Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban

This week’s book of the week was one of my last pre-orders before my book buying hiatus and since it’s still largely current events, I wanted to review it sooner rather than later. Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban by Chad Robichaux with David L Thomas.

For those who do not know who Chad Robichaux is, he is a force recon marine who served 8 tours in Afghanistan and during every single one of his tours, his translator was Aziz. Now, Robichaux outlines just how, over the course of 8 lengthy deployments, he and Aziz developed this very strong bond. It was not JUST as co-workers and a friendship of convenience. Given the operations Robichaux was a part of, Aziz was also required to undergo military special operations training, a lot of that training directed by Robichaux’s team, who wanted to work with Aziz specifically because of his personality and leadership qualities.

Then in 2007/8 Robichaux went into a mental stress spiral that left him with severe PTSD and he was immediately pulled from Afghanistan. From then on, their contact became social media only. Not that their bond had in anyway diminished, but because Robichaux’s clearances for work did not allow close and continuing contact with a foreign national, especially one from Afghanistan, where the Taliban was still hotly acting up.

And during this time Robichaux went through some massive downs before finding his feet and creating the Mighty Oaks Foundation, which is a faith-based organization whose mission is to help veterans who are struggling with PTSD find their way through the challenges of life.

During basically this entire time, Aziz, who is highly wanted by the Taliban as a traitor for helping the American’s, has been trying to utilize the Special Immigration Visa (SIV) to which he is entitled as an ally who provided invaluable help to our troops. And because the bureaucratic red tape is not actually designed to help anyone, only to hinder, 6 years later, Aziz is still waiting for his visa to be approved. And because the Taliban would not just stop at murdering Aziz, the hit list is for his entire family, including his wife and 6 children. Who all need safe harbor out of Afghanistan.

Now, that’s the meat and potatoes of what leads up to the April 2021 troop withdrawal announcement President Biden made. Which painted fresh targets on the backs of every single one of our allies in Afghanistan.

But really, I’m not doing this justice. This book ripped me up. Introductioncried from Glenn Beck’s introduction through the Conclusion. I had to keep putting it down to give myself a break from the crying. Robichaux lays out in excruciating detail, detail the mainstream media goes out of its way not to discuss, just how evil the Taliban is. He tells us about an Olympic sized swimming pool the Russians built for their troops back in the 1980s that the Taliban repurposed into an execution pit.

He graphically describes how the Taliban treats prisoners and their lists of women to be given to Taliban fighters as rewards for services rendered. This, incidentally, is not guesswork. Similar stories, not strictly of the Taliban but of Sharia law in general, were discussed in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book last year. And general treatment of women in the book by Mona Eltahawy.

So, with this background of the atrocities of the Taliban, and knowing how the danger to Aziz and other allies had skyrocketed with Biden’s announcement of unilateral withdrawal, basically giving the keys to the kingdom to the Taliban, Robichaux knew Aziz’s time was out. So, he started pulling together a team and they formed a second non-profit with the direct and apt name of Save Our Allies. Aziz was their specific target, but they knew there were literally thousands of people who had helped our military over the 20 years we were in Afghanistan. And all of them needed safe evacuation NOW.

Robichaux outlines their vetting process and remains rightfully confident that no bad faith actors have entered the United States through the efforts of Save Our Allies and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

However, he goes into great detail of what an unmitigated clusterfuck the entire withdrawal was, including that the airport in Kabul was under the auspices of the State Department, not the Department of Defense, which added to the chaos, as there is no diplomacy where Taliban is involved. He points out that when the Dept of State opened the airport gate to allow refugees in, it was the ones at the front of the line…usually healthy young men… who were able to push in and board planes. And while the NGOs who were doing their own vetting flew the refugees to secondary locations, called lily-pad locations, the Dept of State flew their plane loads of refugees directly to the United States. Draw what conclusions you will from that shit show.

He describes in horrifying detail how women would crowd surf their babies to the gates at the airport hoping to at least get their babies out. Of babies thrown over the wall, hoping someone would catch them on the other side. This…never ended well.

He also discusses the incident Tim Kennedy did in his book, Scars and Stripes, of the base commander who turned a fully loaded bus away rather than taking a minute to check their documents, essentially condemning 30-40 blue passport US Citizens, as well as the allies who were on the bus, to their fate with the Taliban. If you don’t know, blue passport means civilian US Citizen. They should 100% have been allowed in. Robichaux also includes the gratifying information that the base commander was relieved of command and the incident is up for review with I think with a Senate sub-committee.

Good.

The lily-pad locations mentioned above include a massive amount of help from the royal family in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In fact, I was blown away by how much help the royal family provided. This truly was a cross cultural, interfaith effort to save people in need of saving. And some seriously good people stepped up to do the job our government would not.

And after a long time in the refugee camp in UAE, Aziz made it to America, and now works with Robichaux at Mighty Oaks Foundation.

This book was so good. I’m not kidding when I say I cried throughout the whole thing. I cried in horror, in sorrow, in joy, and in shame. Horror at what the Taliban does. Sorrow for those who could not be saved. Joy for the incredible success that was achieved…something like 12,000 were airlifted out during the like three weeks they had to perform evacuations before the Taliban completely overran the airport. And absolute shame at the American Government for their complete failure to protect those who helped us, who sheltered our troops while they were there. And I cried in compassion for Aziz and the thousands of refugees who will likely never see their homeland again.

If you want to understand just how awful Afghanistan was…but also how beautiful and consequently how tragic the Taliban takeover is, then this is an excellent resource, from a man on the ground perspective. And from a man who understands of which he speaks, is not just reporting approved talking points.

One note: Because of the jobs he’s held, not just with the Marine’s but also as a government contractor, Robichaux had to submit his manuscript to the department of Defense for redaction of any classified or controlled information. I’ve read books like this before, and I just want to say mad props to the editors. The books I’ve read in the past where they left the black bars of redacted information in as kind of a “see how shocking it is, the amount of information being withheld” stunt made the book virtually unreadable. THIS book, they left the censorship notes in place, but reworded the paragraph around it so it still makes sense. Basically, the bars let you know there is more information that might flesh out background, but the story remains intact. In complete, legible sentences. So, thank you for that, editors.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on February 12, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.