Stranger Becomes Neighbor

In our final bonus episode, host Andrea Smardon talks to one of the founders of the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership, the all-volunteer group that supports Sima and other veterans of the Afghan Female Tactical Platoon as they rebuild their lives in the U.S.

Co-founder Scott Bailey talks about how it all started with a conversation among concerned friends in church and shares the secrets to their organization’s success - how regular citizens without any prior experience pulled together to form a community of support. He says it’s not about being "helpers," but being "partners." And he talks about the rewards that partnership offers for everyone involved.

They’re known as Zero Units – forces of Afghan men who served in their country’s National Strike Units, the NSU. These specially trained counter-terrorism soldiers worked in cooperation with the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

In this episode, Andrea speaks with Geeta Bakshi, a former CIA operations manager and counterterrorism expert- code named "Blackbird." Bakshi has first-hand experience with the Zero Units, both in Afghanistan and in America. Bakshi is also the founder of FAMIL, an organization dedicated to ensuring that Afghan partners who served on behalf of the United States are supported as they resettle in America.

When small business owner Doug Richmond heard the story of one Afghan father and how he risked his life helping Americans in their counterterrorism efforts, he was inspired to help his family. He realized the best thing he could do was to offer him a job in his business. It started with one hire, but Doug had no idea he would end up hiring a dozen men from the same Afghan special forces unit. Doug talks to Andrea about what one person can do and how we can’t know the impact of our actions.

An experiment to allow women in Afghanistan to help U.S. special forces during combat raids was a full-fledged program by the time the American military pulled out of the country in 2021. Sergeant Rebekah Edmondson was there as the Cultural Support Program began and Americans started training women from Afghanistan to became soldiers as part of the Female Tactical Platoon. In a candid interview, she gets honest about the challenges of developing trust across different cultures and under pressures of war. Now she feels a personal responsibility to make sure these Afghan soldiers are supported in America. Rebekah’s work continues now with the PenFed foundation to assist these women who were allies to the U.S.

As refugees living in the US, Nazifa and her sister founded a non-profit organization called HOPE for Afghanistan, which funded education for girls and women in their home country. But when the Taliban took power in 2021, everything they had been working on collapsed overnight. The students and teachers they were supporting risked death if they tried to continue their quest for education. It seemed as though their efforts had reached a dead end, but Nazifa and her sister have found a way to quietly keep HOPE for Afghanistan going. This is the story behind that effort.

After more than a year in America, 5-year-old Ava - who we met earlier in the podcast - is still living with her aunts in Salt Lake City, while her parents remain in Afghanistan. The urgency to bring them to the U.S. is underscored by a terrifying visit by the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the family’s future in America, along with most of the Afghans who were evacuated to the US remains uncertain. They apply for asylum but don’t know whether they will get an answer before the temporary humanitarian parole allowing them to live in the U.S. expires. Will they be sent back to the country they fled for their lives? A volunteer in the neighborhood who they call “Mom” is determined to help the family. She joins forces with US military veterans and faith-based groups to advocate for passage of legislation in Congress. 

Also in this episode, we get updates on others we’ve been following in this podcast including Sima, the soldier from the Female Tactical Platoon. She meets a lawyer who volunteers to help her with her asylum application. And Sima gets an opportunity that is too good to pass up, but it means saying good-bye to the friends she’s made in Utah.

Americans know very little about the Afghan special forces known as the Zero Units who were instrumental to the war on terror in Afghanistan, but now they’re living among us in America. One of these Afghan veterans has a family of four with another baby on the way, and they are in desperate need of a home. A neighborhood pulls together to help them, even though it means moving them far from refugee services. The neighbors pour their time and energy into the family, with at least a dozen people helping them on a regular basis, and donations coming from all directions.

But what about all the other refugees who aren’t getting this help? We find another family in a similar situation. The father is a veteran who served in the Zero Units and they are also expecting a baby. But this family recently received an eviction notice, and they don’t know where they will live when the baby comes.

When thousands of Afghans arrived in US communities in a short time frame, the refugee agencies were challenged to meet the needs of the evacuees. It fell on regular Americans to try to fill in the gaps.

This story follows the efforts of two especially driven volunteers: one a former refugee herself, the other a stay-at-home mother of five. They reach the limits of what they can do alone, and try to figure out how to build a network big enough to meet all the needs they see. In the beginning, many people wanted to help, but as time goes by and other events take over the news, they find American attention and interest in Afghans is waning. 

Looking at a young woman in a headscarf quietly ringing up groceries at Walmart, you would never know the dramatic life she has lived. During the war in Afghanistan, the US military trained a small, elite force of Afghan women called the Female Tactical Platoon (FTP) to serve alongside American special forces on dangerous night raids of suspected Taliban homes and compounds.

These female soldiers had to keep their work secret, even from their own neighbors, because they were not safe in their own country. And when the Taliban took control, there was no plan in place to protect them.

That's when US soldiers - mostly women - who trained and worked with the FTPs decided they would have to be the ones to get this highly endangered group out of Afghanistan. They call themselves Sisters of Service.

This week on Stranger Becomes Neighbor, we follow the path of one remarkable Afghan soldier and the sisterhood that stands by her side. 

Their father killed by the Taliban, a girl and her family fled to Pakistan then America, but this happened more than 20 years ago. Now, Nazifa is using her own experience as a refugee to help hundreds of Afghans who were part of the mass exodus when the U.S. military pulled out of the country in 2021. But she is only one person and the need is immense. Who will step up to help?