WarGuy

War killed my family—then it recruited me.

I was born into a war that never ended. It only changed uniforms. The Cold War did not stay on TV for my family. It showed up at our door. Soviet helicopters took two members of my father’s family. The militias unleashed against them took five from my mother’s. At nine, I watched my last uncle get shot. Years later, the Taliban took another cousin.

In the 1990s, Kabul became rockets and rubble. Our home was destroyed. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, we fled to the mountains. After 9/11, American B-52s lit our sky while my father fought below. At sixteen, I began working alongside U.S. forces against the same extremists who had hunted my family. I made it to America and built a new life.
Then Kabul fell. My family was trapped behind Taliban lines as thousands flooded the airport. Twenty years after American bombers opened the sky above us, a C-17 became our only way out. 

WarGuy is the true story of a boy born into war—who survived it, joined the fight, and faced one final mission: bringing his family home.