to talk about that. We know that the announcement of the withdrawal and the withdrawal when it happened was in 2021, the summer. Just for context, President Trump, when he was President, had talked about withdrawing as well. From your perspective being on the ground, working with people who became family, you know what promises were made to the people who ended up partnering with the US government and helping our military as well. When there were first talks about the withdraw, how did the people respond? How did you feel about it? Did you think that there was an effective way or at least a way to withdraw, still keeping a small force there, for example, that would still keep the Afghan people safe?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, such an important question. First of all, there was a promise made to our allies in terms [inaudible 00:09:16] process that was promised to them to be able to be in a path to immigration and citizenship to the United States based on their service to America, and this was almost 80,000 Afghan interpreters were promised this, plus their family members. And so, when the President announced the withdrawal, the full withdrawal, and again, I think it’s really important you pointed out, President Trump started these negotiations with the Taliban, and then President Biden.
I didn’t agree with either one of those, and I think people were surprised to hear me say that because I was a surrogate, the veteran surrogate on President Trump’s campaign. I didn’t agree with him doing that, but no one should have negotiated the release of Bagram Air Force Base to our enemies. Bagram Air Force Base is the most strategic place on the globe between Iraq, Iran, Russia and China, and it was the center point for the last 20 years, and it’s kept America out of a major war. It kept America safe, and the entire international community was using that hub to support and advise the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.
We were doing it with a contingent force of 2500 to 4000 troops, so one of the lies I believe that the American people have been told is that we were in this endless war, this 20-year war, and we have to withdraw at some times, and that just maybe we did it the wrong way. But the truth is in 2018, we stopped doing that conventional, kinetic war with the Taliban in that we had the Afghan National Army doing it, and the entire international community was supporting them, and it was working. It was effective.
The world was a safer place and the Taliban was kept in those mountains of Afghanistan. And so to say that we needed to quickly move out our force because American sons and daughters were dying and we have to leave, that’s just not true. We had that small contingent force. We had those forces all over the world, and we leave historically, when we have successfully left major conflicts, we’ve always kept a contingent force in place.
In World War II we still had 80,000 troops in Japan since World War II, 40,000 troops in Germany since World War II. We have 35,000 troops in Korea, in South Korea since the Korean War, and those have worked. Those have prevented us from being in further wars to have that contingency in place. And so to say that we needed to do a full withdrawal, forfeit Bagram Air Force Base, not by negotiating with our allies in the Afghan government that we put in place for 20 years, but to negotiate with the enemy and to say that we had to move our 2500 to 4000 troops out is just not true and it’s not consistent with how we were successful in previous wars.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I think a lot of us think back to the images that we saw when the withdrawal happened. We think of, first of all, people falling from airplanes, just desperately trying to hold on. I remember the video of watching somebody hand a baby over to a soldier on the other side of the fence, and then of course, there’s the tragic loss of life of 13 soldiers at the air base there, so there’s a lot we think of when we watch this, but you’re somebody who knows the people intimately. You know the situation intimately. Where were you when you heard about the withdrawal, and then what did you think as you saw these events unfolding?
Chad Robichaux:
I started following it right when President Biden took office because he started talking about it at day two in office. It was, I think, one of his campaign goals was to withdraw us from Afghanistan, and I was following how he was being advised because it’s always important to look at how the Commander in Chief’s being advised. The joint chiefs were advising him against it. The intelligence community leaders were advising him against it. But he was making this decision anyway, and so based on the things I said earlier, this was very concerning for me for the national security and for the global security because I knew the absence of the U.S. military and having that international presence by Bagram Air Force Base would be a hotbed for terrorism.
And it would also allow our enemies, China, Iran, who definitely wanted Afghanistan for economic reasons, and then Pakistan ISI, which is Pakistan’s intelligence. In addition to that, I was concerned for the Afghan people. I knew, and I think anybody with any kind of military experience knew, the Afghan National Army was not prepared, and it never would be fully prepared without the support that we gave them through that international effort by providing them that support and advisory role, by bringing air support to them.
It was a system that was really working to prevent terrorism, and so it really concerned me. And then I was also personally concerned for my friend Aziz and the other interpreters that had served with us and knew that the State Department would not be able to evacuate all of our allies and they would be left behind, and ultimately what would happen exactly what is happening. They would be systematically killed for their service to us.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so, when you thought about Aziz and I’m assuming you looked to, potentially, the government and the military on the ground to try to evacuate people. When did you realize that the people that you knew, including your interpreter, Aziz, were not getting the help that they needed?
Chad Robichaux:
Well, I tried to do it through the paperwork process first, through the special immigrant visa process that they were promised. He had already been in the process for six years. Remember, it’s only supposed to take nine months. This is a guy that had access to top secret information. He’d been polygraphed, worked for 15 years with the highest level of special operations in the United States military, and I know a lot people in Congress. I have a lot of people in Senate, and we still couldn’t get him through. So I’m like, if this is not working for him, it’s not going to work for anyone.
And so I started looking at different options where I’d be able to get him out because we knew that anything with the military withdrawal did not support the evacuation of our allies. And in addition we started seeing how the President was going to go about things. I was really concerned with the withdrawal plan, or what wasn’t a plan. It was really concerning, so I knew right away that I would have to take matters into my own hands and build a team to go and get Aziz, his wife and his kids.
As we put the team together, put a team together of about 12 special operations veterans that I knew really well and have a tremendous amount of experience from the highest levels of special operations, and as we were putting our team together to get them, one of our teammates made a very important point, that it was maybe a little bit selfish just to get Aziz and his family when we had such a talented group of people with the willingness to go help.
And all of us are pretty strong people of faith and we really felt that was a burden on our hearts to do the right thing, even though our government wasn’t. And we made a decision to say let’s get as many interpreters, Americans, women, children that would be persecuted or sexually enslaved and as many Christians that would be persecuted for their faith, let’s get as many people as we can, and we got-
Beverly Hallberg:
Can I interrupt you here?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah.
Beverly Hallberg:
I just want to make sure when you talk about going over there and pulling these people together that you had served with before, you’re talking about special ops? How dangerous did you expect this to be? How did you plan to enact it? Is this similar to what we would see on the movies where you’re completely trying to go in the dark of the night, pull people out? What was your thought at that time?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, it’s exactly that. I mean, we knew that Bagram Air Force Base had been forfeited. We knew that the White House had made this huge error of moving out military, abandoning Bagram Air Force Base, which had been the most secure place to evacuate people with military aircraft. They had abandoned that and they had moved military out before civilians and before allies, before our $84 billion in equipment, so they had really created a scenario that created a very hostile environment. You talked about the airport, thousands of people, 100,000 people swarming the airport. You’ve seen how desperate people were on those planes.
There were also, for you moms listening out there, you can probably imagine how desperate you would have to be to kiss your little brand new baby goodbye, put it on top of a crowd of thousands of people, and that crowd crowdsurfed that baby to the wall, and somebody at the end of that wall to throw it as hard and high as they could to get over that wall because that was a better chance than to stay behind with the Taliban. To say goodbye to your brand new baby like that, that’s the level of desperation.
And then what they didn’t know was on the other side of that wall, was six feet high and 20 feet deep of concertina wire. My buddy Joe counted six babies that were hung up in that wire and bled to death. I mean, that’s the level of desperation that were there. So knowing that we were going into that environment, we were going to have to go outside the wire, meaning off of that controlled military airport, to go get people. I mean, we knew we were going into a very hostile… I mean, the level of experience that I had in that group, we knew exactly what we were getting into.
We had a lot of comments. People were writing stuff on social media, like, “You guys are stupid. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re getting yourself killed.” We knew what we were doing, but sometimes you look at the risk versus the reward, and we had friends there. It was the right thing to do when our government was doing the wrong thing. It made me real proud to see people, and I say our group, but people coming together just to do the right thing for their fellow human, and people donating money to us, people reaching out to us and saying, “Hey, we’re praying for you,” people just supporting us and getting the word out, and then the volunteer guys that we had go on the team, because everyone was volunteers.
Beverly Hallberg:
So how many people did you have with you going over? How many people volunteered for this dangerous mission?
Chad Robichaux:
We had a 12-man team, but only three people would go outside the wire at a time, outside the airport at a time, and Aziz was actually got by Air Force pararescue men, a special operations guy named Sean Hye. I was able to move Aziz to that gate and we had Sean Hye come out to the airport and get him. We ultimately got, that week, it was 10 days there, we didn’t know how long we had. We just as fast as we could, I mean, if you stopped to sleep for five minutes, you’re like, “Someone’s going to die.”
Beverly Hallberg:
Someone’s going to die.
Chad Robichaux:
My friend [inaudible 00:19:03] lost 37 pounds in that 10 days, just he never stopped getting people, and we were getting the right people. We had people who had SIVs, people with documentation, and I got to back up. The way we were able to do this, by the way, all we did was be willing to go, but we seen what I would say was a miracle, like a divine miracle, because I’m not smart enough, capable enough to pull this off. But the joint chiefs allowed us an NGO as a civilian operation, to go onto the airport and do these evacuations, land aircraft and do that. That’s an impossibility, so that was a miraculous door open.
Then the United Arab Emirates, the royal family allowed us to bring people there, because you have to have either a visa or something to be able to bring people in one country out of other countries. It’s human trafficking if you don’t, and so they rolled out the red carpet for us to use the humanitarian center, and gave us a C-17 plane, the large military planes. And then Glenn Beck, a friend of mine who’s a radio show host, many people may know who he is, he called me up and said, “I just went on the radio to raise a few thousand dollars, and I raised $21 million. What do I do with it?” And I was like, “We need to charter planes.”
And so all these things happened in like three days that any one of those things that didn’t happen would have made it impossible. But these things just fell into place and we were able to stay there for that 10 days and ultimately that week, we saved 12,000 people from that airport and moved them to the humanitarian center in Abu Dhabi. But then Abbey Gate was blown up and 13 of our service members were killed, and we chose, while the military had to leave, we chose to stay and there’s a lot of reasons we chose to stay.
But I think the one that sticks out the most is that the news and the White House were saying that there was 100 Americans still there, and we were like it’s not even debatable. We were like that doesn’t even match up with the math that they were saying. Their own math didn’t match up. But we knew there were thousands of Americans still there, and it didn’t matter to us if we were right and there were thousands or the White House was right and there were 100. You don’t leave an American behind in a situation like that.
That’s a promise that the United States government has to the American people. If you’re in a dangerous situation like this, if you’re in a combat environment, we will not leave you behind. And the President even made that promise, we will not leave you behind, and the White House chose to leave Americans behind. Where I come from, one American somewhere, we’ll scorch the earth around you to go get you. Even if we lose guys, that’s just the mentality that you always had in the special operations community, and it was just unconscionable for us to leave, so we chose to stay, and we stayed for another two months and worked out of a place called Mazar-i-Sharif, and was able to fly another 5000 people out.
I say “we” loosely. We had a coalition of a lot of incredible non-profits that were helping organize and move people, and move people in safe houses and get people out. And then after that, we chose to stay even further and help move people who were stuck in the Panjshir Valley into Tajikistan. There was thousands of people stuck in this Panjshir Valley and they wanted to go into Tajikistan to get out, but that border, the terrain’s like 25,000 foot mountain peaks and category five rapids river across the Panjshir River, which makes the border there, and if you get in the water it’s like ice melt, so it’s freezing cold. You could travel through there for a week with a family and then you hit a thousand foot cliff or rapids in the water.
And then the Chinese military was securing that border and the Russian military was there securing the border. The Tajik military guard, a border guard was there, and then the Taliban, of course, was every few hundred yards on that border. So we made a decision to take myself and one other teammate to go into Tajikistan, and we traveled 12 hours through those mountains and got to the border and spent 10 days on that border. We did about 90 miles in border reconnaissance and at night we would swim across that river into Afghanistan and we built six routes out and provided that information to some of our government agencies that wanted the information, NGOs that were evacuating people and some of the commandos that were helping move civilians across. And so we were able to provide that vital information to help evacuate more people.
Beverly Hallberg:
So you were talking about how you had to swim across freezing cold water. You had to set up this area to try to bring people back. Obviously very dangerous. When you first started this, in those first 10 days that you talked about, are you taking helicopters to different portions of the country? Are you also walking into the city that you were in? You’re at the air base, and are interpreters going with you each time? How did you coordinate that?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, at the airport our ground team was a guy named Cec Bray, Sean Gee and Tim Kennedy, so they would sneak out of different parts, go through a gate or sometimes sneak out of parts of the airport, and they would maybe go as far as two or three miles outside the airport in the city of Kabul. And I would be linking up, working, coordinating, communicating with these groups to link them up, and we’d use near and far recognition symbols. I can’t get into details of how, our means and methods of how we do that, but we would use like a seven point bonafides system to make sure they’re the right people and then we’d get control of those people and then we’d move them.
So everything was done on foot at the airport and then sneaking them back in through what we call rat lines, like holes in the fence and different routes that we built out. And in Tajikistan, everything there was on foot as well. We had vehicles. We had a vehicle that we did the route recon for the 90 miles of border, but we would go into Afghanistan at night. We would go in the night. Sometimes the Taliban or the Chinese special operations right there on the border, we’d be like within 30 to 50 yards from the Taliban or Chinese soldiers and swimming across that river to Afghanistan.
So all this was done on foot. Flying helicopters around was not an option for us. We had looked at using helicopters to move people on the HKAI Airport but that option ended up fizzling out, so pretty much all the movements were done on foot. And once we got them to aircraft, then we were able to load them onto the aircraft, get them manifested, make sure we were getting the right people because we were confined with getting the right people. We couldn’t just put anybody on an aircraft.
Beverly Hallberg:
Do you have any idea how many miles you walked during that timeframe?
Chad Robichaux:
I don’t. Myself and Dennis, during those 10 days we were on that border, we slept probably like an hour, two hours a day for 10 days and literally, I would say, we walked probably 12 hours a day for 10 days, and so we were constantly walking and building routes. It was very treacherous terrain, too, the mountains there. Yeah, so I have no idea how much we walked. Usually, I had a GPS tracker on, but we had to shut a lot of the electronics off because the Russian military was there and any electronics you put on, they were intercepting, and so we were trying to make sure our locations wasn’t, so we needed to shut off our electronics.
Beverly Hallberg:
And one of the things that is interesting, you were talking as we started the conversation, just during the war and your deployments there, you were going to the mountains. I’m assuming you’re interacting with the Taliban to a certain extent.
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah.
Beverly Hallberg:
Maybe that’s not the case. Did you interact with the Taliban during these rescue missions at all? Were they at all willing to let you take people out? What was that like?
Chad Robichaux:
No. During my previous operations, when I was active military doing these operations, there was often times I interacted with the Taliban, particularly in my status, I had to interact with the Taliban. But in this scenario, no, we did not at all. The Taliban would not have been our friends. I think at the airport, the Taliban probably, I would assume, had orders not to mess with any American military looking personnel because they just wanted us to leave, and the President made this huge mistake to give them a date.
So they just had to buy out time, and we should have not gave them a date. We should have given terms. Again, I don’t agree with the withdrawal at all, but if you are going to withdraw, you don’t give a date. You say, “When we get all our Americans out, when we get all of our interpreters out, when we get all of our $84 billion in equipment out, when we get all of that done, then and only then…” Am I still on? Yep. “Then and only then will we leave.” But we chose to give them a date and because of that, they just bought time and waited us out, and I think they intentionally did not-
Beverly Hallberg:
Chad, yeah, your audio’s out just a little, but I think hopefully we’ll cut back in, but a question for you. I was just thinking about this as we were transitioning to going from the rescue where you saved all these people, which is, I would say providential and amazing on so many different levels. One can’t say enough on that. I want to talk about the Taliban itself now that they’ve obviously taken over Afghanistan. They’ve been there for over a year.
What do you think people should know about them? In my perspective, which is very limited, I think that there is a misunderstanding of the Taliban. People think of them as a rogue terrorist group. Talk about how sophisticated they are, and what we should think about them today. Have they been able to grow in power since they’ve taken over Afghanistan? I’m assuming that answer is yes.
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, the Taliban, they’ve grown in power and capability mainly because of foreign governments and intelligence agencies, primarily Pakistan ISI, which Pakistan ISI is like their CIA, and they’re supposed to be an ally of ours. I’ll say, and it’s probably not popular for me to say among some of my colleagues, the Pakistan ISI and Pakistan as a country is not an ally of the United States. They harbored and trained the Taliban for the last 20 years. The Taliban that you’ve seen coming back across the border and occupying Afghanistan is ISI trained Taliban. They know how to use-
Beverly Hallberg:
Okay. I think you cut out just a second there. Let me transition to this. I mean, it’s heroic what you and your fellow Marines did. Did you ever hear from the Biden administration or from the US government thanking you, anything along those lines? Because many people, as you even said this, viewed this as the US military not just leaving our allies behind, but leaving our own people behind.
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah. Obviously probably our actions were not very popular with the administration. It would have been probably embarrassing for them to see that we’ve rescued all these people that they left behind, including Americans, and I didn’t write a book as a hit piece against them. My book “Saving Aziz” is not a hit piece against President Biden, but it does lay out the truth, and the truth is not very favorable to the White House. The Pentagon had my book for five months and did the redactions, which means anybody that reads that book, know that whatever is still left there is true, and unfortunately, those truths are not something that the American government can be very proud of.
I have struggled with that for a little bit, but I do believe that while the government didn’t do the right thing, American people did, and stood up and did the right thing. And I’m proud to have been part of that and proud of our teammates and everybody that supported us to be part of that. But yeah, I don’t think the government is very happy with us, especially the State Department, for having to deal with the aftermath of how many people we did get out and bringing that to the surface. But so be it. We’re the American people and our voice should matter more than our elite leaders anyways.
And I hope this book brings truth to some people so they can actually talk about the things that they don’t agree with, and then voice it to their congressmen and Senate. The new Speaker of the House just announced that there’s going to be investigations into the withdrawal, which is important. I don’t think accountability will ever come for it. I’m not optimistic enough to believe that, but I do believe these questions should be asked publicly of why the White House and the administration made these decisions, why the State Department turned their back on our allies and American citizens, and I hope we get some answers.
Beverly Hallberg:
What would you say, just kind of as we’re closing the conversation out, what would you say about this 20-year war, what we learned? How do you view the work that you did, considering so many people view this withdrawal as just a complete disaster? How do you place it in your own mind, considering you lost people that you served with, and you know how much was at stake?
Chad Robichaux:
Well, I mean, it’s not over. For me, I view it as something that’s not over. There’s still 75,000 allies in Afghanistan and their family members, so it’s unresolved. There’s still 40 million people in Afghanistan, but there’s 20 million women and little girls that are going to be sexually enslaved. There’s 20 million women that have just been told last week that not only are they forced into Shariah law and wearing burkas, and now they’re already married. In August they were doing this, 2021, they were already marrying off nine year old and 11 year old girls, but they have also been told that they can’t have healthcare.
They said that these women, any women in Afghanistan now, cannot see a male doctor, but women can’t be doctors, nor can women be educated. So women’s healthcare is gone in Afghanistan. No education, no healthcare, forced marriages, Shariah law, and for me, I think women that have stood up for women’s rights should be speaking into this. This is 20 million women that we were connected with as a nation for 20 years, and we should be speaking up for them. I’m a guy. I have a voice, but I think women should be speaking up because this is atrocious that women would be treated this way anywhere in the world, but this is 2023. This should not be allowed anywhere in the world. The world needs to speak up for these women.
Beverly Hallberg:
And one of the things I think is interesting, taking a look at what’s been going on with the protests in Iran, also the protests in China, so many women are leading those protests, and so you do see a rise of women speaking up for women’s rights. I know that women in Afghanistan are facing drastic measures if they speak up, so I realize their situation is very dire, but it’s important for all of us to speak up who can on their behalf.
Chad Robichaux:
I have seen that. I would just challenge, we live in the most amazing country in the world, and regardless of how terrible the politics are and how divided it seems, this is still the greatest country on the planet, and this gives us an opportunity by being American citizens. We have the freedom and opportunity to use our voices and speak up for those who can’t. And those women in Afghanistan can’t speak up right now, but we can for them.
Beverly Hallberg:
And your audio cut out again. Yep. Go ahead. Now I can hear you.
Chad Robichaux:
I would say I personally would like to see more American women speaking up for women in Afghanistan and around the world.
Beverly Hallberg:
Final question for you, and if you don’t want to give anything away because you do have a book that came out on the 17th, Monday of this week, where is Aziz today and do you have any stories to share on some of the people that were rescued?
Chad Robichaux:
Yeah, Aziz is here with me in New York.
Beverly Hallberg:
Oh, let’s wait just a second. And now, now I got you.
Chad Robichaux:
Okay, someone keeps trying to call in and I don’t know who it is.
Beverly Hallberg:
Oh. You’re a popular guy. Your book’s out this week.
Chad Robichaux:
Well, they’re calling on Skype and my Skype’s only for interviews.
Beverly Hallberg:
Got it.
Chad Robichaux:
But, yeah, Aziz is here with me in New York. We’re doing the book tour for the release. It was really neat to see him in Times Square, his big face on a billboard. We have a Times Square billboard. HarperCollins got a Times Square billboard for us, and so this giant billboard with his name on it. It’s so cool, and he’s really embracing America. I mean, he’s been friends with Americans for the last 20 years, but his wife, Hatra, and their six kids, they’re just loving.
They live in Texas, right next to me. He works for my foundation at Mighty Oaks Foundation, and he’s out starting to do public speaking and talking about his story, and really as an advocate for other Afghans. And it’s just really amazing to see him, and then many Afghans are coming here and they’re getting assimilated into American culture. One of the things I’ve seen and I’ve loved, so many people have been just really open armed and welcoming to the Afghans that have come here, and really helping them make this place their home. You have to [inaudible 00:36:00] doing evacuations, we would pack whatever you could fit for your family and put it in a backpack, because that’s all you could take.
And they’re leaving their homes and stuck in the humanitarian center for months at a time and then finally get here and have to start over with nothing, and the United States government did not have a very good system in place for immigrating Afghans here. There was very limited financial specifically for Afghans and a very limited transition for them, so it’s been tough on a lot of them, but the people of America, and in this area too, have really stepped up with open, welcoming arms to our Afghan friends.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, it’s an amazing story. As I said, the book is out this week. It’s called “Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban.” It is an important story. It’s a story about heroes. You are a hero, Chad. We appreciate not just you coming on the show, but obviously your service to this country and especially in this way that you weren’t even asked to serve. And so, it’s really an honor to have you on the program. Chad Robichaux, thank you so much for being here.
Chad Robichaux:
Thanks so much for having me on.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us today. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to advance freedom, opportunity and well-being for all Americans, so please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. If you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or a review. It does help, and we would love it if you shared this episode, so your friends can now where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.
