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Mike Drop

Afghan Refugee Turned Marine & Green Beret | Ep. 266 | Pt. 1

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Documentary, Politics, News

4.96.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 115 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Episode 266 of the Mike Drop Podcast, Mike Ritland sits down with Kawa Mawlayee—the first Afghan-born Green Beret—for a raw talk on war, immigration, and identity. Kawa recounts fleeing Soviet-invaded Afghanistan, losing his father, and growing up as a refugee in Nebraska before serving 21 years across the Marines and Army, including Iraq’s invasion and the battle of Fallujah. They dive into today’s immigration crisis, where Kawa contrasts his own integration with the current border chaos and even imagines how he’d fix ICE. From Fallujah’s brutality to the moral injuries of endless wars, Kawa reflects on leadership failures, resilience, and the cost of service—told with the blunt honesty only veterans share. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:28.6

My family's from Afghanistan. In 79, the Russians invade Afghanistan. And that's when everything

0:35.6

kind of changes for Afghans. People start leaving.

0:38.3

If you're not leaving, you're more likely getting killed by the Russians, you're getting displaced.

0:43.3

You know, same old stuff that happens now. My father, he was, he got killed by the Russians.

0:49.3

That was the kind of like the straw for us, that the last straw for us, we were like, we're getting out of here to come to the U.S.

0:57.0

Being in Afghan in the Midwest, I couldn't have told that I was even Afghan.

1:02.0

I never got discriminated against. I never, no one ever looked at me funny.

1:06.0

No one ever said, oh, you're a Muslim. I got none of that growing up.

1:10.0

I started developing like a

1:11.9

really a really big overwhelming sense of gratitude by the time I got to high school

1:16.9

I wanted to join the military and kind of paid back to the country that took us in

1:20.9

that was America back then where we were actually like bring us your you're tired

1:25.0

your poor you're hungry and we we have a system to

1:27.9

integrate them into our society so that they become American citizens and a

1:31.1

productive member of society but I don't think we have that system in place and

1:34.4

it hasn't been there in a long time what do you think the solution is let's say

1:38.2

you know Trump calls you tomorrow and says hey you're you're now the director of

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