At just 12 years old, Lyla Kohistany’s future was supposed to end in Kabul as the wife of a 51-year-old stranger. Instead, her brother went to war for her with the help of the United States Navy. Hers is a story of defying the odds, made possible by her brother’s love and a lifetime of service to America.
Kohistany and her family immigrated to the United States from Afghanistan when she was a toddler, fleeing the ongoing war with the Soviet Union. Though she spent some time living in California, it was Springfield, Virginia, that became home.
“I refer to it often as ‘Kabul West’ because there is a very large Afghan diaspora population here. It was strange, because at home, I was very Afghan and I was only allowed to speak Dari in the house. At school and the rest of life, it was English and trying to become an American,” she told We Are The Mighty.
“I felt very caught between these two cultures as a child, trying to be respectful to my Afghan side, but also very thrilled by all of the possibilities on the American side.”
Though her mother was incredibly loving, her father was a violent man. Kohistany knows now that her father struggled to acclimate to life in the United States. Survivor’s guilt plagued him, as did the loss of identity, given his life as an Afghan soldier—the one he left behind.
“I just wanted to be a kid. I just wanted to be happy and smiling, and to go get ice cream, just like all of the other kids in my neighborhood, and wanted to play sports. We just never had any of those types of memories,” Kohistany said. “What I remember almost exclusively were conversations constantly about war in our house. It was like we were physically in the United States, but my father’s mind was always on Afghanistan.”
When Kohistany was 12 years old, Afghanistan’s war against the Soviet Union ended. Her father prepared to journey back to work for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to rebuild the education system.
She believes his inability to find meaning in the United States made him revert to a very conservative Afghan viewpoint. Prior to leaving, he announced that she was 12 and old enough to be married—and so he arranged her marriage to a 51-year-old Afghan man in Kabul.
“I’m just really glad that my mom gave birth to a boy before she gave birth to me, because had it not been for my older brother intervening on my behalf, I wouldn’t have had a chance…. As a man, he could actually have a conversation with my father that no woman could have. He was enlisted in the Navy and brought it up to his chain of command, and they helped him intervene,” Kohistany shared.
Her brother formally adopted her and she and her mother moved to San Diego to live with them. Shortly after, her father was murdered in Afghanistan.
Years later, wanting to give back to the same organization that had saved her, she was commissioned as a surface warfare officer in the Navy out of Penn State in May 2001. She had dreams of driving ships for a few years and eventually becoming a lawyer, inspired by movies like “A Few Good Men.”
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 would change the entire trajectory of her life.
“As soon as I got my qualifications in 2003, I applied for a lateral transfer into the intelligence community. I was accepted, thankfully, and quickly scooped up by the Joint Special Operations Command to deploy to Afghanistan in 2005 as an intel officer,” Kohistany recalled.
“I absolutely loved the mission and the people that I got to work with.”
After she returned from the deployment, the Navy told her she needed to go back to a sea assignment as an intelligence officer. Knowing her heart wasn’t in that role and was instead in the work she was doing in Afghanistan, she left the Navy and joined the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“I spent six more years working on Afghanistan, both through a counterterrorism lens, but also counterinsurgency. I did a tour at the Joint Staff in the Pentagon and then deployed twice more to Afghanistan. Once in 2011 with a one-star level headquarters, and then from 2013 to 2014, I was deployed as a cultural adviser to a two-star special operations and NATO headquarters,” Kohistany said.
Needing a break, she left the DIA and became a consultant to the U.S. Special Operations Command, training the SOF community ahead of deployments to Afghanistan. At the same time, she was leaning into corporate consulting and earned her master’s degree from Georgetown University.
On April 14, 2021, President Joe Biden announced the plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, and weeks later, the process began. The target date was publicly set for August 31, 2026.
“As an Afghan, as a woman, knowing what life was then going to be like for women and children in Afghanistan. As an American, as a veteran, you know, all of those aspects of what made me me were in pain over how we left and especially seeing those individuals that we trained with, that we fought alongside, that we invested in being left behind,” Kohistany said.
The veteran community united, creating what she calls a “September 12th moment.” There were underground missions to get interpreters and Afghan special operators, as well as their family members, safely out of the country. In the midst of so much grief, horror, and death, Kohistany remembers feeling pride in the military community.
On Aug. 15, 2021, the world and Kohistany watched in horror as the Taliban entered Kabul and the Afghan government collapsed. Just 11 days later, a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed 13 American service members and hundreds of civilians at Abbey Gate.
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said of Pearl Harbor, August 26, 2021, was a date that will live in infamy for War on Terror veterans.
Kohistany founded Honor the Promise to support the Afghan special operations soldiers who partnered with the United States during the war. The goal was to help them by providing the tools and support they need to be successful for their new lives in America.
Then, in 2021, through an introduction from retired Gen. Scott Miller, she was connected to Khalid Noori.
In 2016, Noori began his career working inside of Afghanistan’s Joint Special Operations Command after graduating from a military academy in India. Noori later rose to the rank of captain and became a company commander in Ktah Khas (KKA), Afghanistan’s elite National Mission Unit. During the fall of Afghanistan, he and his wife were evacuated to the United States.
When Kohistany met him, she knew he was “the real deal” and someone she could trust. Why? His only ask of her wasn’t anything for himself but for her to help provide resources to support his sisters.
Since founding Honor the Promise, the organization has supported over 300 Afghan special operations veterans and more than 1,500 of their family members. The work involves helping them secure legal status and equipping them with the tools to build successful lives in America. They also work hard to reunite them with their American veteran counterparts, fostering and creating community.
Over the last two years, Kohistany has been hard at work on a new skill she can add to her impressive resume: filmmaker.
“I love movies, and my doctoral research was on multimodality in storytelling at Arizona State University. The impact of storytelling on identity formation in the special forces community. I was like, ‘We need to tell this story in a way that the everyday American can understand,’” she shared.
When she approached Noori about making a documentary on his new life in America, he said no at first, unwilling to make anything about him. Kohistany quickly explained it would be about finding community and connection so he can heal for his wife and daughter. Then it was an immediate yes.
“I didn’t know that it was going to be so beautifully themed on this concept of chosen family and the struggles of transition,” she said. “Those became the overarching pieces. Everybody struggles with purpose, and we are all going through transitions in life and needing to reinvent, and so that became the larger through line that, I think, will resonate with anyone.”
“Noori” was made possible by the support of the Global SOF Foundation, the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, and the support of the team behind Amazon Global Military Affairs. It will be released on November 1, 2026, on Amazon Prime.
Most viewers won’t know the story of a once-refugee who was almost a child bride or how she became an Afghan American intelligence officer devoted to building a life in America but never forgot the women and children of Afghanistan.
Kohistany shared an early lesson she learned from retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal when he told her he never breaks his word. “Honor the Promise” isn’t a slogan, but a core part of who she is.
“If you say you’re going to do something, show up. Even when it hurts,” she added.
On what she’d want readers to take away from her story, the message was simple.
“Every human being you come into contact with inherently deserves respect. If you can open up your mind and your heart to them, and find common ground, you’ll probably see a better version of yourself and a better version of your country and what it can be through those shared experiences,” Kohistany said.
“There’s so much more that connects us, and I really believe in the words that are written on the Great Seal of the United States: E pluribus unum.”
Out of many, she still believes we can be one. The question now is whether the rest of us are willing to honor that promise with her.
Learn more about Honor the Promise at HonorThePromise.vet and “Noori” at Noori.film.
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