The Trump administration is moving to force Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. military either back to the war-torn nation or to the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C), veterans and refugee advocates say. Those Afghans have been stranded at a former U.S. military base in Qatar since 2021, and fear imprisonment and execution by the Taliban’s government if they are pushed back to Afghanistan.
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On March 13, multiple Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in unmarked vehicles surrounded Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal in front of his home in Texas as he prepared to drive his children to school. The 41-year-old father of six children, who had served alongside the 3rd Battalion of the U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan, died in ICE custody the next day, leaving his family in shock…
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“I don’t know when I will be able to contact you again.” my cousin Ahmad told me during a WhatsApp call from Tehran last summer, in the midst of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. “Maybe it wasn’t wise to come here. Afghanistan would probably have been safer.” For days, his internet connection had stopped working. Eventually, a privileged neighbor shared their Starlink satellite internet…
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President Trump’s catastrophic decision to plunge the US into a war with Iran is following a depressingly familiar playbook to those who lived through—and those who served in—the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with military veteran, author, and peace activist Rory Fanning—who served two tours in combat as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan—about the reality of what the US military has done in the Middle East, and about the veterans who are speaking out against the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Guests:
Rory Fanning is a war resister, military counter recruiter, and writer living in Chicago, IL. Fanning served two deployments with the Second Army Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan, and he is the author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America.
Credits:
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. As the insanity of this Trump-Hegseth War with Iran intensifies, we’re going to bring you a conversation today and hear an analysis of what we face from a man who knows our military, who fought in it, and that stands the danger of wars that have no meaning of than pulling us deeper into a quagmire that endangers our future. Roy Fanning did two tours in combat as an army ranger in Afghanistan. He wrote an amazing book entitled Worth Fighting For: An
The aftermath of the November 26, 2025, shooting in Washington, D.C. has underscored yet again that we live in a white supremacist world where people of color are target practice for racist leaders, and where the actions of one are enough to incur collective punishment against all. As Emran Feroz laid out in his recent Truthout op-ed, abundant evidence suggests that the suspected shooter…
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After two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. last week, several U.S. pundits and politicians were quick with their descriptions of the alleged attacker. They erroneously assumed that he brought his “culture” or “society” to the United States. “You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies… At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the…
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