‘Do You Remember Me?’
The ordeal one of our Afghan allies went through to become an asylum seeker.
I DON’T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I texted Nazir.1 My memories from the fall of Kabul are a haze of trauma. It was madness in every direction. Everyone was scrambling to get their trusted Afghan allies inside those walls.
But while my memories from those horrible days are elusive, I remember Nazir.
How could I not?
Nazir was an Afghan National Army (ANA) colonel and a graduate of the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC). One of my responsibilities as a military diplomat was to help identify potential candidates for some of the military’s most challenging schools; the Department of Defense selected only the best and brightest of the ANA for those schools.
Allies aren’t forged solely on the field of battle. We build them inside America’s most demanding training courses. Foreign military officers come to the United States, earn a degree from an American military university, and return home with all the wonders this country can provide. Having a degree from one of these schools can open doors for the graduates, so the graduates tend to be overwhelmingly grateful for the opportunity.
Nazir was a strong enough candidate to impress the Afghan government and senior American military officials. He graduated from CGSC even though English was not his native language. It’s an astonishing accomplishment. And when Nazir returned to Afghanistan after the year-long program, he rose through the ranks in the Afghan Army, serving in senior positions.
We met in 2020, during what would be America’s last year in Afghanistan. He participated in a networking program that my office ran for Afghans who graduated from America’s most prestigious military universities.
I learned a lot from those men. They were impressive. They were survivors. They graduated from pilot training, Ranger School, the Army Special Forces Qualification Course (the famously grueling “Q course”), and more. They were far better soldiers than I ever was, including Nazir.
He was among Afghanistan’s best and brightest.
I TRIED TO HELP NAZIR get out of Afghanistan during the fall but—and there is no way to say this that doesn’t sound awkward—he wasn’t at the top of my list. Others took precedence because they were more senior in rank and thus would likely be recognized more easily by the Taliban. Those triage choices were mine. I still stand by them, even though they fill me with heartache.
All of it is such a haze. The withdrawal was a two-week sprint through trauma after trauma. Little did I know that I would spend the next two years running a global, off-the-books operation to uphold the pledge that we provided our Afghan allies.
I remember helping Nazir for a few months after the fall. Then I lost him. I don’t know how or when exactly. I was trying to get hundreds of my Afghan brothers and sisters out—men and women who fought alongside me for over three years in the field. By the fall of 2021, I was losing Afghan contacts weekly.
Many of them, like my brother, Col. Sohrab Azimi, were executed by the Taliban. Others disappeared as part of the Taliban’s three-year-long assassination campaign. Many just wanted to move on with their lives, even if that meant finding ways to accommodate themselves to life under the Taliban’s regime.
I probably figured the Taliban killed him. I maybe mourned for him for a few moments, but honestly, I don’t remember. Part of the problem with living with combat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), moral injury, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is that it exacerbates trauma. I’ve lost many details because I had to survive the moment.
Col. Nazir is dead. Damn. I have to move on and help others.
I said that phrase with different people’s names for years. I became cold to death. I simply buried it and tried to get someone else out.
I moved on.
LAST MONTH, WITH THE HELP of the Bulwark family, I got my final combat interpreter out of harm’s way. Ahmadullah made it to the United States. It was a two-year-long ordeal, often perilous. But in the end, it was a story of triumph over despair. It’s a miracle he survived.
But the stress took its toll on me. A few weeks ago, I had my first flashback in years. The “combat stress” I experienced with Ahmadullah triggered repressed memories, fighting their way back into my consciousness.
Snap.
And I was back in Afghanistan, gearing up and preparing for a mission.
For a few days, I had to take a knee. In early May, I had to call my wife from work to tell her I was too distraught to care for my daughter responsibly. These wars screwed me up so much that, yeah, I cannot even take care of my daughter some days. Being unable to perform your duties as a father is bad enough; it’s worse when it’s from these damn wars. It makes the betrayal—especially the unworthy way the Afghan war ended—feel more personal.
Losing a war is a trauma I can never fully describe. I struggle often. Every day, I mourn for Afghanistan. I’ve learned to stay with the pain, to sit in it. I’m learning to let go of it, to breathe, and to realize that I did everything I could and that whatever America’s sins are in Afghanistan, those sins don’t belong to me. For all of my mistakes, I have acted honorably. My country may have acted dishonorably, but my own honor is intact.
All these thoughts were tumbling in my mind two weeks ago as I watched my niece run in her conference track championships. I missed most of her life, off fighting these wars. I didn’t get to see her grow up. I missed so many of her important moments. But now, I’m here watching her shine.
It was terrific and ordinary—everything my life had been missing during the wars.
Then I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone and saw a text on WhatsApp. It was from Nazir.
BEFORE I LOST NAZIR, I was frank with him, as I was with so many other Afghans: I told him that nobody was going to save him. It was up to him to save his family. He would have to fight for survival.
And he did. He fought ferociously.
I know his story now. He traveled lightly, carrying only the money he needed to survive. He took pictures of all his important documents with his phone and then burned all the originals. Among these documents was a letter of recommendation I had written him in October 2021, after the fall of Kabul.
First, he made it to South America. The details are not entirely clear to me (his English is better than my Pashto, but that’s not saying much). That leg of his trip was legal; he had acquired a temporary visa. After he arrived there, he eventually made it to Mexico—with seven other members of his family.
He stayed in Mexico for three months, trying to navigate America’s complicated bureaucracy. Finally, he decided to just cross the border. How did he do it? I don’t know.
But he did it.
Border patrol agents arrested him and put him in a cell for three days. He showed them his phone with all his documents, including my letter of recommendation.
“Sir, I showed them the letter and asked them ‘Why do you arrest me? Here, look, I worked with Americans in Afghanistan. I was an American ally,’” he told me recently over the phone.
After three days, he was released from detainment.
Of course, he had help. A former CGSC classmate had been assisting him throughout the ordeal. After he was released from detainment, his classmate lost track of him—for nearly two weeks.
Then Nazir and his seven family members showed up in Denver, Colorado, where his classmate lives.
Somehow he found a way.
Finally, he found my contact number through the Afghan refugee network and texted me last week.
“Hey brother—it’s Colonel Nazir. Do you remember me?”
I DON’T REALLY KNOW MUCH ABOUT America’s immigration system. It’s never really interested me. In the before times, I probably considered myself a border hawk. But over the last four years, I’ve also learned that while it’s essential to secure our borders, we must also remember that sometimes people will come here because they need asylum. And they may need asylum not because they did something wrong but because they joined us, they helped us—they placed a bet on us, and it didn’t work out.
Col. Nazir traveled halfway around the world. He made the trek from Afghanistan to South America to Mexico and walked into America with all the promises our best and brightest could give to one of Afghanistan’s best and brightest.
I told him years ago not to lose that letter. He didn’t.
“He is a friend and ally of the United States,” my 2021 letter said. “Colonel Nazir is without a doubt one of the finest partners I’ve ever worked with. He’s not a threat to the United States. He has earned his place among us. We cannot leave him behind.”
Now, he will wait for his asylum court date. I plan to be there fighting alongside my brother-in-arms the entire time.
A pseudonym.
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