Journal 2 | The Fireside Journal

"NO FUTURE FOR MY SON" ANTI-SLAVERY BLITZKRIEG

Yemen's W ar on Boys

The SDF Liberation of Shaddadi

EDUCATION FOR ALL 1 1 1

Improving The Lives Of W omen In Afghanistan Jou rn al 2

CONTENTS JOURNAL 2 | October 2018 4 | A Quick Update The Nazarene Fund

Welcom e.

TheFiresideJournal is an online magazine focused on frontline humanitarian interest topics from around the globe. Our online editions are free and always will be.

EAST ASIA 10 | Just Another Day in a Warzone The normalization of oppression

38 | Operation Underground Railroad An interview with a slave hunter

M IDDLE EAST

PHOTOGRAPHY

16 | No Place For my Son Yemen's war on boys

6 | Suhanna Photograph

by The Fireside Journal

26 | Anti-Slavery Blitzkrieg The SDF liberation of Shaddadi

24| Tattered Kites Photograph by Ephraim Mattos

Be brave. Be kind. Be free.

Our motto guides the kind of content we share with our readers and the kind of advertisements we allow from our sponsors.

34 | Education for All How Pashtana Durrani is improving the lives of women in Afghanistan

Subscribe for free at thefiresidejournal.com

Follow on social media

Send us a message by visiting thefiresidejournal.com or by direct message on social media.

All content here-in is copyrighted by The Fireside Journal, LLC, and affiliates and is subject to our Terms & Conditions. All rights reserved.

2

14 | Red Ber et s Photograph by Hollie McKay

Cover Photo: A group of men gather around a Yemeni boy whose arm was amputated. Photo courtesy of Hollie McKay

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader , W elcome to the TheFiresideJournal. I'm truly glad to have you with us!

Last month, we released our very first issue of TheFiresideJournal and the response we received from our readers was overwhelming. We received messages of congratulations and messages of gratitude and many reached out wanting to contribute. I am both humbled and honored that so many would join me in this incredible project by reading, sharing, and contributing. I look forward to seeing what the future holds and sharing that journey with each of you.

This month, we've upped the ante with more excellent articles and brilliant photography from humanitarians around the world.

First, we have an article about how war can become 'normalized' for civilians after decades and generations of armed struggle.

Next, we take a journey through the Middle East by looking at the effects of the war in Yemen on the young men of the region, we share a story about a British man who volunteered to fight ISIL in Syria, and we highlight a woman who has dedicated her life to educating the children of Afghanistan.

Lastly, we have an incredible interview with a man who goes undercover to find and rescue slaves around the world.

As always, it is my sincerest desire that you are not only educated and entertained by The FiresideJournal, but more importantly, you're inspired to give and help others in your own life and that, you too, will live by the motto: ?Be brave. Be kind. Be free."

Thank -you for r eading and shar ing TheFiresideJournal.

W ith Sincer est Gr atitude, Ephr aim Mattos Founder and CEO

3 1

3

A Quick Update.

OUR MISSION To liberate the captive, to free the enslaved, and to rescue, rebuild and restore the lives of Christians and other persecuted religious and ethnic minorities wherever and whenever they are in need.

The Nazar ene Fund is having a r ecor d year and we?ve made a positive impact in some of the darkest places on earth. We?re on track this year to save a little over 14,000 Yazidis and persecuted Christians from Iraq and Syria. We've already identified another 19,000 people who need our help next year as ISIS continues to operate in the mountains and deserts of Syria. In July, more than 200 people were slaughtered in a coordinated attack by ISIS fighters. The attack was a grim reminder of the evil that still exists in the region., but we must not relent in the face of adversity. The Lord says in Proverbs 24:11 ?Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.?This is exactly what we?re doing and we will not stop until the innocent are no longer killed. Thank s to the faithful suppor t of our incr edibl e donor s, w e?r e abl e to car r y out our mission.

In addition to the above, we shut down two organ-harvesting farms in Northern Syria, where organized criminal networks and Islamic State members prey on poor victims from refugee camps to harvest their organs and sell them in Eastern Europe and Gulf States. We need more financial support to pursue and stop these criminals It?s a long term process due to the complex political nature of the region, but we are moving forward.

Finally, this year we have begun working in Burma and are looking at opening up additional fronts in Niger, Cameroon, and South Sudan where people are being slaughtered every single day while the international community does little to help. Please join the fight by partnering with us at www.thenazarenefund.org.

@rudyatal l ah @RudyA tal l ah 4

W ith Love, "Rudy" Chief Operating Officer

TheFiresideJournal is proud to be associated with The Nazarene Fund, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Please visit www.thenazarenefund.org if you'd like to make 5 a tax-deductible donation to The Nazarene Fund. Thank-you!

5

Suhanna | Photo by The Fireside Journal / / Suhanna stands barefoot outside her home located in a slum in Kolkata, India.

6

7 7

COM

OCT OBER

CIT Y OF

H U M A N I T A R I A N W A R R I OR S

W RIT T EN BY FORM

EPH RA IM

AN T HE

#1 BEST - SEL L IN G

CO - A U

SCOT T M

AVAILABLE NOW FOR P 8

M IN G

R 23, 2018

F D EA T H

S I N T H E BA T T L E OF M OSU L

M ER U S N A V Y SEA L

M A T T OS

ND

U T H OR OF AM ERI CAN SN I PER

M C EW EN

PRE-ORDER 9 9

EAST ASIA

Just Another Day In A War Zone The Normalization of Oppression

By Nicholas Hel Kachin and nor ther n Shan states ? Total W ar Citizens by birth from within the deep jungles and mountainous valleys of northern Burma are under occupation by soldiers from their own national army. Various ethnic groups within two states, Kachin and northern Shan, guard historically claimed, resource rich lands against the Burma Army, which seeks those resources to fuel a perpetual war lasting almost 70 years. It is a war being fought across two states, in an area larger than South Korea or Ohio. Living under occupation is a day-to-day affair of frequent military checkpoints, soldier brutality, corruption and the military state in one?s life.

It is a war zone, and farmers, service sector workers, and officials are subject to an occupying military authority, or they might be one of the 100,000 plus people currently displaced in Kachin State by a Burma Army battle or pillaging raid. It is total war and it is a silent war.

Outmaneuver ing Gol iath, Today and Tomor r ow Burma Army soldiers from more than 100 battalions man checkpoints, patrol streets or jungle, and wage war against ethnic people.

They look at the Kachin and Shan and profile 10

them in suspicion of support to the covert resistance. Human rights monitors must travel in disguise to protect their lives and to tell the story of oppression to the world.

Saw Len traveled under the guise of a farmer seeking temporary labor across the state. For two days he rode in buses and cars west in Kachin State to receive training in reporting from an International Non-Government Organization (INGO) called Free Burma Rangers (FBR). The organization has a 25-year history in Burma of training locals to rescue civilians and provide food and aid relief in active conflict zones, as well as record human rights abuses. The report training emphasizes photo documentation and interviewing techniques of civilians for monitoring the army and telling the story of the oppressed.

Saw Len described his journey to the training location as uneventful when asked by the senior ethnic and foreign Rangers about his travels. He had made it to the training and that was enough for him.

The senior Rangers, however, wanted to know more. Saw Len was then asked about specifics of preparation for the journey, what he encountered on the way and if there were obstacles.

11 11

Mae La Refugee Camp on the Thailand-Burma border. Photo by Ephraim Mattos

The obstacles that Saw Len did share were many and deserve their own story in the broader narrative of living under oppression.

Before his departure, Saw Len had scrubbed his phone for compromising material, such as photos of family members in a militia uniform or pro-ethnic autonomy page likes.

Avoiding pro-democracy digital content is no easy feat when an entire ethnic population resents their occupiers, however, the Burma Army regularly disregards personal privacy and searches people?s photos and checks their Facebook photos, friends and media posts at checkpoints.

Checkpoints throughout northern Burma 12

are known to extort passersby and delay or halt movement. Hiding jewelry or cash is advised. Saw Len said he passed through many checkpoints over the two days of travel, though during this trip he encountered no delays because he paid the appropriate bribes. ?This happens every day,?he said. ?They are everywhere.?

Soldiers from Burma Army units rotate out every three months. There is opportunity to become familiar with some soldiers before they leave, though it is temporary. ?At some checkpoints the soldiers know me and they let me pass. But at other checkpoints if I am not known they will ask

for my ID card, where I came from and where I am going,?Saw Len said. ?I feel nervous with unfamiliar soldiers.?

his parents, his younger siblings, to all.

The trainer then emphasized the point that every aspect of the Burma Army?s occupation was relevant to report on, just like the more blatant human rights abuses by the army the Rangers are taught to document.

At checkpoints along the route he was scrutinized as a fighting-age male. The Burma Army has been ruthless, and a drunk Burma Army soldier in a bad mood is free to claim about Saw Len whatever connection he wants. The soldier is also free to extort or steal anything. Saw Len needed to be convincing that he was a laborer and deferential toward the soldiers at the zones of Burma Army and ethnic controlled areas he crossed, a network of pockets of control where bribes elicit permission.

The Ranger trainer stressed that a military presence isn?t a norm internationally and that all military intervention into civilian life is suspect.

A ceasefire in the north had maintained relative calm for 17 years, however, the Burma Army broke it in 2011 when Saw Len was 13. Now at 20, regularly helping displaced and desperate villagers is what Saw Len does when he isn?t farming for his family.

?It?s not normal in many countries to see soldiers every day,?one of the foreign Ranger reporters said. ?Do the security patrols make you feel safe??

?I would be very uncomfortable if one hundred soldiers patrolled past my home,?a foreign Ranger from the West said. ?And my people wouldn?t accept it either.?

?No,?Saw Len answered. ?And we have to pay bribes at the checkpoints.?

Despite the frequency of searches, risk of seizures, and general danger of travel, Saw Len, and even a few other Rangers, didn?t see their journey as exceptional or worth reporting. The in-between of home and destination became a routine risk.

Oppression had become normal.

In the training lessons, the instructing Rangers often concentrated discussion on the most egregious Burma Army attacks against civilians or of Burma Airforce strikes of villages. The need of civilians or activists to travel under cover, pay bribes at checkpoints, and risk death due to a soldier?s unwarranted suspicions, didn?t leap out to Saw Len as an Orwellian reality worth mentioning. It was all too familiar to him,

Neither does Saw Len, who has chosen not to join an ethnic army to fight for a self-administered state within Burma. He has chosen to be a Ranger and to report and provide relief to his people instead. And he has been trained that the corruption during the journey is just as important to document as the destination of ethnic equality in Burma. ?I just want to help my people,?Saw Len said. ?I want to own our lands and to not have the Burma Army be here and fighting.?

13 13

Editor's Choice Photo #3

Red Berets | Photo by Hollie McKay / / Yemeni soldiers wait in the back of a pick-up truck before moving to the front lines.

14

15 15

M IDDLE EAST

16

"No Future For My Son" Yemen's War on Boys

By Hollie McKay The ongoing war in Yemen has been characterized by bomb blasts and bloodshed, death and destruction. But it?s the silent scars, the suffering of the country?s young boys that perhaps poses the greatest obstacle to the country?s ability to ever bounce back. ?The most difficult thing is helping those who come from the battlefields having been sexually abused,?laments Dr. Mahyob Almechlatky, a psychiatrist at the Rehabilitation of Children Recruited and Impacted by W ar in Yemen Project in Ma ?rib, Yemen. ?Sadly, it is very common. A big number of students have faced this and we are trying to take away the shame.?

Around him, two dozen boys sit solemnly in a small classroom ? their heads hanging low, their meek frames defeated. Not only have more than half these children, aged between 12 and 15, been victims of such egregious violations since the war began but they are also grappling with having been forcibly recruited as child soldiers and made to commit heinous crimes against their own countrymen.

17

Every boy here has a painful story, each more tragic than the next. The Yemen war 17

has by all accounts, been a war on young males.

now lopsided and his mouth still swollen, ?They beat me.?

Khalil, 14, recalls with wincing clarity how one day he was playing outside with a friend when a man drove by and offered them a ride home ? only they ended up in a Houthi militia base. For three months, Khalil was ordered to perform various military tasks such as filling sandbags.

The Yemen civil war began in 2014 with an uprising lead by the Iran-backed, Shia minority Houthi rebels who swiftly took control of Yemen?s capital city, Sana?a and dethroned the Saudi-endorsed government.

Subsequently, the Saudi Arabia leadership formed an Arab alliance and in early 2015 entered the fray with an air campaign on its

?If I was too slow,?Khalil whispered, his face 18

rugged, impoverished neighbor.

child recruits ? such as stabbing them to death.

Omar Abdullah, 14, too was swept up from a playground outside his local mosque and for two months was abused. If he refused to undertake the commander?s orders, he was pummeled with the barrel of an AK-47 and starved into submission.

However, the Houthi leadership vows that under no circumstances do they force anyone ? let alone children ? to take up arms. ?Yemenis are like all other human beings, they love their children, and no one wants to send their kids off to the fighting zones. It is not easy to force someone below eighteen years old to fight,?insists Mohamed Abdel Salam, the spokesperson for the Houthi insurgency group, officially known as Ansar Allah ? meaning ?Helpers of God.??The truth is that Saudi Arabia is targeting children with their air jets and no one is talking about that. They are being killed in their houses, in the markets, while at school.

This isn?t just happening one or two times, but all the time.?

Finally, one of the ?Houthi supervisors? offered to sneak Omar out of the military center in exchange for the equivalent of $100. ?They put me between the corpses, the dead fighters, and for ten hours I could not move,?he remembered, fleshing out that fearful drive with vivid detail. ?Then when we arrived the supervisor said he would blow up my house if I did not give him the money. My family had no money, so I begged my neighbor who helped.?

And for Ahmed, 15, who still speaks in staccato as his eyes stare far off into the distance, he too was offered a ride home while herding his goats on the outskirts of Ma'rib. Before he could interject, he was hurled inside and his four-month hell with a Houthi militia began.

And when those fateful strikes occur, it is most often the young boys who can be seen in the aftermath ? their tiny backs bent over in the full-tilt of the Middle East summer sun ? digging graves to bury the dead against a soundtrack of civilians howling with grief, with hunger, with fear. Most recently, a botched Saudi strike hit northern Yemen?s Sada province and left 44 schoolchildren dead. Less than two weeks later, 22 more children were slain.

?They gave us the wrong information; they told us we were fighting ISIS,?Ahmed said. ?But when we?re fighting, my friend, who was a child like me, was killed next to me and I panicked.?

The tragedies have ignited renewed outcry from the international community and have called into angry question the U.S support ? in the name of targeting information, weapons sales and mid-air plane refueling ? for the Saudi-led coalition.

A local army unit attached to the Yemeni forces surrendered and took him to the sheikh of his local tribe for safe passage home.

Other children have been coerced into committing atrocities against their fellow

19 19

Nonetheless, the protracted Yemen conflict ? which has killed almost 7,000 civilians ? has dissolved into a blame game between the warring parties, with attempts by the United Nations to broker peace agreements between the Houthis and the Saudis falling through time and time again.

Yet as the diplomatic dance drags, the value 20

of the Yemeni rial continues descending against the dollar while fuel and food prices keep rising. Government salaries are no longer being paid to those trapped in the Houthi-controlled capital and jobs are next to impossible to come by. Beggars line the clogged streets ? and often it is the little boys who perhaps once dreamt of getting an education are instead sent out in desperation

Middle East even before the war, is something of a quiet place even when it is teeming with tragedy.

Outside another rundown building on the edge of Ma'rib, a few young boys hobble in silence. Each is missing a vital part of their body ? a hand, a leg, an arm. ?Sometimes I go to my office to cry for each of these miserable stories,?Dr. Haitham Ahmed Ali Ahmed, a Sudanese volunteer with Physicians Across Continents, tells me. ?It isn?t fair, but we do whatever we can to give them another chance.?

from dusk to dawn. They move from car to car, corner to corner, in the quest to bring home enough scraps to fend off a family?s hunger pains.

More than two-thirds of Yemen?s population of 28 million need aid, according to United Nations estimates.

The country, already the poorest in the

The boys themselves don?t cry, nor do they complain. The loss of a limb has become commonplace in the ongoing violence. The market for prosthetics has become so high that opening an in-house facility ? complete with a warehouse of materials and a workshop run by foreign professionals ? is a must. The special center opened in February last year and more than 300 hundred artificial limbs have since been fitted to 200 victims, predominantly young boys.

However, the materials often used in the factories across Yemen is said to be outdated, meaning that even small children have little choice but to be fitted with body parts that are heavy, hardly functional, and mostly for cosmetic purposes.

Accurate data is impossible to attain, but its assumed that more than a thousand minors are in need of a prosthetic. As for who to point fingers at, both sides are at fault. The Saudi alliance has been broadly accused of indiscriminate bombing, while the opposing Houthis stand accused on planting hundreds 21 of thousands of land and sea mines of which 21

22

children are all too often caught in that crossfire.

And at a nearby displacement camp, more such victims huddle together in the tent-dotted patches of dust. Several boys ? all of who were wounded playing with ?a toy?that turned out to be a mine ? vacillate between smiles and staring out into nothingness. Their lives are frozen in time, waiting for the stalemate war to end. The mere notion of a prosthetic limb for the displaced seems like a faraway luxury.

But perhaps the greatest miscarriages of injustice are on those who have not long been part of the world.

One baby boy?s eyes stare wide from his gaunt face, each of his ribs protruding out from beneath a layer of flaking, fragile skin.

Everyone heaves. Everyone?s skin is rubbed raw and blotchy. The war has seen the return of ancient diseases like cholera and diphtheria. Threats of every kind loom.

There is no safe place to go. ?There is no future here for my son,? whimpers the mother of the ailing baby. ?Sometimes I wish someone like you, from the outside, would take him away. To a place where there is hope.?

23

All photography by Hollie McKay 23

Tattered Kites | Photo by Ephraim Mattos / / Karen children play with their tattered kites in Mae La Refugee Camp on the T

24

hailand-Burma Border.

25 25

An

26

n t i- SLav er y BLit z k r ieg The SDF Liberation of Shaddadi Written and Photographed by Ed Nash

27 27

I was standing in a bombed out building on the edge of Shaddadi in northern Syria. The winter wind was howling through the smashed walls and I had been soaked during the night by a freezing rain so that I had had to seek shelter or risk suffering from exposure. I was tired, chilled to the core and hungry. But I was awake and alert, expecting an attack from the ISIL forces we had bottled up in the town.

At 0600, just as dawn was breaking, the truck came.

Screaming a warning I snapped my AK up to my shoulder; the safety came off in the same movement. I had my target in the sights. I was about to deliver a heap of problems to someone. *click* I swore viciously! The first round, which had been rattling around in every war zone since Vietnam, had misfired.

28

I racked the action to eject it and took aim again. The detached part of my brain monitoring the situation reported that the truck wasn?t heading towards us, but had turned left to follow the road out of town. It also appeared to be unarmoured, and had fighters watching over the sides. This wasn?t an attack. It was a breakout.

within ten seconds. Then I spun around and ran to the turn in the staircase, which had been blown open and from where I would be able to keep sight of the target for longer. As I went up the stairs three at a time I slammed a fresh magazine into the rifle and twitched the sights up to five hundred metres. I reached the top and snapped three more rounds at the rapidly disappearing truck.

This had all taken place in less than four seconds.

By now other SDF units were beginning to open fire and the truck roared away as quick as it could towards the ISIL positions further south. I heard later that it hit a mine our sabotage troops had laid as it made its mad dash.

As the truck started to pull away I laid into it with the Kalashnikov. Round after round punched into the vehicle and I could see the chaos among the men in the back. Some were trying to take cover while others were trying to figure where the fire was coming from, in order to return it. The truck accelerated hard, knocking all of them around like skittles.

It was February 2016 and I was part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) battle group that was responsible for liberating Shaddadi. I was one of a number of foreign volunteers that had joined the Kurdish YPG in its battle against ISIL and we were finally striking deep into the

I emptied that first mag, even on single shot,

29 29

enemy?s territory.

Shaddadi was a key town connecting ISIL territory in Iraq and Syria. It had also been a major trading centre for the slave trade, with many women and children being sold there, mostly Yazidis that had been captured when ISIL had overrun Shingal. Our intelligence briefing before the attack reported that many were still in the town and as such the SDF planned a flat out blitzkrieg to try to encircle the area in the hope of catching as many of the slaves and their ?owners?as possible in a pocket.

This we would have to liberate as quickly as possible as our intel also assured us that the ISIL commanders had issued edicts that in the event of imminent capture, any slave had to be murdered to prevent saving by the SDF. Needless to say, this information fired up all the

30

marked them out as unusual, but inside the floor was covered in a mass of soiled mattresses.

Huge quantities of condoms, spermicide, lubricants and antibiotics were strewn all over the place. It was here that the captured women were kept and used by ISIL fighters as they saw fit. Evidently they had been here in some numbers.

SDF troops and we had driven flat out to surround the town, fighting through the surrounding villages and across the wide plains of Syria as quickly as we could to try to get to the town and the people imprisoned there.

Alas, we arrived too late. ISILs defences had slowed us enough to allow the town inhabitants to flee, taking their slaves with them. We walked through the abandoned city, its streets littered with discarded equipment and documents blowing in the wind. Our wanderings, looking for ISIL suicide cells and intelligence, meant we soon came across just what it meant to be a woman captive of ISIL.

Carefully picking through the debris in the hope of finding some evidence of the identities of the women who?d been held, you could feel a palpable sense of evil in the air, like we were being contaminated by being in this place.

Perhaps it was the knowledge of what had happened here, the suffering and the misery, that was influencing my imagination, but it felt like a dark presence lurked and I began to feel a great and mounting rage deep inside. I wasn?t

We called them ?the rape houses?.

They didn?t look like much from the outside, though the heavier doors and window bars

31 31

the only one to be affected. My Kurdish team commander, generally a very calm and measured man, spat on the floor as we left. ?Daesh pĂŽs,?he snarled, a term indicating something is evil in a completely literal sense.

It was not the only discovery that we found that infuriated us. In many abandoned houses we found nooses hanging from the rafters. These had been placed ready to string up the unfortunate slaves so that we could not save them, should it look like their owners would not be able to spirit them away before our arrival.

I cannot begin to understand the thinking of those men we fought. ISIL had shown, and would continue to show, a complete disregard for any basic humanity that is simply beyond my comprehension. The willingness to deliberately target civilians, especially women and children, enslave and rape as they saw fit and actually boast of these crimes, is beyond me.

I suppose at an intellectual level I can understand the idea of the use of these methods as a ?terror?tactic, to overawe your opponents.

But it singularly failed to do that. Instead, it motivated the world to act and to fight against it.

W hen you are faced with true evil, what other choice do you have?

To read more about his experiences fighting ISIL in Syria, read Ed Nash's riveting war memoir DESERT SNIPER. Available now on Amazon.com.

32

33 33

Education for All How Pashtana Durrani is improving the lives of women in Afghanistan

By Justen Charters The room is dimly lit. Dozens of newspaper clippings hang from the walls. The Afghan girl sits, her face uncovered, her long black hair pulled back. There?s an inextinguishable fire in her eyes. At just twenty, she exudes confidence in a country where women are continually treated without dignity and denied basic privileges.

Fortunately, the girl in the dimly lit room, Pashtana Durrani, took notice of the injustices and suffering. And she couldn?t just ignore it.

She doesn?t care what kind of force she has to fight against to make a difference, either.

Durrani is determined to change things in her country that?s been marred by decades of war, poverty, and around-the-clock terrorism. A place that, for her, feels like it has yet to step into the modern age.

She pours all her energy and time into her project, LEARN. ?My work is totally based on quality of education, health clinics and health care, and zero hunger,?Durrani said.

A little over a year ago, is where LEARN?s story begins.

She drew her inspiration from Jordana, a girl in

34

a village that didn?t have access to school or other opportunities like those who live in Afghanistan?s more developed cities. ?This girl was in the house, reading books, learning English. People with privilege go out and study. This was something she wasn?t able to do.?Seeing this problem first hand, Durrani wanted to see what she could do to make things easier for Jordana and other girls in Afghanistan. ?I went on and did my survey. I got my hands on everything I could,?Durrani said.

W hat she discovered is that there were a lot more problems than just a lack of education for girls.

Photos courtesy of Pashtana Durrani ?In less developed areas, women are still dying from post-partum hemorrhages. Some girls are having early pregnancies or being forced into child marriages. If they live in Taliban controlled or conflict zones, they can?t go out, go to a hospital, or go to school.?

districts. To decrease the post-partum deaths for women where there aren?t health clinics, they?re taking an eye-opening and innovative approach. ?If a woman is having labor pains and there needs to be a delivery, we have midwives that are taking directions from doctors on mobile phones,?she said.

She continued, listing off other issues that aren?t being addressed by the international community at large. ?There are still acid attacks. W omen are also dropping out of school because of menstruation cycles. They can?t afford pads, and they can?t afford transportation. There is no development in these places.?

Durrani and her team are determined to change that, so they?re targeting the undeveloped

W ith the need for healthcare so dire, Durrani is making sure that they?re tackling the issue head on by helping people like Jordana obtain critical life skills.

35

?We are sending her to nursing-school in India.

After she is finished with her schooling, she plans to return to Afghanistan to work in the clinics,?she said.

35

36

they have to give half of their fruits and vegetables to the Taliban. The Taliban buys it for a cheap price. It?s supposed to help the farmer, but it doesn?t, it only gives the Taliban a bigger share,?Durrani said. W hat ends up happening is the farmers end up not having enough food to feed themselves and they starve.

W hen it comes to education for girls, the Taliban influence remains prevalent even in places where they hold no authority or power.

In some areas, they?re able to keep track of which women go to school and in others the local government has no interest at all in opening up a school for girls, according to Durrani. ?We want to reverse the cycle of Taliban control,?she said, ?So we are giving the children an education, so they don?t [become radicalized.?

In response, she?s fighting back in her own way against the Taliban without having to fire a shot. ?I empower the small-scale farmers. I buy from them. I sell at a decent price and pay them back.

I?m also working on an app that they can sell their fruits and vegetables on. You have to give them a guarantee that you?ll be buying from them. It helps to continue to stop the terrorism chain when it comes to [commerce and business]. And it helps the farmer,?she said.

W hen asked how long she has been involved in the kind of work she is doing, Durrani turns back the clock a lot further than one might anticipate. She was seven, living in a refugee camp near Quetta, Pakistan. W hile boys were able to go to a nearby school, she wanted the same thing for herself. So, her parents decided to take matters into their own hands and educate their girl and other girls the best that they could with what little resources they had.

LEARN?s mission statement reads: ?LEARN is in the business of changing and shaping lives. The work we do at our Non-Profit Organization is aimed at providing a holistic approach to solving some of our society?s biggest challenges. We make sure our partners are empowered by creating opportunities for individuals and communities.

LEARN aims at solving problems through innovation. Our main focus is provision of Quality Education to every child, especially girls, in Afghanistan. Building resources for communities, especially women and youth, empowering them through mentor-ship, skill building and capacity building courses.?

?We lacked a school for girls. The first thing we started in our house was a community school.

My mom used to teach there, my father would also teach when he was available, and I would teach there from my books,?she said.

She understands what it?s like to be destitute all too well, and the poverty in many locations where LEARN operates is nothing short of staggering. W hile people in big cities like Kabul, Mazari Sharif, and Herat, have access to electricity and running water, the individuals in many other districts do not have the same luxuries. Say they want to clean dishes, or take a bath, they first have to grab a bucket and go to the well, and then they still have to heat the water to use it. And they don?t have power at all.

Yet, for those trying to live off the land, there are worse things than not having access to fresh water or power. ?The farmers in some areas,

Durrani has got that right. She is in the business of changing and shaping lives. And based on her plans for the future of LEARN, she?s only just getting started.

37

To learn more about Pashtana Durrani and her work at LEARN, please visit: w w w . l ear nafg.w ixsite.com/ or gafg 37

a n In t er v iew w it h a SLAV E HUNTER

by Katie Beth Gill

Tim Ballard, the Founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR).

38

The human trafficking industry is savagely monstrous. The largest anti-slavery organization in the world, International Justice Mission, gives data which will deflate you before sentence end. 40 million slaves globally. 1 in 4 of forced labor slaves is a child. An estimated 150 billion dollars generated annually. For perspective, the film industry worldwide took in about 40 billion dollars in 2017.

It is a Goliath and there a few Davids stepping up to the plate. This is an interview with one of them.

Katie Beth: I hope you will have a little grace towards me because I am not a journalist. I am a nurse. The reason they asked me to do this is because I was in the human trafficking arena for six years.

Slave Hunter: Hopefully on the good side!

KB: (laughs) Yes, on the good side. It needs clarifying, doesn?t it?So, not a journalist, a nurse.

KB: How would you explain what you do to a friend?

SH: Usually I tell them I work for OUR (Operation Underground Railroad; www.OURrescue.org), we rescue kids around the world from sex trafficking. I guess that?s one side of what I do and the other is I own an investment company.

KB: How did you get linked in with OUR? SH: So, Sean Reyes is the Attorney General of Utah and he?s heavily integrated with OUR, right?

KB: Hmm-mm.

SH: I was meeting with the Attorney General of Colorado, her name is Cynthia Coffman, and we were discussing sex trafficking and those types of things, and she said, "You should get together with Sean the AG of Utah because he?s involved with all that." So I reached out to Sean and he already knew some of my background in weapons trainings,

39 39

martial arts, years of combat training and a number of different things. W hen we met he said, ?I kind of already know about your background and this would be a really great service if you could come join our jump team and do operations?. I was off on a mission within two weeks of that meeting.

KB: W hen you say you?re part of the 'jump team', what does that look like specifically?W hat is your role?

SH: We have two teams and I am involved in both sides. We have an undercover team that goes in to a city for example, and just hits the streets with nothing. Ground up. We work our way up looking for drugs and that leads to prostitution which leads to sex trafficking of minors at some point, right?

KB: Right.

SH: So we are befriending the cartel people that are doing the trafficking and get deeper in with them.

And this is an ongoing, undercover operation that can last for months.

KB: Months?

SH: Yeah. It takes time and several meetings to become friends with them KB: W ow. Do you guys have to obtain a certain level of evidence before you?re able to rescue the children?

SH: W hat we will do is verify there are active minors involved in sex trafficking because obviously that helps in the prosecution as well.

KB: Do you think the tide is starting to turn against human trafficking?

SH: I think the tide that is going to help against human trafficking is the building up of awareness of this war going on. So, rescuing, saves the children and of course we?re not going to stop the rescuing but that doesn?t cure the problem. I think the initial turning point of trafficking is bringing it to light so people can see it. That this is actually going on in your neighborhood. Your state. Your country. Your region, wherever it is you are in the world, this is going on and there are more kids in slavery nowadays than ever before.

40

KB: Well, I mean humans in general. It?s greater now than the trans-atlantic slave trade.

SH: It is a subject people don?t go and search on Google for. Until it is a subject that has come to light, and until it is a common term that people are aware of and they know what?s going on, once that happens, we?ll see a huge turning point. Because then it brings to light the people who are involved that are creating demand for the trafficking.

KB: Do you think it?s willful ignorance?Have you read the book ?Blue Like Jazz?by Donald Miller?

SH: I haven?t.

KB: There?s a line in it where he talks about how actually believing in something is incredibly inconvenient. Because if you have conviction about something, you have to do something about it and it?s such a level of inconvenience that people willfully stay ignorant. If you truly knew how bad it was and believed it was wrong, you would have to do something about it. Do you think that?s what we?re up against now?

SH: Not yet. I think, honestly, people just aren?t aware of it. I knew about the stories of Elizabeth Smart. Everybody heard about that in the US when it happened. And I?m sure there was a lot of hope that her story would cause huge changes in trafficking. But my interpretation of Elizabeth Smart was that she was kidnapped.

KB: Hmm. SH: She was kidnapped and she was locked up for years and she got away. I didn?t interpret that as active sex slavery or trafficking of any sorts. W hen I heard Tim Ballard, founder of OUR, Operation Underground Railroad, speak about their rescue operations, I said ?oh wow, that?s amazing?but I still didn?t go to their website and search it because it's just not a subject that I would search. I didn?t realize how big of a problem sex trafficking was. So I think for the most part it?s not willful, it?s just people aren?t aware, because I wasn?t until the last two years. But to go back to your question from earlier, I?m on two teams? So we do the undercover work, we uncover where the children are, and we don?t do

any of this in an area unless we have federal approval. We work with the federal government of that area, of that country.

KB: Sure.

SH: And we also have to have after care set up.

KB: W hich is huge.

SH: Yeah, it?s like what you were doing. We will rescue the girls and have no where to put them.

KB: And so they get recycled right back in again. It?s awful.

SH Exactly. So, those are the two main things we establish before we will even go into a place to do an operation. We are rarely working with the local police because it?s too risky. Usually local police are involved in some sort, not all of them but there are some that are paid off.

KB: Oh my gosh. Oh that?s so discouraging.

SH: So we do all the undercover work, work with the federals and they do the take down and we?re there doing the take down as well. We?re there posing as buyers.

KB: So, the majority of the countries you?re working in are technically Tier 1 or Tier 2, which means on some level compliant with the legislation outlined by TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act). We?re not talking about Tier 3 countries like Somalia or Yemen, we?re talking about places which are supposed to be relatively compliant with this.

And yet, it?s happening on a scale which you could pull fifty girls out of one bust. Is that discouraging to you?I mean, at least when we were pulling girls out of places in Asia, we could say, ?this is a Tier 3 country, we knew it was going to be really bad?. But how could it not be discouraging to you to know that you?re working in countries which on paper are fully compliant with their setup to prevent these things from happening?

SH: They are 'compliant' in that they have established rules against trafficking. But I don?t think any of these places would say they?re 100% compliant, even in the US there?s trafficking.

KB: Sure, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SH: They?re essentially saying they will prosecute trafficking if it gets caught. The problem is the resources to catch them, is extremely hard in most of these countries. Even in America, we are working with regions that have no resources assigned to fighting trafficking. There?s a huge trafficking problem in one of the states I?m starting to do work in. Huge problem.

KB: We have a huge problem here in Tennessee, too. So I hear what you?re saying: there's a massive problem everywhere.

SH: And I look at America as a Tier 1.

KB: Sure.

SH: And when I look at the rescuing side, we?re going to rescue kids everywhere and use these busts to keep promoting awareness.

KB: W hat was the turning point for you?W hat was it for you which made you say, ?I can?t go on another day and not be involved in this??

SH: For me, the initial part was hearing Tim Ballard speak. I heard him speak at a conference with Elizabeth Smart. She spoke and shared her amazing story. Tim spoke after her and shared about where they?re going, what they?re doing. That was 2015.

After I heard him speak, I told myself: 'I will be working with that guy one day.' 18 months later I am sitting in AG Reyes' office and then shortly thereafter headed on my first mission.

KB: Yeah.

SH: For me, my first operation happened down in [Latin America]. I go down there and we?re sitting with traffickers but we have to stay undercover. We have to pose as if we?re buyers. At those kind of take downs, the priority is to rescue the girls not to arrest the traffickers. If you get the trafficker at the same time, great. But the priority of these missions is to rescue the girls. And at one point while we?re down there, we?re needing to verify they actually have girls and that they?re not just showing us pictures. So they take us over to one of the houses 41 to show us the ?product?and I see them. I see three

41

girls. And the traffickers say, ?See?We have the girls. We?ll be in touch?. This is my first operation. I go by a different name, I have a different Facebook name so it plays if they look me up. And I?m flying back home and it all just hits me. And I?m crying.

Tears are streaming down my face and I say to the team, ?man, this is just crazy?. So as I?m on my way home from the airport, I take a detour, just trying to clear all that negative energy out before I got home to my kids. At the time, my children were 9 and 12 year olds. On my next trip to [Latin America], I was thinking, ?do I really want to be involved in this??I mean, I?ll fight sex trafficking but maybe there?s another way I could serve. I don?t know if I can be a part of this. Leaving and knowing they?re being abused every day and every night. And I had the picture of those girls in my head from that night. So until I got back to [Latin America] I?m thinking about these girls and thinking ?I could just grab these girls and run out?.

KB: (begins crying) I?m sorry, I?m sorry.

SH: No? KB: I?m so sorry.

SH: This is how I felt! Exactly how you?re feeling right now.

KB: Yeah. (sniffles) SH: Can I do this again?We could just grab these girls and run. We could get these three out right now. But they had like 30. So I?m battling inside my head, I don?t know if I can do this. We get back to that same house and they show us a few more girls.

And we have to figure out how many girls they really do have. They bring out some more girls and I swear one of them is like nine and the other is fifteen or sixteen. So while my partner is talking to the trafficker, I wanted to say something to the girls, you know cause they?re looking at us like we?re the bad guys. We always have to play the bad guys.

They look at us like we?re the monsters. I walked by the youngest one and she looked at me and she said real quickly, ?thanks for coming?. And I looked back at her and she just kind of turned away. It was like she knew what we were there for. Somehow she

42

knew we weren?t bad and we were there to help.

And that for me was the final turning point. We went back a few weeks later and rescued them but I remember leaving that night and thinking, ?we will get every single one of those girls and we will get every single one of those evil traffickers?.

KB: I?m sorry. This just unearthed a lot of stuff for me I didn?t see coming. This is off topic a bit but we did both sides of the coin. We worked with the rescuing but I actually lived in the rehabilitation home with the girls. I slept on the floor with them and helped with their nutrition and withdrawals.

The rescuing is obviously crucial. But it?s not over for the girls once they?re out of the brothels. It?s a daily rescuing that has to happen after that.

SH: The great thing is that you know firsthand what is going on. Here?s the thing, the actual rescuing event happens in about two hours. It?s fast. But after the rescue?That?s the after care. And that can take years to a lifetime.

KB: Yeah. W hew, gosh. We had this one girl in our home and the weight was just falling off of her. You know, I?m sitting there as a nurse looking at this going, ?this girl?s got HIV at least?. And we wanted to get her tested so we could get her on treatment.

She was like an abused animal, crouched down in a corner in a room, physically lashing out at anyone who was trying to make her go get tested. She was like 19, 20 so she was a little bit older but she had been in it since she was? 11?12?We kept trying to tell her, ?we want to help you, we want to help you get better?. And she said that she wasn?t strong enough to find out that she had HIV because it would be the final straw to her completely losing to what had happened to her. I had never thought about it like that before. Her last hope was ignorance of having HIV or AIDs. She didn?t have the emotional or mental strength of knowing what would be ahead of her and knowing they would get the last laugh. Does that make any sense?

SH: Yeah.

KB: You know even living with them, having breakfast with them and sharing bathrooms and stuff, I still could never put myself in their position

of what they?ve been through and I was literally spending 24 hours a day with them. W hich leads to my next question. I?m super professional at this journalism thing (laughs). So I did this work for years and it consumed me. My time, my health, I sold my belongings, I drained my life savings, everything was sunk into trying to help these girls.

And after six years of this, the government kicked us out. Our homes were closed down save one. And we lost our girls forever. After all of that, we have nothing to show for it. We are talking about an ocean of 40 million victims and 150 billion dollar annual revenue? it?s a massive, massive foe. So, knowing those odds, if you fail more than you anticipate, is it still going to be worth it for you?

SH: My line of work is in investments. And the reason I?ve been able to do this is that I?m lucky enough that my company has a great team which has allowed me the freedom to step away from it and focus on OUR. I am able to self fund any of the operations I?m on, I self fund all of it. That?s kind of my way of giving back in addition to being out there. And so I feel more obligation that if I was blessed in these other circumstances, why wouldn?t I be doing what I?m doing?That?s what has allowed me the time and freedom and flexibility to just jump on a plane any time I need to go.

KB: It?s Spiderman theology, right??To whom much is given, much is expected??

SH: (laughs) Ha! Ha! Yeah, exactly! You know it?s funny, my kids wait up for me when I?m coming back from an operation because they want to hear the stories and it?s given me purpose. And it?s rewarding in A) I get to see kids?lives being saved and that?s more than enough for me. That has made me go ?I?m in. 100%?. And B) for my kids to watch and see and learn. They see that dad can do anything he desires and yet he?s chosen to do this.

And hopefully they find something to help effect change in the world.

SH: It is because it?s not about us. To self-guard my one life over someone else?s life? I just couldn?t do that.

KB: Maya Angelou once said, ?Humility is knowing your place in the world. It?s understanding that you are not the first person who has ever done anything important?. How does it hit you knowing there?s a problem out there that requires more than just you fighting it?W here does it leave you knowing you are not special in what you?re doing?

SH: I?m happy. I don?t want to be the only one out there combating it. I don?t want to think we aren?t gaining momentum. I wish there were 20,000 more of us out there trying to make a change. This is a worldwide effort. Nothing to do with the individual. At all.

KB: Are they proud of you?

SH: Oh yeah. I?m so proud of my kids and they are proud of me. They look up to me. I?m their hero, I guess. I love my kids.

KB: You know, most children look at their dads like they?re heroes. But in your kids?case, they?re actually right. You?re doing legitimate super hero stuff.

KB: Nothing to do with pride or Batman syndrome or anything like that?

KB: Thank you for your very precious time!

SH: Or credibility. You look at the articles of the operations for OUR (www.OURrescue.org) and you?ll never see my name. We just released a documentary. You won?t see my face in the documentary. And I?m completely fine with that.

The importance is not the person doing the rescuing. The importance is those kids over there being enslaved. We?re trying to rescue lives.

KB: It?s hard to keep that in perspective when you?re giving up so much for it.

SH: No, thank you!

To become an abol itionist, visit w w w .OURr escue.or g today.

43 43

Thank you for reading TheFiresideJournal.

We invite you to learn more about our partner, The Nazarene Fund, by visiting www.thenazarenefund.org.

NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS! Are you a writer or photographer interested in contributing humanitarian content to The Fireside Journal?

Send us a message by visiting www.thefiresidejournal.com, or direct message us on social media.

www.thefiresidejournal.com

Layout Design by Tyler Bradley www.exitrowcreative.com tybrad1@gmail.com

44