The Untold Story of the Afghan Women Who Hunted the Taliban

In the narrow kitchen of the girl-a-a girl in Pittsburgh, out of the customer’s line, there are a few 26 years old women in a hijab making chicken sandwich. He looked up every few seconds to check the drive-thru screen. Bip sounds insist, like a hospital heart rate monitor, detailing every new custom order for him to gather: no cheese, yes meat, no tomatoes. He folded every lettuce leaves so that it covered under the bread, just like that. His colleagues knew him as a quiet employee with limited English learned quickly. It was impossible to explain, almost never happened.

About this story: To protect the identity of several subjects, we have changed the name or removes the last name if necessary, as noted in the text. We have also blurs several faces in photographs to protect their identity which is still in sensitive roles in the US military or those who are afraid of retaliation from the Taliban.

A year ago, Nahid escaped from the US military chinook helicopter into remote compounds in the middle of the night, carrying M4 attack rifles and scan the horizon through the green fog vision of the night, looking for the Taliban target and ISIS. He did several midnight attacks, along with green berets, sea dogs and army guards. One night, a grenade thrown out of the second floor window killed three Afghan men’s soldiers stood nearby. He stood after a wounded American soldier, shot the darkness to ward off further attacks, praying for his survival, until air support arrived.

And then, six months ago, he boarded a C-17 military cargo plane from Kabul, sat on the floor with hundreds of his people, towards American life that he didn’t really ask, but thank you.

For six years, Nahid was known as a brave and very effective soldier, part of the secret unit of Afghan warriors of women made and trained by U.S. Special operation. In a country where most women did not leave the house without male escort, the unit, a tactical platoon woman, worked with elite strike forces, did work that was not able to be done by men’s soldiers in Muslim countries:

Looking and questioned women and children missions High at night. From the moment the platoon was founded in 2011 until the fall of Kabul in 2021, women did around two thousand missions.

And now he is here. One of the 39 members of the female tactical platoon which will be evacuated to the United States in the chaos that follows the fall of Kabul in August.