The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2022 21 legal relief or to stay in their current refu- gee minor program until they’re adults, in an effort to minimize the upheaval caused by program transfers. Voices from Afghanistan: A Sampling of Podcasts C apturing local voices is crucial to understanding what happened in Afghanistan and what the country’s future might hold. To help readers access these stories, we’ve compiled a sampling of podcast episodes that fea- ture Afghan interlocutors sharing their lived experiences. The American Diplomat podcast, hosted by Amb. (ret.) Pete Romero and Laura Bennett, offers four episodes that aired between July and October 2021 focusing on Afghan stories. One shares a conversation with “HT,” a former interpreter for U.S. forces whose family members have been killed as a result of his affiliation with the U.S., while other episodes trace the journey of Toobah, a former USAID employee, whose life is under threat by the Taliban because of her work helping women find jobs. Listen at amdipstories.org. On episode seven of The Negotiators podcast, former Afghan official Fawzia Koofi, who sat across from Taliban negotiators throughout the talks in Doha, Qatar, provides her perspective on why Afghanistan fell so quickly, the future of the country and what the failed talks reveal about the Taliban’s mindset. Listen at foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/negotiators. The Daily, a podcast from The New York Times , offers episodes highlighting the challenges faced by Afghan society before, during and after the U.S. presence in the country. An interview with former Afghan Brigadier General Khoshal Sadat discusses the factors that ultimately drove the Afghan military to lay down their arms. A separate two-part interview tells the story of a teenager whose family tried to force her to marry a member of the Taliban. Listen at nyti.ms/3FXeYyP. n This edition of Talking Points was com- piled by Julia Wohlers and Steve Honley.