Hello again everyone!
It has been sometime since my last update: while we have been quiet recently, we have been far from idle.
Our August event in Georgetown was a resounding success, and brought together Afghans, veterans and volunteers from every conceivable background. For those who were not able to attend, you can view it in full or in select excerpts at our YouTube Channel
On the operations front, we are typically selective of what we share. However, it has hardly been a secret that flights were shut down for an extended period of time. I am happy to say that they now moving, and we are once again fully operational! In the next two weeks we are expecting that three families will immigrate to the US- this on the heels of one of our more personal successes, which saw “Mohammad” and his family relocated to Washington State.
I always do what I can to to promote what the NMRG have done for US Forces, and Mohammad personifies exactly why. In a 2018 operation in Western Afghanistan, Mohammad effectively tackled Dave (1208’s Deputy Director) to prevent him from stepping on an IED’s pressure plate. It was later discovered that the IED included multiple 155mm artillery shells: enough to essentially atomize Dave, and kill a significant number of the Green Berets who were there that night.
Those who follow us might be familiar with a new initiative we are developing: a consortium between our NGO ecosystem and the private sector. This is predicated on the fact that while multinational aid organizations have been hobbled by the Taliban for two years, the 100+ "micro-NGOs" like ours are largely unconfined by such constraints. With a few stakeholders and a mechanism to enhance collaboration between NGOs, there is an unprecedented opportunity to drive innovation in decentralized humanitarian operations. There will be much more to follow on this account in the months to come; disruption is something of a specialty for 1208, and we want to make the most of that.
We have some exciting things in the works, and I look forward to highlighting them as soon as they become public. In the meantime, I encourage you to support our efforts by contributing to our humanitarian mission or simply by sharing our success as widely as possible.
Until next time,
Thomas Kasza
Executive Director