Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name's James Gearing, and this week it is my

absolute honor to welcome on the show, Rasul Rasek. Now, Rasul is arguably one of the most powerful

voices of hope for his native country of Afghanistan. For many of us, we were acutely aware of the

conflict in his country lasting 20 years and equally aware the rapid withdrawal

that occurred a couple of years ago. But sadly, the plight of the Afghan people has recently

been forgotten by many. So the purpose of this conversation is not only to educate us of how

his country was before the Soviet invasion, lead us through that conflict, the civil

war, the events after 9-11, the withdrawal, and most importantly what is going on now.

Whether at the hands of oppressors or simply hunger and cold, people are still dying in droves. So I urge you to listen to his

powerful message, share this conversation, and ask yourself simply, how can I be part of the

solution? So with that being said, I introduce to you, Rasul Rasek. Enjoy.

Music to you, Rasul Rasek. Enjoy. Well, Rasul, I want to start by saying,

firstly thank you to E.J. Katerson for connecting us.

And secondly, I want to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.

Pleasure to be here.

And thanks for having me. E.J. is a great friend of mine and I appreciate you guys. Hope me up to be on your podcast. So we're going to paint a picture of some of the

history of Afghanistan and then we're going to walk through to, you know,

really the last couple years when we all withdrew, the Allied forces withdrew, it kind of fell

off the radar when it came to the storytelling. The Ukraine, for example, seems to have a lot more

airtime at the moment, but the Afghan people are still suffering. So I want to make sure that we

kind of paint the story, the backstory of the country of Afghanistan,

and so you can kind of lead us through and educate us,

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