“Marine Raiders, our saying is that ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ means never above you, never below you, always beside you,” Marine Corps veteran Luke Focer told a crowd gathered at SOF Week in Tampa. “It’s that bond created purely over blood, sweat and tears.”
Focer was part of a panel discussing “Noori,” a new feature documentary following the life of Ahmad Khalid Noori, a former Afghan special operations veteran, as he struggles to integrate into his new American life.
Many Americans may be familiar with the plight of former Afghan interpreters trying to come to the U.S. on Special Immigrant Visas, but few know the hardships faced by trained Afghan special operators, who fought alongside U.S. special operations during the war.
The panel was part of “Shoulder-to-Shoulder: Celebrating 25 Years of Partnership,” a special event held during the annual SOF Week, and reflects the shared vision of both Honor the Promise and the Global SOF Foundation (GSOF), an international SOF network built on a lifelong sense of service and community.
Over the course of 20 years, American and Afghan special operators worked closely together, fighting for the Afghans’ long-term freedom. The War in Afghanistan did not have a happy ending, but the relationships between Americans and Afghans who fought the war endure, even as some Afghan allies still struggle to escape their homeland and others settle into new lives as Afghan-Americans.
Nowhere is two decades of shared experience more apparent than in the special operations community.
“We created this partnership that really turned into a bond, a brotherhood,” Medal of Honor recipient and Army Special Forces veteran Matthew Williams told We Are The Mighty.
“I look back and appreciate the opportunities I got to have in spending time with them. They learned who we were. They accepted us and they emulated us because they wanted what we had and that’s why we were there. They wanted Afghanistan to be a free country… they were fighting to provide a place and opportunity for their family just like we would be doing here if we were put in the same position.”
“We shared blood together on a battlefield. On their battlefield.”
One of those Afghan special operations veterans is Ahmad Khalid Noori, the subject of a new documentary film, “Noori.” Living in Northern Virginia is a far cry from Northern Afghanistan, but he embraces the country that has adopted him.
The film follows him and former Afghan Commando Abdul Popalzai as they set out on a road trip across the United States to reconnect with their American special operations comrades and connect to their new homeland by meeting everyday Americans along the way.
“The idea was how we really reach maximum audience in the United States and be able to tell who we are and why we end up being here,” Noori told We Are The Mighty. “And then also to show the day-to-day challenges and the struggles that we as immigrants are facing here, but also some of the opportunities along the way.”
“Seeing your life on a screen, it’s overwhelming,” Noori said. “But I also of course realized the reason why I ended up being in this film. 25 years ago we started a partnership, both the U.S. and Afghans, and that partnership meant a lot to us. To be in this film and not to only talk about my story, but talk about the journey of my teammates, where they are now in the United States and how are they doing. It is a very important cause.”
Noori was born in Northern Afghanistan, but when his father was killed in a 2011 attack, he joined the fight to keep all of Afghanistan free. He began his career in 2016 with Afghanistan’s Joint Special Operations Command. As a captain, he led a company within Ktah Khas, Afghanistan’s National Mission Unit, conducting counter-terrorism operations alongside U.S. Special Operations Forces across the country.
“Noori” the film was screened at the SOF Week “Shoulder-to-Shoulder” event, which displays the SOF community’s commitment to the bonds forged on the battlefield. As the film’s impact partner, the Global SOF Foundation champions the kind of true-to-life storytelling that highlights the lives of SOF veterans the world over.
“The bonds forged through special operations service and sacrifice are universal and absolute, no matter what flag is on your uniform,” Meaghan Keeler, COO of the Global SOF Foundation, said during the event. “The Afghan special operations community knows that mission very well.”
Keeler and “Noori” producer Lyla Kohistany collaborated to organize the screening of the film during the “Shoulder-to-Shoulder” event.
The film is not the first collaboration between Honor the Promise and the Global SOF Foundation. The GSOF community includes active duty, veterans, operators, enablers, industry partners, and academics (just to name a few). As Keeler emphasized, the organization says that SOF connections are not bound by geography.
At Modern Warfare Week in 2022, GSOF welcomed Afghan veterans to the event and recognized them on stage for their service. During the first-ever SOF Week in 2023, Afghan special operations personnel were in attendance, raising awareness about the needs of the Afghan SOF community while reconnecting them with their American teammates. Both that year and in 2024, Afghan veterans attended the SOF for Life transition seminar and met prospective employers.
During SOF Week 2025, GSOF and Honor the Promise held a “Night for Noori” fundraiser and offered a sneak peek at the documentary.
“There’s so much left on the table—from an educational standpoint—that I think that the American public didn’t quite understand,” Williams, who attended a 2025 screening of the film in Napa Valley, said of the War in Afghanistan. “They understood that we spent 20 years there. They understood that it went poorly at the end. But they didn’t understand the common bond we had with brothers on the battlefield. I think that this movie does such a phenomenal job of showing the need for connection and bond and brotherhood. You can only do that through shared service and sacrifice.”
For six years, Ahmad Khalid Noori was everything Americans would expected from a highly-trained, highly-skilled special operator. He conducted precision operations in challenging environments and worked with his allies to build trust and interoperability—all while inflicting punishing defeats on the enemy.
Until it all came to a sudden end.
“In August 2021, Afghan special forces members, ANA, and commandos like me—we didn’t have an option,” he said. “We had to leave the country because of their service and everything that we did with the U.S. and coalition forces.”
“I can’t even fathom what that’s like,” said Williams. “You leave the country not because you want to, but because you have to because it’s literally fallen and the people that are in power now, they want you dead, right? I mean, they know who these guys are, they know what they did and that’s what they signed up for when they joined their special operations community, the same as we do here in the States. And I think that’s so fascinating and so important.”
Noori resettled in the United States after the Fall of Kabul, and now serves as a Program Strategist at Honor the Promise, where he helps Afghan Special Operations veterans evacuated to the U.S. access the support, community, and stability needed to move forward.
“When Afghanistan collapsed for all of us, it was a very hard moment, but for someone like me, I knew that my service has not ended. I always wanted to seek an opportunity to continue to serve my people, my community. And this documentary was a portion of that,” he said. “But how could I tell the story of hundreds of men and women who, shoulder-to-shoulder, serve alongside U.S. forces and they are now in this country? They’re willing to rebuild their life, but they need support.”
He mentors his comrades in adjusting to new lives as Americans, as civilians, the same way he mentored Afghan operators on the battlefield. But being in a position to help those like him, doesn’t make him immune to the same challenges. In the days before his daughter was born, Noori was also searching for belonging and purpose.
“I was still struggling with transition with resettlement and adjusting my life here,” he recalls. “So I think I didn’t wanted to do it alone. I reached out to my fellow U.S. Special Forces teammates, and I asked them if I could visit them and see them and then perhaps do this journey and explore America.”
His friends were, of course, happy to see him. Noori decided to drive across his new country. “Noori” follows his journey as it explores the enduring bond between U.S. and Afghan Special Operations Forces and the universal struggle to heal after war.
“It ended up helping me to explore more about America, but also that sense of belonging that I was looking for,” he continued. “And that journey, we don’t have to walk it alone. The struggles, the challenges that we are going through as former veterans or special operation members, we don’t have to go through this alone. We have buddies, we have friends that we could always reach out to and get their support.”
Organizations like the Global SOF Foundation and Honor the Promise continue to join forces to continue to connect and serve Afghan special operations veterans and their families to aid their long-term reintegration through employment, mental health and resilience programming, legal assistance, and community support.
To learn more about the Global SOF Foundation check out the work it does every day. For those interested in Honor the Promise and its mission of integrating Afghan special operations veterans into their communities and living their American Dreams, visit its website.
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