Honor the Promise’s Dr. Lyla Kohistany turned survival into service

We Are The Mighty’s Mighty 25 recognizes Dr. Lyla Kohistany, an Arizona State University alum whose life and career connect Afghanistan, U.S. military service, intelligence, special operations, scholarship, and a continuing commitment to Afghan partners.

Dr. Kohistany came to the United States from Afghanistan as a child, later commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer, entered naval intelligence, deployed to Afghanistan with Joint Special Operations Command, and continued her Afghanistan-focused work with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Following the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021, she founded Honor the Promise to support Afghan Special Operations veterans and their families as they established new lives in the United States. The organization has since supported more than 300 Afghan SOF veterans and 1,500 family members. Her work also became a vehicle for storytelling. Dr. Kohistany’s doctoral research at Arizona State University examined multimodality in storytelling and its impact on identity formation within the special operations community, an academic foundation that informed NOORI, her documentary following former Afghan Special Operations soldier, Khalid Noori and his family, as they build a life in America.

Small Wars Journal is honored to partner with Dr. Kohistany and Honor the Promise as we host a virtual/in-person screening and panel discussion of NOORI on November 6. Her story speaks directly to questions familiar to us. What happens to partners after a war ends? How do veterans reconstruct purpose and identity? What does it mean to honor commitments made through years of shared service?

We hope that you would consider attending our special screening of NOORI. Register here for remote attendance.

A huge and heartfelt thank you to Dr. Lyla Kohistany (Ed.D), Mr. Ahmad Khalid Noori, Global SOF Foundation, and Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation for their support.