Rescue in Afghanistan: A Veteran's Story

Most of our team are Christians, and we all just watch God orchestrate something that none of us are capable of doing, because what we did was not possible.

We have very high-level professionals and experienced people, but what happened is beyond explanation to get that many people out in that period of time with no one getting hurt on our team. This is Chad Robichaux, sharing about the amazing efforts behind the scenes in Afghanistan. He's our guest today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daley. I'm John Fuller, and we've all seen the news about the troubling, difficult circumstances in Afghanistan, and I do hope you're praying for our Christian brothers and sisters and other vulnerable people left behind after the recent evacuation from the country.

Now, as we go along, giving an insider's perspective on that situation, just be advised, parents, if you have younger children listening in, you may want to have them occupied elsewhere. John, I wanted to talk to our guest today because he's been on the ground. He's been in Afghanistan, eight tours with the Marines, and he's done an incredible thing here by getting many, many Americans and SIV visa holders out of Afghanistan, and I think it's going to be important to hear from him about what's going on, what motivated him as a veteran to get involved. But I think, most importantly, the spiritual element of what's going on.

There's a lot happening here, and it's not purely a political issue. There's so many things going on, and I wanted to get a firsthand report, again, from Chad, our guest, about what is happening and what he has observed about what is happening as a Christian and as a soldier. And Chad Robichaux is a former Marine with Special Forces. He's the founder of Mighty Oaks Foundation, which serves veterans. He's also been working with an organization called Save Our Allies, a coalition formed to help vulnerable Americans and allies and Afghan supporters of the U.S. Chad, welcome back to Focus on the Family. It's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me on, Jim. Yeah.

Let me give people, actually ask you to paint the picture of your background. You served eight tours in Afghanistan. You're in the Special Forces within the Marine Corps. Man, I'm in awe of you.

You are my man-guy. Well, yeah, I was very fortunate. I come from a military family. My dad served in the Marines in Vietnam, both my sons are Marines, and I get to serve as a force recon Marine. I was part of a JSOC task force, one of the Marines that got to represent the Marine Corps there in the JSOC task force, and I did eight deployments to Afghanistan in that capacity. And my job, I think, is really important for the conversation we're going to have. To understand my job was a little different, I was an AFO, Advanced Force Operator, so I embedded with Afghans and lived in these people's homes and with their families and learned the culture and played soccer with their kids and just really understood them to be the patriots they were to fight for the freedom of their country, for their children and their futures.

And also, you know, to support and believe in America's war on terrorism there. Yeah, Chad, that's one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you, because you're a believer, you serve the nation with such, I guess, nobleness, is the right way to say it, and courage. And you have been so connected to the action in Afghanistan as you described it.

That's why I really wanted to talk to you. And I think it's millions of people who are feeling like, man, what have we done here? And I don't want to focus on the politics of it, but the lack of honor and what's been done seems to shake so many of us at our core that it doesn't feel right. And I just wanted to hear it straight from your mouth as you're there and have been there eight times. And then you've gone back and we're going to get into that how you've gone back to save people and help them get out.

But I think just man to man again, what did that feel like to do it the way we did it? Yeah, it's, you know, I agree with you, Jim, I've been trying not to get into politics of it. But it just seems like when you just say what happened, it almost feels like a political leaning way. But it's just really not, you know, the thing that that happened here is we've been conditioned as a country to believe that we were in a 20 year war, and we needed to get out. Now, the motivation behind that could be, you know, opinion, but we'd be conditioned to believe that this was an endless war, we had to get out. The truth is, this wasn't a 20 year war, the war was over about three years ago, as far as US forces fighting the Taliban. We have been supporting an international coalition effort, the Afghan National Army to fight the Taliban on Bagham Air Base, we had at lowest point 2500 troops, but an average about 4000 troops there in the international community was all at Bagham Air Force Base, the most strategic location on the current global stage in the world between Iraq, Iran, China, Russia, Korea, you know, Syria, it's just such a strategic location. And it enabled us to go to have limited military presence there and support the Afghan National Army with the rest of the world to keep the Taliban and terrorism at bay, it was working. But we first mistake was to pull out in the way we did and give up Bagham Air Force Base the second was to pull out the military before the civilians before our American civilians before our Afghan allies to forfeit Bagham Air Force Base for the White House to stop Central Command from their effort to put the 82nd Airborne in and secure the airfield of Bagham Air Force Base was a huge mistake. And then the White House took the neo operation, which is a non combatant evacuation operation, the White House took it away from the Department of Defense in military, which is who is responsible for those operations, usually a j sock or SOCOM task force does the evacuation effort, but the White House believed that the military had too much of an emotional attachment to Afghanistan, and gave it to the State Department who has no experience no business running a neo operation. And that was a catastrophic mistake and failure that created a scenario to where the airport which is the last stronghold became begin to be treated like an embassy. If US citizens can make it on, they're safe if they can't, we're not going to do anything about it.

We're not going to go out rescue anyone. We're not going to our troops are simply security guards for the perimeter of that airfield. And there's there's this thing that was being told that we owned that airfield we control the airfield. But the truth is anyone that understands military strategy knows that whoever controls the outer perimeter really controls that space. And the US State Department allowed the Taliban not only allowed but coordinated with the Taliban to control the outer perimeter to be security checkpoints to check American citizens passports to make it in to the airport. And, and we know that Taliban without allowing that to happen.

Well, that's one of the best explanations I've heard so far. And Chad, again, it's so good to be able to lean on your experience there in the country and those connections that you made being at the front line really getting to know these families getting to know the culture, etc. Let me move to the motivation to get back in there in Afghanistan, you're retired. But you and some of your fellow veterans got together and decided we can help some of the people that we worked with get out of there.

Just describe that coordination, how you talked with others, how to, how did you come up with this idea to get in there and get some of these folks that you knew, worked with the US military and needed help? Yeah, well, if you read some old books, I talk about that I've written, I've talked about a guy named Bashir. And his name isn't really Bashir.

I hid his name from his protection. His name is Aziz. And Aziz was, and I worked together, really, oftentimes just the two of us through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and in the villages of, you know, tribal villages, and we became very close. In fact, he saved my life on multiple times and saved the lives of my friends.

And I've seen him, you know, courageously on the battlefield, you know, save other service members, especially as Special Operations guys. And so I developed such a heart and friendship for Aziz. We stayed in touch all these years. And we did eight deployments together. His family was close to me. And we were trying to get a special immigrant visa.

And the system was just broken, and it wasn't working. We've been trying for six years. And so when I've seen this start to deteriorate, about two months ago, I reached out to my buddy, Dan Stenson, who served with me on our task force and said, we have to go get Aziz and his family. And we decided to do that. So we had a little bit of forward kind of runway before this happened, because we were planning, put some money together, we worked some networking resources. And as it started to collapse really quickly, we began to hurry and start moving into how can we make this happen fast because Afghanistan's about to fall. In that effort of doing that, one of the other Special Operations guys that we had on our team, recognized there was about 3000 orphans.

And it just really moved our heart. And we said, if we're going to go get Aziz and his family, let's give these kids. And we went to the UAE government and asked for support.

We had some relationships there. And the UAE government, amazing, the crown prince, some military generals gave us their full support. They offered us any aircrafts we needed, a humanitarian center that would sit 4100 people and their airfield and all their military support. We brought about 12 Special Operations guys. We spread them out from a three man team on the ground in Afghanistan, outside the wire, one person inside the wire on the airfield to coordinate with the military. We had a team in Abu Dhabi and a joint operations center and a team in Washington DC. And so we executed a plan to reach out, let people know that we're going to do this. So we received about 30,000 emails for help.

We triaged it, categorized it between Americans, interpreters, Christians that were going to be persecuted, women, orphans. And we coordinated efforts. And we're on the ground for about eight days in Afghanistan. And we started with Aziz and his family. And at the end of when the death settled, we had rescued 8911 and coordinated the rescue of about 3,000 others.

That is amazing. And we just, I mean, it was one long day. All of our team, I'm so proud of them, slept an hour a day for two weeks. And it was just, and I can tell you, most of our team are Christians. And we all just watched God orchestrate something that none of us are capable of doing, because what we did was not possible. But even we have very high level professionals and experienced people. But what happened is, you know, beyond explanation to be able to get that many people out in that period of time with no one getting hurt on our team.

Well, it's amazing. And Chad, the thing about that, and you even were able to vet these people, you were able to make sure that the ones you're in contact with were actually people that helped the U.S. during the battles. And somehow you were able to accomplish that where the U.S. government couldn't.

That's the other shocking thing. Yeah, we, I'm told we have our group, which is, we kind of have two names for the group because the two different efforts we have was ComTF, which is Com Commercial Task Force. And they were Save Our Allies as the organization. And our task force on the ground was Task Force 6-8.

I might say a 6-8 here in my semi. But I'm told that our Task Force 6-8, that we were accounted for the most rescues in evacuation and most rescue personnel. In addition, we're second to only the military for evacuating people out. That's phenomenal. I mean, that is phenomenal. That is a miracle. It really is.

It really is. And, you know, I'm the person getting to talk to you in the phone right now, but I could tell you I'm just representing, you know, some of the most amazing professionals and bravest people that I've ever got served with this week, including some of the Afghans that didn't want to leave, that chose to stay there. And some of them are still there. They chose to stay there to help us with this, forfeiting their own ticket out.

Yeah, I want to ask you about that, Chad. In terms of what we're seeing in the news, I mean, so often you don't get a full picture from just watching a 30-second bite on the news. Describe more fully, you mentioned Christians that most likely will be persecuted. What does the cultural landscape look like with the U.S. military gone? What will ISIS-K and the Taliban, what are they going to do, in your opinion, as an experienced soldier in that theater? Just genocide at the most grotesque level that you can imagine. We had firsthand testimony on the ground of people being crucified already, of, you know, people being burned alive. One guy had his U.S. ID card melted to his chest, arms cut off, hung by his neck and drugged by a vehicle. This is just a sheer brutality, and Christians will be immediately executed, particularly the Christians that we were targeting, because there were so many missionary efforts there, and there was a lot of converted Christians, and on their ID card, they had to put the word Christian on their ID card, so now they're identified. We know that they're looking on phones for Bible apps, and Bibles as they're searching houses, and anything they find like that is going to be an immediate execution. They're doing door-to-door executions now. Regardless what the media says, I haven't really been paying attention, but I'm talking firsthand testimony from people that we still have on the ground that didn't make it out because they were helping us.

There's already door-to-door executions taking place. It's horrible. You know, it feels so dishonorable, again.

It feels like we did not keep our commitments, we didn't do the right thing, etc., and it's just horrible to end it that way, when it could have been handled so differently and so much better, it seems. Chad, I do want to, I think in that context of those Christians, as a Christian man, as a soldier, looking at the whole thing spiritually, how do you get a handle on this? How do you try to understand the evil there is in the world? I remember talking to Mike Pompeo, he and I have developed a good friendship, and he mentioned to me that as CIA director, he said, I thought, as a Christian, I thought I knew what evil was until I saw what I saw in that role as CIA director, and evil is far worse than we realize. You've seen it firsthand, you know what's going on there.

How can human beings treat other human beings that way? Yeah, you know, it's kind of taken me back full circle to really a struggle in my faith and belief in God. When I was in Afghanistan last time, I got to witness this firsthand in the tribal regions of Afghanistan.

Now it is Afghanistan, but just to understand what humans do to other humans to grotesque impacts of evil when people live in these evil ideologies and raise their children in hate, and that's what these madrasas will do moving forward. And so for me, as a Christian, where I am today and understand is just understanding that God is sovereign. Could God stop this from happening? Of course he could, but he allows it to happen. And this is one of the things I don't think we'll ever understand why God allows it to happen, but he does, and he's in control. And being a little older now and having had a lot of these life experiences, what I have seen is that when God does allow it to happen and we don't understand, we always at the end of it see a work and a fruit that comes from it that we could have never seen in the darkest times. And I just know that God has a plan for this, for allowing this to take place, despite the horrific things that are going to happen to people. You know, we as humans look at life with a time stamp on this planet, but God sees things eternal.

No, it's so true. And I think Romans 8.28, which again, you see it from an entirely different perspective than most of us that have never been in warfare, that haven't been on a battlefield, that haven't seen atrocities committed the way that you've seen them. And I can imagine it is much more difficult to embrace Romans 8.28, which says, you know, all things work for good to those who love the Lord and are called by his name. But I think in the end of that, Chad, it's about eternity with him, that this is an 80, 85-year run, and then it's over, and then we're with the Lord in eternity.

And that may be that all things work for good, if we learn those lessons and continue to trust the Lord, which sometimes it's hard to do. I can't imagine. One of the things, Chad, you've been very committed as a person who has suffered from PTSD. You have been an outspoken advocate for mental health for those suffering from PTSD. Speak to that passion for a minute.

Explain what it is. Some people don't even really understand what happens to a person in battle. Yeah, you know, after my deployments and coming home, I was diagnosed with PTSD. I dealt with, for a period of three years, I dealt with debilitating panic attacks, to where I literally would feel like I was going to die.

Anxiety, depression, frustration, extreme anger towards my family and anyone that loved me and people closest to me. And it ended in a near-divorce. And not only that, but I ended up nearly becoming a veteran suicide statistic by attempting to save my life.

And thankfully, if you guys don't know, if your listeners don't know, the veteran suicide rate is over 20 a day. And I was almost one of those statistics, and my wife and some amazing people came around me and helped move me forward in a recovery process. And the most influential thing in my recovery was the restoration of my faith and then the discipleship of a local man in my church, who really helped me to calibrate my life intentionally to the life that I believe I was created to live, through kind of calibrating the biblical principles. And through that process, I found restoration, I found hope, and I found a new purpose.

And that purpose manifested. God put a deep burden on my heart to share what I discovered with other veterans. And so about 10, 11 years ago, we started Mighty Oaks Foundation, and since then, I've been able to speak to 250,000 active-duty troops, written several books. I've given away about 150,000 books to the troops. And then we have recovery programs that we do about 35 camps a year.

They're one-week-long. They're faith-based, peer-to-peer mentoring programs, followed by Aftercare. We've had 4,000 graduates, but we do about 1,000 per year now, and we pay for everything.

It's about $4 million a year in programming. We pay for their flights, we pay for all their training, we do the spouses programs, and it's just been an incredible experience. Because of the successes we've had through faith-based programs, I've been able to testify to the World Congress, and President Trump appointed me to be the chairman of the White House Faith-Based Coalition during his administration.

We really lead efforts within the DOD and VA to change policy to bring faith solutions in our veterans' care system. And so it's been just an amazing journey. It's such a blessing to be able to give that back. And I'll tell you, Mr. Jim, when I was getting on that plane to head back to the Middle East, the last time I had been to Dubai, flown to Dubai Airport, I was leaving there in the most horrific level of panic attacks that you could ever imagine. Like, I literally felt like I was dying. I had a bunch of valium in my system to try to calm me down. And so to head back there this time, it hit me, like, I'm about to go back into what I came from, full circle these years later. And I just prayed to God, like, God, let me stay stable, let me stay steady, let me be able to do what you're calling me to put in the burden of my heart to do right now. I just prayed that I wouldn't have any anxiety, any stress, that I'd be able to function at a high level, and use my skills and experience that He's allowed me to have to help these people. And it's been the most remarkable testimony, because I'm on the ground for 14 days straight, sleeping literally one or two hours a day. And my wife's worried like, Are you okay?

Are you okay? And I'm like, I've had zero anxiety, like not one bit of anxiety, not one bit of stress. I felt so clear, so focused. I believe God just spared me of that resurfacing.

Not only has it been healed to that, but there's been times that have had anxiety and stress over the last years. And He's scared me of that during this time to focus on the work that we went there to do. Well, that I mean, Chad, I could feel it, I sense it. And that had to be an amazing experience. But you know, what a noble thing to do what an honorable thing to do you and your colleagues that were able to get over 12,000 people out of Afghanistan the way you did. And in such short notice, those eight days that you worked tirelessly, literally to get those people out.

I'm thinking of those 20 soldiers a day, those vets that are taking their life, we have an audience of active and veteran military, if there's that person who's listening, Chad, what would you say to them right now? You know, especially right now with so many people trying to reconcile this veterans, like did I do this for nothing? Did I lose my legs for nothing? Did I lose my mind for nothing?

Did I lose my friend, my family member like for nothing? It's a very tough time to reconcile it. And there's answers to those questions. And you don't have to figure them out alone. Like, you don't have to do this alone. You're never meant to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. There's people who care about you who love you that want to help you get through this. You know, programs like Mighty Oaks Foundation, you go to Mighty Oaks programs.org.

Sign up on our website, we'll have somebody contact you and help you answer those questions. They'll be moved navigate through this. And, and, you know, by the way, it doesn't cost anything. And people love you and are going to be there for you. You just have to let us know. That's awesome. And Chad, I hope the focus listeners will help support you as well and be a part of that team to help people. Chad, you mentioned your family and your wife, Kathy, your kids, your two sons who are Marines. Today's your daughter's wedding. And you've taken some time out of this important day on focus on the family. No less I got to tell you remember focus on the family.

But today's that day. And when you look at it, buddy, I mean, think of that. Think of where you were in the depths of despair, literally and thinking about ending your own life. And now you're going to stand with your daughter.

I mean, it chokes me up thinking about it, my friend. And that's what life is about. That's what God is about. God is a God of life.

That's why we battle the way we do for the preborn and the aged. But you're going to stand next to your daughter today and give her away. And man, I'm just so proud of you. I'm proud to be a friend. And thank you for all that you've done. And I hope you have the most amazing day today. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you to all your listeners, too. Yeah, God bless you. God bless you.

God bless you. John, I mean, you can hear that emotion in me. And, you know, from my perspective, this is the nitty gritty of life.

This is where it all kind of meets the road. And to hear from Chad, to hear from him on this very important day in his life himself with his daughter's wedding is remarkable. And I'm so grateful to him and all the colleagues that helped him accomplish this incredible heroic feat of getting over 12,000 people out of the country.

Wow. I mean, that just deserves our respect. And I think the main thing here, man, it just touches me that when you think of family and him getting to know those families and the families he worked with in Afghanistan to help the US accomplish its mission to hopefully rid the world of terrorism, you know, it's going to be debated the actions that we've taken if they were right or wrong. But man, I just so respect him for really reflecting the heart of God, respecting life in every circumstance.

And it's an awesome thing to talk with him. Remember Mighty Oaks Foundation, what they're doing, we'll link to that at our website. John will give you details about that in a minute. But what an honorable organization to take care of these people. Also, I don't want to miss what Chad said there at the end about those veterans. We know a lot of veterans and their families listen to focus on the family. We love and respect you. And Chad mentioned that horrible statistic of 20 soldiers a day taking their own life.

We don't want that to happen. And if we can play a role in helping you call us we have caring Christian counselors who can pray with you and point you in the right direction. They can connect you with Mighty Oaks Foundation and with other groups that are helping veterans in that space. You're not alone and we want you to know that. So get a hold of us here at Focus on the Family. And also I want to mention what Chad talked about throughout the program, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's the ground floor. And if you don't know the Lord, if you've been confused and don't understand where things are going in this world, we would like to introduce you to the Lord. And it will change your life forever.

I mean forever. And we want to be a part of that. So call us and talk to us about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.

And we'd be happy to talk. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Ask to schedule a time with one of our counselors or request that coming home booklet that Jim just described. Also, we're going to have a link to Chad's organization, Mighty Oaks Foundation. This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. And as Jim said, we want to remember the many veterans who are suffering in these difficult days and offer them our support. Now, if you'd like to learn more about the rescue operation that Chad talked about in Afghanistan, it's called Save Our Allies. We'll link over to that at our episode page as well. And finally, please continue to pray for our brothers and sisters, our Christian brothers and sisters and other vulnerable people, many of whom are in grave danger and torment right now in Afghanistan. Pray for God's mercy and protection and that God will reveal himself and also do so to those who need to know him. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back tomorrow as we once more help you and your family thrive on each other.