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#201 Thomas Kasza: The 1208 Foundation's Fight to Save Afghan Allies
How does a Green Beret transition from Active service to leading a humanitarian mission? Join us in this gripping episode as we sit down with Thomas, the founder of the 1208 Foundation, and uncover his remarkable journey. We'll explore his tireless efforts to support Afghan allies from the National Mine Reduction Group, brave Afghan Warriors who risked their lives to clear IEDs alongside U.S. Special Forces. Thomas shares compelling stories of their extraordinary sacrifices, and the relentless work being done to assist them since the turbulent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Ever wonder what happens when a documentary collaboration goes terribly wrong? This episode takes a hard look at the fallout from a failed documentary project involving Disney, where crucial safety measures were overlooked. With faces unblurred, several Afghan allies featured in the film faced immediate threats, detainment, and even death. We dive into the emotional toll this mishap has taken, the ongoing battle for justice, and the challenges of holding a corporate giant accountable. This conversation also reflects on how conflicts like Afghanistan become overshadowed by other global crises, leaving those most vulnerable in the shadows.
Finally, we confront the frustration and emotional burden faced by the Special Forces community and organizations like 1208 in their mission to support Afghan partners. Hear about the lack of support from higher military officials, the painful exodus of experienced Green Berets, and the heartbreaking stories of Afghan allies left behind. We'll also discuss practical ways you can contribute, from donations to participating in initiatives like the Welcome Corps. This episode is a stark reminder of the sacrifices made and the ongoing struggle to advocate for those who risked everything.
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security hot podcast. Let's go with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore ignore weather to live off.
Speaker 2:The land job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period live fucking doing it.
Speaker 1:Live, thomas, how are you, man? Long time. We have been trying to make this happen for for a while now. Uh, green beret, 12-boy Foundation founder and advocate entrepreneur. Dude, you are a busy man and you have quite the mission, so today I want to dive in. Man, let's strike while the iron's hot. How did you find yourself in this space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, involuntarily let's put it that way definitely did not choose this path, really wouldn't want to say it chose me either, just kind of just flopped in my lap. No, so I spent, you know, 13 years active duty. The last year and a half or so I was on my way out, going to med school, or trying to go to med school, so doing the prerequisites, all that stuff. And my final, my final time at first group, um, and my ets date happened to span august 23rd, 2021, right? So, like eight days after cobble fell, no shit.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I'm trying to go to med school. I'm doing all this time prepping for the mcat, which is like an absolute beast of an entry test. Oh yeah, so I don't, you know, I don't have any. I don't have any time scheduled, like after I get out of the Army, like, basically, I was planning to, you know, take the MCATistan falls. Here I am, you know, right time, right place, to kind of get involved and kind of take care of the guys who, you know, partnered with us in afghanistan, um, and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:That's the story right there, you know, right place, and a whole bunch of white space and for those that don't understand the, the significance of who you're trying to help and the name behind and what it means, give us some more background on that, like what, what's? Why is it so important that we help this specific group of Afghan allies?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So NMRG, right, it's a big long army acronym for the National Mine Reduction Group, um, and it's kind of in the name, right, mine Reduction. So reduction in the army terms mean, like you know, removing mines or, more specifically, moving IEDs, right, so these guys weren't just like any old interpreters you know, I'm not saying the interpreters did a lot of work, because a lot of those guys were, you know, pretty gangster in their own way but these guys were, you know, know, like the interpreters, except providing, you know, english star translations. They were there specifically to clear ids on our behalf, right, which, oh, yeah, you know, as you know, that those probably the number one killer of french anyone, afghanistan, iraq were ieds. Um, you know, so those guys are taking like just extraordinary risk on our behalf, to the point where, you know, I don't program strength about three to, yeah, 300 guys at any one time.
Speaker 2:Like 47 of those guys were killed between 2015 and 2021. Um, and they compare that to 22 green Berets in the same same timeframe in Afghanistan. You know, so it's kind of like one of those things. Like you know, our entire mantra, especially force right, is to kind of build up partner capacity, you know. You know, liberate the oppressed and all that stuff. So like, out of all the guys who really put their put the most on the line for americans, it was these guys like hands down and I don't think there's really out of all the afghans.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any competition like who, who really sacrificed the most on our behalf? Um, and that is one thing I want to emphasize too, is this for us. You know, these guys weren't afghan soldiers. They weren't, you know, working for the Afghan government. They were specifically hired. They're hired contractors working for us, and us alone, you know. So we kind of owe these guys a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's completely different, like you said, from the commandos or Afghan forces. These guys are working in small teams with Green Berets, and it's when we think of mine reduction you're thinking of vehicles, and of course they do that as well, but intimately they are with the team and they're leading the way, clearing as you're moving from your infill to your you're, you know, setting in your freaking support by fire, and they're integrated within your stacks and your soft force. These guys are working with our special operations professionals day in and day out, and when the fall of Afghanistan happens, we're leaving them behind, we're letting them just out there flailing in the wind. How did that mission begin? How did that?
Speaker 2:mission begin. So, you know, I wasn't as far from the only guy involved in the whole, you know, getting people out of Afghanistan, right, actually, I was kind of actually linked to the party in many ways, just because, you know, I was trying to go to med school. I was not trying to get involved in humanitarian crisis, so I was like I was kind of heads down in the books for, you know, the entire period leading up to the collapse of Abacanson. But then, like I said once, once it did happen and I was kind of right time, right place to get involved, I noticed really quickly that because they had this kind of really close held, pseudo secret relationship with the special forces, they just they weren't well known, right. So I tried to initially get my guys taking up like another ngo, I tried to like volunteer with like another ngo, getting them in their books and their systems, you know, but just wasn't resonating. Right, they're eligible for the siv, the special immigrant visa, which is like the it's pretty much the goal is the goal ticket, right, more or less.
Speaker 2:Um, but people in these kind of main scale or, you know, mainstream ngos, they just weren't recognizing the energy, they just weren't appreciating what they've done or or really knowing their, their specific details? Uh, because if you work the energy some of those guys are, they're really rough around the edges, you know. Yeah, um, because back, in fact, you're going back to the old days. These guys were recruited out of the, the villages right out in the boonies, just because they have that kind of local knowledge, um, but with that comes some like major issues with, you know, their english proficiency and literacy, right. So for a variety of reasons, um, I was kind of I kind of recognized that they just weren't getting the love they needed with some of these other ngos. So it's like, all right, screw it, I'll just make my own, right, um, you know, so august, no, so august was a collapse in november.
Speaker 2:It's actually kind of created totally its predecessor, which is actually called team 11 at the time. So I didn't, I don't, like I said, I didn't want to get involved in humanitarian world. So, like team 11 was like my team, like my, my 15 guys, right, um, but then just once again, right time, right place, all this time in the world to do something, I just kind of started collecting, you know, energy from other teams as well, kind of pulling into our database and then, just, you know, linked up with a couple more SF guys, a couple of retired guys, a couple of former interpreters, that's kind of coalesced into a little. You know something. Larger organization you know, some of the larger organizations actually focus on the entirety of the energy program rather than just my, my team of 15 guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what kind of success were you able to have on the ground?
Speaker 2:Initially not a lot Initially. You know some guys, some guys were pretty successful depending on who they knew, cause that's kind of what pulled down to a lot in the early days, like who you knew actually in Ishqai or in the State Department who could kind of streamline things and get the processes moving quicker. So initially I did not have a lot of real movement forward. I helped get a couple of interpreters out in the early days. It wasn't until a full year later I actually got my first guy from my team out. Um, since then, you know we have, you know we've had, we've had more people. So now we have a, we have a pretty good system, going to the point where actually I really don't do much anymore. I'm kind of just more, like you know, right now, like the public face the public face behind it, trying to bring awareness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, public face and the uh admin guy which sucks um the one thing all green berets hate.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly admins. So all the all the freaking, all the talking to cpas, all the tax stuff I could do all that stuff. All the subscriptions for web browsers, you know, or internet, um, yeah so, but anyway, like now, I don't really do too much. I I'm actually, you know, transition to some more kind of strategic level, or want to be strategic level stuff with like a startup and all that stuff um panning over the day-to-day reins to, you know, former interpreter and all that stuff. Um, so yeah, we we're having some good successes. All things considered, I'd say our success is definitely higher than the average ngo, but still it's great. We're still looking for that silver bullet somewhere. It exists.
Speaker 2:I think it's just a matter of getting state department to talk defense department, just because you know how heavily these energy you're going to be. You know energy we're actually living on our bases, right, like, literally, our case, the building next to like 20 meters away, right? So these guys are heavily vetted, you way, right? So these guys are heavily vetted. You know all the access to explosives, weapons, everything you could want. So the fact that, so that it should be just a matter of, like, dod handing state department hey, check out this drive, check out these, these rosters. Everyone on these rosters should be good to go to send them to. You know, cutter for processing. Now it should be, in theory, should be, like that right, there should be that silver bullet. But knowing how our bureaucracies work, that's not the case. So here we are, almost three years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't even imagine what this mechanism looks like and how many frigging, obstacles and blockades are in your way trying to get resources or trying to connect, because guys are still trying to come here, they're still trying to get out and people tend to think I mean, and the Taliban are great at propaganda. If you open up your social media, anybody right now will probably get a targeted ad, especially if you're a soft guy. You open up your social media, you get a targeted ad for Afghan tourism.
Speaker 2:You see the one with the uh the family from boston yes, yeah, yes, dude, yeah, close my mind quality parenting at its best right there yeah, but our guys are still there and it's not a happy-go-lucky place.
Speaker 1:It is not a great place to go on vacation, um and that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Like you, you talk to some other people in various circles, whether it's media or ngos, like, oh yeah, it's stable, it's peaceful, peaceful. But I mean, yeah, I get it, it's stable, it's peaceful because you know you have a single power and control, it's no longer a civil war. But you know, guess what is also peaceful, like north korea. Right doesn't mean like a stable and peaceful environment does not mean people are prospering, right, or that people aren't getting snatched out of bed in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:You know yeah, exactly, and if you're part of the, the opposition, it's not really a peaceful happy place for you. It's like fuck, like, how do we write this wrong? There is a huge issue that occurred with all the highlighting of all, like the media coverage and the, the movies and the documentaries that were going on.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah yeah, so retrograde any award-winning documentary from national geographic right. Like going back to the very beginning, like you know, I was telling how I got a couple interpreters out one of them was actually a cousin when the cousin of the retrograde interpreters and that's how we got him out was through that relationship. So that's how I got involved with this documentary initially was the fact that it helped get my interpreter out. Right, fast forward a year. I reached out to one of the producers who I was talking with and helped facilitate this evacuation. Hey, what happened to this documentary, like you know? Oh, hey, it's coming out in a month. Come visit us for a screening in washington dc, right? So then myself and a couple other guys go to dc, go this initial screen this is probably two or three months before the actual public release brought some energy uh, who are living in the area along as well, met with these guys and it's a great documentary, you know. It's just absolutely soul-crushing but extraordinarily well produced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um has a lot of guys like I personally know in the film, like my former interpreters in the film, a different interpreter who's in the film, um energy that one of my partners you know worked with our there as well. Like a lot of crossovers. Like, all right, let's collaborate, let's uh, you know we'll tag along to your oscar award campaign. Uh, festivities are running wrong called the screening tour. Yeah, you're still like hey, if someone has a question like how can we want to get involved, like we'll be in the back, like hey, talk to us, we'll help, we'll show you how to get involved, right, um, and because it's not geo, right, you know, disney wasn't that geo. You think there's layers upon layers of risk management already involved. Like everyone who's in the film is already safe, you assume that by default because now geo has a very good brand name.
Speaker 2:Um, it's different now because there's disney. That is is now there is now. Yeah, there's no room that geo anymore.
Speaker 2:It's just disney bob iger and mickey mouse yeah, so we, uh, no, we. So we made some assumptions that these guys, these are, these guys are solid, everyone in the film is taken care of. So we collaborated with them for a little bit, took care of a couple people who weren't in the film. They gave us a few names. These are the stragglers. We took care of them, no problem. And they come to find out they didn't do anything at all to safeguard these people. Everyone in that film is in serious risk, to the point where a month after it comes out, it gets one of our guys detained, portia, for 16 days, ultimately dies because these guys did not blurt out any faces. And that's the key thing I should have started with initially is that this documentary did not blurt out any faces because, look, created decisions by the director. So you know, one thing led to another and you know it just blows. It blows up. We got, you know, major washington post article came out in may. Um, got the documentary taken down. All the stuff still ongoing. Right, these? There were, uh, nine guys as of the time of the publishing of the article. Nine guys still in in afghanistan because of this documentary, um, including the widow of the guy who was killed. Um, yeah, still still haven't gotten disney to do anything about it.
Speaker 2:Um, which is pretty, pretty amazing considering that you know this producer, who I was originally in touch with, who was working retrograde, she was on, who, like on text, michelle ever saying, oh yeah, disney helped get 300 families out of afghanistan during the collapse. It's like all right, guys like where's the treatment for our guys? You know our, you know these guys are shown collaborating actively with the us army special forces. Right, they helped, you know. At the same time, they're helping get out the. You know the extras and the technicians, all these guys from in the background of other films. So it's like you know you help out these 300 guys. What about our nine remaining guys? And our nine remaining guys and I include the african commandos, the african government officials, you all in all, you expand up to like the family because these afghan family connections, you're talking like 200 people these guys put at risk at least. So it's pretty, pretty egregious um exploitation of these really persecuted individuals.
Speaker 1:Dude I, I can't even imagine the level, not just of anger and frustration and sheer just violent rage. You must've been dealing early on with this. But how do you, how do you stay the course and how do you continue when the victories are so small and feel apart Like how do you stay on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know A lot, a lot of heavy metal and walks on the beach man, yeah, I mean like, cause that's the thing too. Like we, like I said we, I, I, dave, dave, dave, me and my partner, who's mentioned that article quite a bit, he bit, he kind of elevated his concerns initially pretty extensively, to the point where we have the retrograde producer on voice message, on text, expressing her direct concerns about the guys involved. So anything in the media recently about them, like, oh, we were aware of the concerns and met our threshold anyway, like it's complete fabrication, right. So, dave, dave, voices concerns. Initially, I kind of, once again, because I'm I'm like the public facing side, I have to kind of balance our assets because, like, on one hand, like afghanistan's forgotten conflict, essentially, you know everyone who's at risk right now is second thought, right, because you know, oh yeah, first ukraine took away all the oxygen, then gaza, so like afghanistan's like lower tier in terms of global crisis. So like, on one hand, we're trying to balance assets we have, which is, you know, collaborating with this, you know emmy award documentary, and then, two, we're trying to do the right thing for our guys, right, so we kind of have to square that you have to kind of reconcile a pragmatic approach versus doing the right fucking thing.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, so that that that that was kind of like the source of my stress. Right there was, like I'm trying not to blow you guys up over this, you guys need to do the right thing. You spent, we spent a long time trying to make those guys do the right thing, um, until initially, like, all right, you guys aren't gonna do it, we're gonna, we're just gonna take things on our own hands. Um, so that that was by far the most stressful part. Just, you know, like you guys kind of played me for a trump for a while.
Speaker 2:In many ways, I think the main reason they wanted us because we were their easy button, those guys I mentioned who we helped out with if they had a problem, we'd say, fine, we'll spend our time and energy and complete lack of resources other than our own blood, sweat and tears and we'll take care of your problems for you, with the expectation that they would do something. And they didn't have any any stage. Um, and then, yeah, initially, just fine, right, I got, I got the opportunity to uh participate congressional roundtable. That's where I kind of kind of put everything on the table, just because once you put in congressman, that's part of the record, like it's like. Come at me, bro, like put on a congressional record. You know, try something. Um, the washington post picked up on that. Now here we are. What was that?
Speaker 1:experience like like it's one thing to see on like c-span and see, like watching lieutenant colonel scott man do the same thing is one thing to see your green beret brothers up there. What was it like in that seat facing those assholes.
Speaker 2:So ours, ours wasn't that big of a deal because, yeah, there's two things, there's two tiers, right, you have a test, congressional hearing or testimony and they have, like a hearing or, sorry, a roundtable. Roundtable is just pretty much informal, right. So it's just, um, you know, six panelists and a couple congressional members who, uh, depending on what they had, and they'd rotate it out because I had to go vote on something, it's actually very much way, way more low-key than you know, hand on the bible, kind of swearing stuff. So, yeah, um, a lot of, definitely a lot, of prep went to it, because you don't want to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, because, even though, even in those stages, as low skill or as small skill as it was, like you say the wrong thing, it's still gonna blow up. Yeah, and you don't want to. You know you don't want to give anyone the wrong ammunition, right, because you know you have to play this fine line where you want, you want people to do the right thing, but at the same time, you don't want to say something that can be used as ammunition because, let's be honest, they're that entire round.
Speaker 2:It was, you know, like they're all veterans and it was like eight Republicans, one Democrats. It was it's partisan by default, which, fine, it served our own ends. Uh, but you have to, kind of, you know, play that nasty game in a way which is not not I don't know, it's not something I really go for, you know. But yeah, it's the rules. You know, rules are rules. Got to play it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's never easy having to go there in front of anybody and sort of like plea or give your side of the story, especially when it feels like it's not going to make a difference, Like how do you guys continue this mission? Like what's, how do you guys rally around each other and continue to, every day, day by day, try to move that ball just a few inches further.
Speaker 2:I don't know anymore, like anymore, like I don't know, it's just, it's attrition. Um, they, everyone has their own, their own coping mechanisms at some point. Um, so Dave just goes off and travels, like it irritates the shit out of me sometimes Cause, like remember, I tried to get Dave on you know last, cause we tried to, like I try to get Dave on, because we tried to a year ago I tried to get Dave on, but he's off traveling again, so I'm just doing it myself. Now he copes by traveling, just unplugging. I cope completely opposite way. I should get more involved, but like, kind of like an academic pursuit, like I.
Speaker 2:You know, I did one master program through Georgia. I'm doing another one in Oxford right now. It's all through Georgia. I'm doing another one in Oxford right now. It's all focused on what I'm doing now, but in a different sense. I'm taking what I'm doing now but putting a different spin on things. For example, right now I just picked a fight with Disney. Now my next thing is going to be pick a fight with the United Nations. That's putting things way too ambitiously.
Speaker 1:I I don't know man, you're green beret. I say go, go for broke. So it's, it's um being a doctor, no longer part of uh oh no, that's ship sailed if you can't.
Speaker 2:I like chasing shiny objects too much and you can't do that med school, right, you're four years of medical school and you have three to five years of residency. So, yeah, uh, no, no. But like, no, like my co-co-co-co-co serve energy of other small-scale NGOs popped up for lawyers, not for, like, smw pilots, and we're able to like kind of in many ways we are able to kind of punch above our weight class, right, yeah. So like, I've tweaked this little academic pursuit where we have all these small-scale NGOs who are kind of small and so decentralized. We can operate underneath the taliban in many ways.
Speaker 2:You know, straight up, like it's maybe it was straight like youtube, right, like these small compartmentalized cells who can actively subvert maybe not subvert the right word but we can kind of operate below the threshold of uh, not violence, but threshold of notice of the local government kind of. You know, we can set up drill schools here. We can, um, set up an X-fill mechanism over here. Now, how do you actually kind of create something where the whole is greater than some of its parts, right? So like, basically, that's my active pursuit, is all these small scale NGOs, create some kind of mechanism that's actually coordinated right, decentralized but coordinated, so you can actually do make stuff happen right, because the big NGOs like the UN stuff happen right, cause the, the, the big NGOs like the, the UN, and stuff right, they're all cut off easily cut off cause they're all highly centralized Right.
Speaker 2:So you cut off their, their supply mechanisms or whatever, um, or just put certain restrictions on them.
Speaker 2:You, you're, you know you're putting them at like 50% capacity or you're taking like half their half their aid budget, right, and that's the thing. Afghanistan right now, 40 million dollars a week is going there, but most of it's going into, like, taliban control, right. But here's the thing you have to make this balance because on the un side, like you know, 25 percent of our mission we're completing 25 percent mission is better than completing zero percent, because so they have to operate within taliban control measures, or else, you know, you have millions of people starve, um, so, like my entire theory with in my, the way I kind of keep my, my brain engaged is, you know, but if you can create this mechanism, you know tech-based mechanism where everything is decentralized, and you know it's like hydra approach, right, you can't there's no one interdiction point to chop everything off. If, yes, you can find the coordinating piece, which is that's the start, you like coordinating piece to get stuff moving again yeah, that's, uh, that's perfectly along the lines of, you know, being a green beret and that's.
Speaker 1:That works to your advantage. But the other thing that I like how do you because you're still in, you're still, and are you 19th or 20th group? Uh, 19th, 19th, how do you put the uniform back on and go to go to drill and deal with that, those two polar opposite ideals of like hey, like I believe in my mission, I'm a green beret and fuck like we let down our guys, like at any point, do you?
Speaker 1:feel like they, they conflict like, because I know for a lot of us when it was happening I was just like how the fuck do we ever look at another partner force in the face and and talk with them in any sort of credibility?
Speaker 2:Especially the retrograde thing too. Man. You know that was done with authorization. You saw a piece of fake Yep, no calm. So you had the highest levels of SF and you probably read the article too. Who gave kind of a non-answer?
Speaker 2:You have the highest level of SF, selling out partner force for a recruiting video, essentially, yep, and that's one thing that I've hasn't really talked about in any real extent yet. But, like, come on, man, like you have general fran burdett, who's now retired from usasoc, approving this, especially if he's a former first group commander right before I got to first group. Yeah, come on, man, like, where where's usasoc right now? Where's first sfc? Like we're, we are the premier partner force capacity or partner capacity built, whatever I'm calling. You know, yeah, sorry, I'm getting, I'm getting my getting the blood's, getting it right now. We just think we are. You know, we are the premier premier force for building partner, for premier force for building partner capacity, or however you want to phrase it. You know, yeah, our entire thing is to operate with and through our partners. And where, where's, where are the higher levels right now? Where, where's, where are the bosses?
Speaker 2:You know why haven't they said anything about this? Why are they not? You know why aren't they all talking to the state department? Hey, get our guys out. You know, it's only, it's not many guys, it's 180 families, right? So you're talking like 930 afghans in total at a broad. You know, a total of like 150 000 applicants, 150 000 applicants, not just families, right, so you're talking like 800 something thousand people. So we're talking, we're talking less than a percent is our asking. Um, yeah, why, why can't?
Speaker 1:why can't the bosses just give us that, you know and it is extremely frustrating when you hear some of the inside details of some of the meetings that occurred during the fall and how they were. You know General Milley was completely okay with civilians and retired soft professionals taking the lead in trying to get their brothers, their Afghan partners, out of the country. And it's to me the other thing that really sticks and really just it's like a dagger. It's the fact that if we fail in Afghanistan, you've been there, you've briefed your mission and gone off, gotten in the back of a bird and gone, done your job. If at any moment you're found to have been a failure of whether it's negligent or did something, your ass is on the line. You're going to be held accountable for what you failed to do.
Speaker 1:But we don't do that with any of our senior officials and that just doesn't sit right with so many of us. And I'm still waiting for somebody to at least do something is fuck, millie got to walk his fat ass right out of office and not be held accountable for any of the things horrible, fucking things that we can do for the legacy of Green Berets, the fact that you have individuals that didn't uphold the standard, that didn't do anything in a moment where they could have done something and they just quietly walk off into retirement. And it's a hard thing for our generation of Green Berets to live with and then to continue to serve and mentor and develop and coach other green berets and still have that positive mindset and still not. And and I get it, you got to be able to fight and and uh, not come across as just this negative, burnt out nco or officer but how?
Speaker 1:do you deal with?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, yeah, I I don't know about that one like, because I am definitely that negative burnt fnco right now, because I, I mean, actually you asked about, like, yeah, my future. I I gotta figure out my future pretty much the next few days actually, because you know, I left active duty, you know, august, three years ago, so you get three years stabilization. We transition from active duty to the guard and that three years of stabilization is pretty much up now.
Speaker 2:Um, technically, if I don't extend, I need to extend for a multiple multitude of reasons, mainly being the fact that I need to maintain my clearance so I can actually, if we find that silver bullet from the nmrg, right, I have to be able to hey, hand over these, hand over whatever I need to hand over from, you know, dod to the state department, just be there to kind of kick someone's ass to keep things going.
Speaker 2:But I mean, yeah, I don't, that's one thing, like the accountability, like I don't know, like I don't it I do care, but at the same time I also don't, because I gotta focus on getting stuff done now. Um, so I, yeah, you know, maybe there's some absolution for those guys if they actually do something now. But you're seeing the effects of it day to day. I don't know how things are in the other groups but, like talking to guys at first, you know there's an exodus going on right now, like everybody I know is pretty much on their way out. Or they know someone who's going almost at the verge of shuttering the entire teams, going down like five companies, or shutting down, maybe shutting down entire companies, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:I've heard the same thing the exodus of the soft professional, and you said it when you're the premier force that has chosen to build partner nation capacity, to build teams in these countries where you have let me we saw it with the green on blues Like, if you don't build strong relationships with your partner force, that is a huge weak point and going into and it goes now to every AOR, whether it's Latin America or Southeast Asia, like people have seen this Everybody saw the fall of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1:So how do you save face when you're training with your partner nation? That's a thing that our force is going to have to address from here on out. The precedent has been made time and time again. Now we walk away and we leave our guys behind. It's a horrible thing to try to reconcile and to put it on our ncos back because, as always, our sf regiment lives and and dies with the nco corps. How are we going to empower our ncos to go there and forge these bonds and be able to continue doing their mission when our partner forces in every nation now know that, hey, when things get tough, these dudes are going to cut out and they're not going to be here for us, like yeah, I mean the entire idea.
Speaker 2:Like you know, we're trying to still, in many ways, we try to make them an image, right and still within the same kind of hours, that we, we kind of drive us. But you know they're gonna. They see those images of people trying to, you know, climb onto those c17, c-17. So you know, in the back of mind, they're going to know like, hey, end of the day, like I have to have my exit strategy, right, I have to. You know, I have to look out for myself. You know they're not going to have that kind of selflessness that you want. So you know, the exit strategy could you know very well be, you know, like you, compromising these SF guys I'm partnering with, right, because they're not going to look after me. Maybe these individuals might look after me, but you can be damn sure their bosses aren't.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I think on the individual level. I think I'm pretty good about building rapport. Once I'm an Afghan, I remember being on a range with Afghan commandos. There's a unit of regular ana over there and they kind of like, hey guys, come, come this side of the vehicle, stay away from the regular afghan regular ana. You know they're looking after us. Um, I just don't know if they'll start seeing that in the future, you know looking at your own career, looking at what's next?
Speaker 1:um, I mean you, you can only chase so many higher education goals. When you look at 1208 and where it's going to and how it's growing, do you see it morphing into something bigger? Or is it almost more beneficial, just like you were talking earlier? Just kind of stay smaller?
Speaker 2:You're able to operate underneath the radar. I think 1208 is definitely staying small, small. Dave and I are both definitely burnt out. We're done. We have a really solid interpreter. He worked the Czech SOAP I'm not sure if he ever worked for them. Awesome guys, we have enough funding to keep him going. As long as we keep Siobhan going, we're good.
Speaker 2:Just because we're pretty much a holding pattern for the indefinite future, which sucks, you know. No one wants to be just kicking the can down the road forever. Um, so, on my end, I'll I'll just be on on standby trying to kind of facilitate these intermediate to high level engagements, if we can get something going with, like you know, pentagon I I'm talking some, a policy guy in Pentagon who's actually pretty, pretty helpful guy I'm trying to facilitate exactly what I'm talking about. I'm trying to, you know, touch those tips, so to speak. Yeah, so I'll be, I'll be on hand for that.
Speaker 2:But like 12 way itself, you know, the idea is that it's limited in shelf life, right, like, like I said at one point, nrg program was like 300 dudes with 300 families, so we have no real reason to keep ourselves going beyond that. One really terrible part about this job is, like you know, our email gets flooded all the time, but it's usually by Afghans who don't have any relationships. I was like bro, I'm sorry, it's a point where I don't have the bandwidth to even respond. I used to respond just to try and be a nice guy.
Speaker 1:But now it's just like sorry, I can't help you, dude, we only, you only have so much bandwidth to it and it's not. It's not a simple email. It's emotionally draining seeing everybody cry out for help and resources and it's you're not the entirety of the us, you're just Green Berets trying to make a small amount of impact and I think that so many, if we look across our regiment, from retired guys to guys that are in and served during Afghanistan, everybody has a story of that text message, whatsapp message, signal message in the middle of the night of a friend in need, desperate for some sort of help, and it's like what the fuck do we do?
Speaker 2:what the fuck do we do? I remember that very distinctly because, like you know, like I, like I said, I was heads down early on just because of the whole med school thing. But then, like august 14th, august 14th, like my best friend's wedding, right so like I wake up literally in 15th, like hung over, and it's like what?
Speaker 2:the like, you know the big, you know like the uh, you know the biggest possible font across new york times or sienna, whatever website or cobbles falling like within, like probably 15 minutes later, you know the first text comes in. So it's like like you, just you don't know. I still don't know what to do for the most part, like I'm still flying, I'm not humanitarian, my trade, I don't know what I'm doing. I have a few good connections, I know a few good tricks, but like, by and large, I still know what I'm doing. You know, certainly didn't know what I'm doing then.
Speaker 2:Um so like, yeah, the minute I try to pivot from something other than mrg, like you know energy, you're gonna suffer, right. So, like I've only have enough time and space and you know, emotional investment to focus on those guys. Um, so I would love to see totally go away sooner rather than later, but just, you know, I gotta keep it going for for the meantime yeah, yeah, it's a mission that has to stay for a little while longer, but if we want to help out, how can people get involved?
Speaker 1:how can we provide like resources or monetary support, like how can people get involved with 12th away to help you guys out?
Speaker 2:I mean 12.org or, sorry, 12 foundationorg is our website right, so I make sure to have all our donate buttons Very prominent. More specifically, you know there's one initiative that I've actually criticized in the past, but it actually has turned out to be somewhat productive. It's called the Welcome Corps, and you can actually sponsor individual families.
Speaker 1:Oh, no shit.
Speaker 2:So it's one thing I'm trying to hit about some of these sf related ngos, like you know, the sfa, for example. Right, there's certain groups are actually already sponsoring afghans. But one thing I'd like to approach more in the future is try to coordinate something with these guys can actually do like a buy, a buy name sponsor of some of our guys who are actually ready to travel right now and who already approved. So we have some like 75 families ready to go. It's just going through a state of the art process is just crazy. 75, that's huge 75, it's not bad.
Speaker 2:The only issue is because I don't know why they have these stipulations, but it's a $5,000 sponsorship fee. For it. You have to form a group of five people and put in $5,000 for itself. There are reimbursement policies I'm not sure some of them expire for, like veteran groups. So you get groups of five together um, sponsor guys. We can move people that way, um. Once again it becomes an issue with the resourcing thing, right, cause people don't necessarily have that kind of money just ready to go. Yeah, so welcome. Core is a good one, um, but because it is by name sponsorship is best to talk with us first so they can actually provide the name in advance. Um then yeah, any kind of any kind of uh, funding, finance, all that stuff you know, can always use volunteers. Volunteers are kind of hit and miss, because it's not the jumping in point is very it's not easy to get involved in this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But, like you know, it's always, you know, someone make merchandise, all stuff like that. There's always volunteers like that. But we but we're actually doing fairly solid right now all things considered, but, yeah, no one's finance. Number two would be the welcome core and local connections after that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well, we'll be sure to put down the episode description so that you can do your part and help out our allies. It's been sort of a lot of, uh, heavy discussions. Uh, thomas, is there at least one happy ending, good story you can share with us from your time with?
Speaker 2:1208 oh man, a happy 12-8 story.
Speaker 1:I don't know I know this is a heavy subject. Apologize, but we have to talk about it. But is there at least one happy ending that you've had so far?
Speaker 2:I don't know, the academic stuff is pretty interesting. Actually, I think there's one thing that I'm developing right now. Like I said, I have a spinoff right. So 12-Way is a nonprofit spinoff which is not technically affiliated with 12--bit, because you can't have a for-profit smell from a non-profit legal stuff.
Speaker 2:Um, it's called re-blue, right. So I don't fear maybe you've heard that familiar that term, infantry days or something like that, like I only heard it once but stuck with me for some reason, like my iraq. Infantry days like re-blue, like you're blowing your rifle, I think, well, that, yeah, protective coating, re-ing you and refinish your rifle, but like some reason, some nci knew back in the day like rebluing would be, like you know, to refurbish or to refinish, like repurpose. Yeah, you know yourself, like we need a reblu training so you're all refreshed, you're ready to go again. Um, and the idea of reblu is that we're going to kind of kind of take what's already existing in some of these, um, just, you know, rough around the edges, countries like you know, afghanistan, uh, Somalia, myanmar, and kind of concrete bridge between you know, western investments and some of these informal economies.
Speaker 2:Um, so specifically, right, it's a, it's a, it's a block, it's a tech company. Essentially it's tech meets humanity and operations. So essentially creating like this tech platform that kind of converts tech into like you're talking like eighth century financing. So I don't feel like the most like hawala at all. Yeah, yep, yep, yeah. So for anyone who's not feeling hawala, it's basically like an islamic based remittance program or you know just pretty much you're taking on faith alone or trusting your partner. Um, that you know you're gonna afford some money, essentially, right. So like it's an eighth century banking system. But obviously that scares the shit out of any kind of western investors, right, because boy, does it work?
Speaker 2:it does work it works because also it's also major terrorism and money laundering back here in the past. But the thing is, when you look at places like Afghanistan and Somalia, yemen, iraq, even places in South America sorry, not South America, god, south Asia they have this high reliance on it but there's no other economic systems for them, right, other than the wall. So you're kind of creating this bottleneck where the West is too scared to get involved because they're scared to get burnt either by regulation or just by theft, and so it's just not going anywhere. You just you're at a stagnant point right now, like we're in afghanistan, right, 75 of that economy is classified as informal, right non-regulated, which is worse in the world by like 10. Like next is 65 in formalized gabon and like after that's like nigeria, like 60, so like far and away the most dire economic uh straits that you could imagine. That's all because you know the west doesn't want to get involved and you have taliban banks, or neither of them are great, but like I said earlier, like because we have these connections in afghanistan, we've developed these really great, almost rat lines in a way, in terms of these religious capacities. What if we just make this half a point and instead of bringing Afghans to the Western system, we bring a Western system to the Afghans.
Speaker 2:Essentially, all you have to do is find some Hawala door Saraf Saraf is like the final broker in Dubai and a broker in Afghanistan and vet the shit out of them. So you find the guys who are the really good ones, the best possible ones in the entire country, attached like a blockchain tracking platform, right? So you don't I'm not going to get I'm not a tech guy tracking platform right now, or that's tracking technology. So you get this tech tracking platform that you know can track every single transaction. But the problem with the transactions are they're not stuff or they're not any kind of regulated system. So you need a human component, right?
Speaker 2:So essentially, just slapping on this human-based betting system onto this informal um economy and running a uh, just a digital pipeline through it. So essentially, it's like a financial VPN, right? So you're taking this really dirty, archaic, informal economic system and creating a nice little clean, safe space through it where you can get Western investment, just because we know the guys on the back end, because guess what US was in Afghanistan for 20 years. We know everyone, we know some people, we know a lot of people, people there. So why don't we actually take the best of them and, you know, hook them up with the tech that they need to be productive and, you know, make stuff happen that way? Oh yeah, there's I'm sorry there's no real good elevator pitch for it, because it's a very ambitious idea that no one's, as far as I I can tell, no sense to Makes sense to me and it's worked before.
Speaker 1:I mean we've relied on it to get food, so it should, in theory it should work.
Speaker 2:I mean just give them an app so you're logging all the stuff along the way. Humans vet it. All it is. Yeah, Blockchain will make it. So you can't fund, you can't, you can't fake the numbers that way.
Speaker 1:that's all it is, yeah, although I mean some people might be upset because all those gravel contracts would go away.
Speaker 2:That way, but you said it. Yeah, I said the quiet part out loud, didn't?
Speaker 1:I don't fuck this up for me, my man. Plenty of people came back with a good amount of money. All you to remember is save the receipts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just put Target on my back from a whole bunch of like you suck logistics people.
Speaker 1:Ah, they were in on it too. Thomas, thank you for being here, man, I'm so glad we finally got to do this Again. The name of the organization is 1208 Foundation. Please go hook them up, try to send some resources their way.
Speaker 1:But, man, from all of us, dude, thank you for what you're doing. You took on. You and your partner have taken on the workload that so many other individuals should have been doing for us, and I can't thank you enough for being willing to do this and keeping our partners in the forefront of so many other people's minds. I mean, I can't wait for more of them to get home. So, again, thank you for what you're doing, man. It's not lost on any of us that you're working your ass off to make this happen on behalf of so many teams and so many Green Berets that feel so passionate for getting our guys back. And, um, I hope more resources come up and I hope more people get involved, because did we need to get them home? We need them here in the States. They were there for us when we needed them and, damn it, we need to be there for them.
Speaker 1:Um, so, thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Man, absolutely. We'll see you all next time. So then, absolutely we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care. If you like what we're doing and you're enjoying the show, don't forget to share us. Like us, subscribe and head on over to our patreon, where you can be part of our community and get access to all of our episodes as soon as they drop. And remember we get through this together. Take care, thank you.
