Story In The Public Square Podcast

Soldiers know what it means to keep the faith—a character trait valued in others given the grim realities of fighting on distant battlefields.  Shafo Sahil and Matt Waters know the bond borne of shared battlefield experience and can help us understand what recent Hollywood portrayals got right and what they got wrong. Shafo Sahil was an interpreter who was assigned to work as a Special Forces interpreter and completed over 100 missions in Afghanistan, including one where he saved for Matt Waters’ team from an IED. Sahil grew up in rural Kabul and was a good student who dreamed of going to college but sought work as an English teacher to help support his family after high school. After the Taliban tried to bomb his school, he decided to work as an interpreter to help defend his country from insurgents. As the U.S. prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan, they laid off interpreters and Sahil went back to work as a teacher. The Taliban started sending him death threats, and he went into hiding when they began sear