Allen Jackson - Afghanistan and Ukraine (Front Line Perspective) - Part 2
It's an honor to be with you today. I'm excited about this program. We're going to give you a front line perspective from what's been happening in Afghanistan and Ukraine, not something gleaned from the news. I'm going to introduce you to some friends of mine. They visited the church recently and I had a chance to sit down with them. Chad Robichaux is a retired Force Recon Marine. He did eight tours of duty in Afghanistan, and when we withdrew from the country he recruited some of his friends and went back in and helped rescue 17,000 people. That's an amazing thing, one you won't very often hear in the news.
You'll also meet Aziz. He was his interpreter. That's the reason initially that Chad put together the team to go back in country. He'd worked with Aziz for more than 10 years in a very important way, and we abandoned Aziz and his family when we withdrew from the nation. And then you'll meet Kevin Weaver. He works with the Warriors Project working with our retired vets and active military people and all the stresses that come with re-entering civilian life, all the pressures that come from the military. They're three modern-day heroes. Their stories are amazing. They aren't created by Hollywood. They were men of character and courage that understood words like honor and valor and duty, and they lived them out. I believe you'll enjoy the broadcast.
Allen Jackson: All right, Aziz. You've been in the United States just about a year. So we're going to teach you to say y'all, all sorts of important things. But I want to ask a question I've asked you before, the biggest surprise. You self-taught English, but being in the States is different than reading about it. So what's the biggest surprise since you've been in America?
Aziz Ullah: Well, thank you, Pastor Allen. Good morning, Tennessee, and thank you. Well, the biggest thing that really surprises me is when I first land here on this beautiful land and I see some neighbors, or colleagues, or friends, or children of friends they're complaining about having a bad day and I'm like, "Dude, you don't even have an idea what a bad day really looks like". You know, 'cause it's not their fault 'cause they don't know. They have not left the other side of the world, and I have lived it. I will tell you a story about that. Like, back in the 1998, I owned this private English school. I was an English teacher teaching English, and it is the first black era of the Taliban. I'm inside the class, and according to their rules and laws at that time everybody had to close their businesses and go to the mosque and pray. And we ignored the prayer. We were just continuing with our lesson.
Suddenly, this group of Taliban came. They sent a couple of guys upstairs and they tried to hit me with a cable and take me to prison because I didn't obey their laws. And I tried to explain to them that I was teaching. They told me, "No, you are teaching an infidel language. You have violated the law". And I'm young and handsome. And, you know, when the Taliban takes you at that time, you are done. So I got really scared. And at that time I was also boxing and I was really energetic. I punched this Taliban guy on his face and jumped from the second floor, run away to the neighbor's house. While running, a sharp piece of glass torn my heel and it was bleeding. I got refugee in the neighbor's house. While the Taliban they used the stairs to come, they lost me. So while I'm in this house, I don't know that this house is also a Taliban's house. And this lady, she told me, "Are you Teacher Aziz"? I said, "Yes, I am Aziz. I need refugee. Please hide me somewhere. The Taliban are behind me. They want to take me to prison". She's like, "Don't worry. My husband is also a top Taliban leader. When he comes tonight, I will explain the situation and he will help you". I'm like, "Oh gosh, I didn't want this".
So I got refugee in her bathroom for a couple of hours. Since the bad guys couldn't find me, they left. And they told all those bakery guys, the shopkeepers, the neighbors that they are coming back and they know me and they will take me to the jail. So I had to leave that night, went to my parents and I told them this is what happened. My father told me, "Hey, Aziz, at the end of our street there is a human trafficking guy. He has 39 young Afghan boys with him taking them to Pakistan, Iran, and then Dubai. Why don't you just join them? Go. Your future is dark here. It's not good for you". We cried. We hugged each other, and I got my backpack and he gave me a little money and I had to leave my country because of having a bad day. Went to Pakistan, got mugged in by the Pakistani police. And have that in mind. If you ever want to go to Pakistan, be careful. There really bad place, you know. They got all my money from my shoes, wherever I had it hidden, they took it from me. And then I called my dad. He sent me more money.
In Iran, the same thing. The Iranian border police did the same thing because we have no visa, no passport and we were not legitimate. And then once we arrived in the Gulf waters using a small boat sitting like 40 guys in a boat with a kayak man and this, you know, human trafficking guy, we have no food. Our monies are robbed from us, and this is the first time that I see the ocean. When we arrived at the middle of the Gulf waters where the dark water is separated from the clear water, which is an obvious miracle of God if we think about that. Who else can do that? Like you see the dark water. So this is my first time. I got really disappointed. I looked around that there is no dry land anymore. It's all water. Any corner, any angle I looked it's all water. Suddenly the sky got cloudy, rainy, stormy; and at this time this boat ran out of fuel. So we are on one side afraid of the patrols, the border police from Oman or Dubai that they will catch us, and then the other side the boat is out of fuel.
So this is a really bad day, and we are all crying and the storm is, you know, pushing us and this boat is going high and then drops back on the water and we are crying, somebody is saying good things to God, somebody is saying bad things. We are just crying on our situation. And the whole night stormy weather pushed us all the way to the border of Iranian. They call it Bandar-e-Jask. Like in the next morning at 3 o'clock we noticed that we are at the same place that we first got on the boat. And then after that, when we arrived to Oman, they put us in a trash truck, like all these 40 boys, and brought us to Dubai and dropped us off in a park. And this human trafficking guy said that, "This is Dubai. You know, now you're by your own".
Now we have zero dollar in our pocket. We have no shelter to live. We have no food. We have no friends, no relatives, and no visa or passport. So this is a really bad day. And then I noticed that a tourist is sitting by a cafeteria. He's having a chicken wrap. And, you know, he had like two, three chicken wraps on his plate. He is eating. And then as soon as he left, I saw there was some leftovers. 'Cause I'm hungry and also my buddies, I went suddenly I got this chicken wrap, opened it. I ate the remaining chicken wrap, and I saw that this is actually a newspaper that they used it for wrapping the chicken. So I look at it. 'Cause I know English, I read it. It's Gulf News. It says, "A Christian family needs a house boy right across the terminal two. Call this number. Part time". I'm like, "Oh, thank you, God. This is your miracle".
So I asked my friends. Somebody had a little money hidden somewhere in his underwear. He took it out, gave it to me. I bought this booth phone card, used the phone booth, dialed the number. This beautiful lady came, Christian lady. I told her my situation. She first didn't want to hire me because I was not legitimate. She's like, "If the UAE government finds out, we are both in trouble". And then also she was afraid of her husband 'cause her husband was a Muslim from Kuwait. And so, she had a really nice heart. She hired me, and I worked for her like part time. I was getting this money. For 3 months I was using that money to feed my friends. And from the night we were sleeping on the Dubai, Dubai parks; the city parks, like on the chairs, on the grass, near the river.
And, you know, a few of us would just sit in different corners and do a patrolling that just in case if the police comes or municipality guys comes and then we would just kind of whistle for the rest to wake up. This is a real bad day. So please be grateful for what you have. You have no idea how blessed you are, how much God loves you; how much your parents, your grandparents, your leaders, how perfectly they made everything for you or how perfectly they made the life or the resources or whatever you may need in life, that they... you are blessed because of the Lord's love, because of your parents, because of your management. Give them a big hug or at least keep them in your prayers, and please stop complaining. Sorry. I didn't mean to insult you or... I'm sorry for my, you know, just commanding voice. I cannot control it. I get excited when I start talking. I'm sorry. I just wanted to bring smile on your faces. I love you all.
Allen Jackson: We needed an attitude adjustment. Thank you, Aziz. I want to clarify one thing. You mentioned the Taliban. And, you know, these days we're told that they are strategic partners, that somehow they're good guys and we should... I bet you have an opinion on that. Can you help us a little bit, Chad?
Chad Robichaux: Yeah. So, you know, the White House has really... and the state department has really took this enemy of 20 years and 24 hours later they said, "Okay, they're the good guys now". Right? They are... and by the way, like when we were doing these evacuations in this book, like if I was to move someone across the Afghan and Pakistan border, I would have to pay the Taliban and the United States state department would view that as me funding terrorism. But the White House and our government right now is giving the Taliban $5 billion that has no congressional oversight. Essentially our US taxpayer dollars are funding the next terrorist attack in the United States. I mean, that sounds like speculation or conspiracy, but it's not. The ISIS-K there, the Taliban, US taxpayer dollars are going there.
This was just in, the inspector general just brought this out in the hearings, and one of the things that happened during these hearings is they're called out on this money and in question. We already gave them 2 billion of that 5 billion and 3 billion still scheduled to go there. The Taliban signed what's called a Doha Agreement to not allow terrorism to come in Afghanistan if we gave them that. So newsflash, they are a terrorist organization. They're a terrorist regime shredded the pit of hell. And within hours of them being told they could take Afghanistan, they started capturing our commandos, that we trained, our allies that helped us fight for freedom for 20 years and executing in the street, doing the exact violation of that agreement. They started grabbing 9-year-old girls where they're dragging them away from playgrounds, their families and marrying them off to 50-year-old Taliban fighters and sex enslaves them the rest of their life.
Taliban has already taken away all human rights from women. Twenty million women in Afghanistan, not all of them grew up in the mountains. Some of them grew up in freedom and became journalists and doctors and teachers and were in ministry, in schools and now they can't even go outside not covered. They're sex slaves to whoever the Taliban chooses them to be sex slaves to. They're not even allowed medical care because a woman can't see a male doctor but a woman can't be educated to be a doctor. There's new human rights, and we with US taxpayer dollars are funding this new and approved Taliban. They're not a government. They're not a legitimate government. They are a terrorist organization. Again, I believe they're straight out as the most evil and satanic group of people that I've ever seen in my life, and I've been to 45 countries and seen some pretty evil things. I don't believe there's anything more evil than the Taliban. And Aziz who's, you know, from there agrees these are just mentally twisted, evil people that Satan is using to torment the 40 million people of Afghanistan.
Allen Jackson: Thank you for the courage to tell the truth.
Chad Robichaux: Absolutely, can't not, I can't not.
Allen Jackson: Okay, I want to change spots on the globe for just a minute and talk about Ukraine. Kevin, you told me you had a victory just this weekend around Ukraine. Can you give us the 30,000 foot view of that?
Kevin Weaver: Yeah. So just this morning we've been... Chad's been, multiple times we've had a... yeah, ten times this year. I've been twice this year. And then we've had a team in since before the invasion made up part of our cathartic process of giving guys like Special Forces guys who are willing to go and do humanitarian work, rescues, medical training, similar things. We partnered on some of those, and we're going to be doing more of that. So the war ministry heard about what was happening. We partnered with Convoy of Hope back in February. We took 100 sets of cold weather gear for guys around the front lines in Bakhmut in that area, in Kharkiv and they didn't have gear. I mean, they're wearing like T-shirt material in the middle of winter 'cause they just don't have the supplies. So we were able to take supplies and help those guys out.
So that kind of got us in, and we begin to work with some of the area chaplains there and begin to engage with translated material reboot. We translated a book for Chad. His book on resiliency, which was fantastic. That's getting ready to, I think it's already come out. Isn't it? It's already been printed. So, you know, we have translators on our team that's one of the partnerships that we're working together. So this morning as we were talking with the war department, we just literally found out in a text when I was talking to Larry. I said, "Oh, this is amazing". They said that they've just, we've been sending them paperwork. They wanted us to work together to provide a potential process of care for Ukrainian soldiers similar to what we're doing here in the US, and they just opened the door for diplomatic status for us to do that. So that's a huge victory unexpected but, again, a miracle from God. So thank you for praying for us.
Allen Jackson: That is wonderful. You'll be shocked to know that Chad's been in Ukraine. How many times this year?
Chad Robichaux: We've been ten times this year, but we've had a permanent presence since before the invasion. We saw the invasion coming. I had one of my team members there and initially we thought we would do more rescues, which we've done a lot of rescues but more precision rescues. If you've seen the Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall when he was catastrophically wounded, myself and my friend, led that rescue effort and got Benjamin Hall out and then, because our government was not allowed to go get him as an American citizen. Several of the team members from the Fox team were killed, and we were not going to go back. 'Cause it was a kinetic combat at the time we were not going to go back to get Pierre who's a 25-year-old Fox cameraman, but then his wife Michelle showed up in Poland and was like, "I want my husband". And I was like, "Yes, ma'am".
And we went recovered Pierre's body. And we've recovered a lot of the bodies of US service members who believe, you know, the fight in Ukraine is a fight for freedom and they want to help, and they've joined the Ukrainian legion. And so a US service member will be killed there, and our state department was not wanting to move them. And so we've been by the request of families has been going and evacuate the bodies of the deceased US service members, including recently Dan Swift, the US Navy Seal who was fatally wounded on the front line. And so we've been all the way to the front line doing ministry for the Ukrainian troops, and one of the things... pushbacks.. I'm sure you got it too, but one of the pushbacks we got at Mighty Oaks Foundation is people are very confused about Ukraine and Russia. It's very confusing. I read and study this stuff every day and I'm very versed in global military strategy, but it's a very confusing thing.
So people get confused and they look at the $113 billion that our government's sending, which by the way I don't agree with. I believe we could end this thing in 2 weeks if we had a leader in the White House that would make the decision. But just because, you know, just because the corruption that's going on, and people will tell us, you know, "Hey, Zelenskyy is corrupt. Why are you guys going there to support"? And I'll say, "Yes, absolutely. Zelenskyy is corrupt. I think he's a terrible human being that's been propping himself up as a savior of Ukraine. And I think people in Washington, D.C. are corrupt as well". Right? Politicians are corrupt. That's a no newsflash there. But if we, especially the body of Christ, lets our politics get in the way of our compassion to help people, then we should change our politics.
I was on the news recently and I was getting pushback from this interviewer. I won't say his name 'cause I do respect him. I think he's just confused with it. He's smarter than me, and he's arguing with me about Ukraine and Afghanistan and I asked him a question. We were sitting across like this. I'm like if a baby was on this table choking to death, would we help this baby? Obviously, we would help this baby, right? If our neighbor's house is burning, would we go inside and make sure they were out safely? Of course, most of us would. How far does someone have to be away from you to lose compassion for your fellow human? And here in America right now I think we're so desensitized to all the stuff going in the world that it's very easy for us to lose compassion for our fellow humans.
I've been in the front lines of Ukraine. I've seen the mass graves. I identified two sets of mass graves because our government couldn't. I went and identified two sets of mass graves. One was 1,500 people, one was 500 people; only women and children, most of them bound. I've been to the apartment buildings that are leveled to the ground because Russian ballistic missiles the size of telephone poles have been flown in the side of these apartment buildings with no military targets in sight, elderly communities. What's happening there is evil and our politics should never get in the way of our compassion and heart for people. And we have to be very careful with that, pastor.
Kevin Weaver: This is really amazing to do. Chad, you've seen this. You know, one thing that I think there's been good that's happened to help with the confusion for us too, it's helped me a lot, is to see that the people of Ukraine, they've been split for literally decades, if not centuries. Half of them have always believed, "Well, we're Russian". Half of them believe, "No, we're Ukrainian. Well, we're Russian. We're Ukrainian. Well, maybe I'll be Russian this week and maybe Ukrainian next week".
I'll tell you now there's none of that. Because of this issue now, "We are Ukraine". They have kind of united their hearts together. It's been really amazing to watch the unification of the people. So inside that corruptness I'll tell you there's something very pure and wonderful happening in the hearts of people being willing. I have 80-year-old people, 80-year-old ladies that said, "We're willing to give our lives for the freedom of our country". It reminds me of what happened back in the 1770s in the US, and by the way we had an interesting country by the name of France that came to our aid and helped us kind of win a victory. So I think if we're able to help bring and propagate freedom and democracy, you know, that's our responsibility.
Chad Robichaux: And there's a revival there right now. I was in a safe house where 300 people were left from this community. These people lost everything; their family members, their livelihood, their jobs. Like all, they had whatever they were carrying. We're in this safe house, and in the middle of the night we woke up 'cause the IDF, indirect fire, was hitting within 100 yards of us. The building was shaking and finally got some sleep while the bombs were still going. It went off, for like 4 days it was like every 5 minutes. And when I woke up the next... they were doing a worship service and the worship was so fervent I had never even heard anything like that before. I just started crying 'cause I'm like, "These people are worshiping God in the midst of this". And they asked me to speak to them and it was just so incredible to see. And every Friday in Kyiv they get together and the chaplains come back from the front lines and they share what's going on in the battlefield and people have a praise and worship service. And this is, you know, orthodox Ukraine to see just this contemporary, like, worship just happening in the streets. It's just amazing to see happen.
Allen Jackson: Amen. May it happen here. But to be honest, I'd like to sit here and ask you guys questions all day long. Will you come back? All right. I don't think we've exhausted this well of stories, and we want to say thank you. Thank you for your service to our nation and on behalf of the kingdom that we're a part of. And, Aziz, welcome. We are honored to have you in the United States.