This is Jockel Podcast number 375 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, I go. Good evening.

When Aziz and I reached the Hills Peak, kids playing on the ladders and diving platforms scattered.

As we neared the pool, the only sound other than our footsteps came from the gusting wind.

I made the e-requiet. I noticed a cable suspended from one of the middle diving platforms,

about seven and a half meters above the pool. The cable made of steel barely swayed in the wind.

It ended in a slip-knot noose. I've witnessed many public executions here, Aziz said.

Some were hanged, some were thrown off the towers like garbage and died on the concrete floor,

and not always immediately. After the Soviets left Afghanistan, following nine years of war,

the difficulty of pumping water up to the top of the hill to fill the pool wasn't worth the effort

for a nation with little interest in training athletes for international competition.

When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, they found a use for the empty pool.

Aziz and I descended the ladder into the pool's deep end. The width spanned 25 meters.

The wall was riddled with bullet holes the size of 7-6-2 bullets.

They were head high of a person on their knees, and there had to be thousands of holes.

I crossed to the shallow end, stepping around puddles left by the latest rain and observed the same

pattern of bullet holes in that wall. They were the height of the head of a kneeling child.

I pulled my leatherment tool for my pants pocket. With appointed pliers, I dug into a few of the holes.

I removed two bullet jacket remains and looked down at them in my hand.

Two symbols of the Taliban's hatred of innocent people of unimaginable evil.

I slid the jacket remains into my pocket. I didn't want to forget the anger I felt standing next to those bullet holes.

Aziz knew this place would show me why his family was so caught up in our presidential election.

My home country was the land of the free. There's was now becoming one.

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