Afghanistan 3 years later: Many remain in limbo, feeling let down

Three years after the deadly and chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, many evacuees and allies remain in limbo.

Thousands airlifted out of the country are stuck in an immigration backlog that leaves them without a permanent way to remain in the U.S.

Those who worked with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, which is now under the rule of the Taliban, face significant obstacles and a crushing timeline for securing a visa to the U.S.

“It's Groundhog Day. The things that mattered three years ago still matter. People are still not getting evacuated. People don't have permanent status here. … There's no money. All the little nonprofits that popped up, they're out of money,” Joseph Azam, board chair of the Afghan-American Foundation, told The Hill.

The withdrawal succeeded in evacuating roughly 80,000 people who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan, the largest such operation since the U.S. exited Vietnam.

But when the last flight went wheels up on Aug. 30, 2021, an estimated 100,000 more were left behind. It’s a group that includes former military interpreters, those who worked on U.S. democracy and civil rights efforts and others vulnerable under Taliban rule.

The different constituencies are united by the same feeling: the U.S. hasn’t fulfilled its promise to Afghan allies. 

For evacuees

Most Afghans who managed to navigate the dangerous conditions to get to Hamid Karzai International Airport and secure limited flights to the United States believed that they would be able to permanently stay.

But sweeping legislation from Congress to ensure that has yet to be passed, leaving many Afghans feeling burned compared to other groups the U.S. had helped, such as people who fled Vietnam and Cuba.

“I think our situation was treated very exceptionally, and not favorably exceptionally. That was a little bit of a disappointment,” said Naheed Sarabi, an evacuee who previously served as the deputy minister for policy in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance.

Sarabi, who was only granted asylum to remain in the U.S. in April, 2 1/2 years after her arrival, noted that many Afghans held off on applying for asylum because they could not afford the legal fees associated with the process.

The U.S. has had some success with those who could afford it, processing 19,000 out of 21,000 applications for asylum among those who left during the evacuation.

And of the 35,000 who aided the U.S during the war effort and arrived in the U.S. on a so-called special immigrant visa (SIV), 21,000 have been awarded permanent residency.

But that leaves about 20,000 Afghans who were evacuated but remain on some kind of temporary program.

A shaky immigration status is just one roadblock facing those seeking to adjust to a new country.

Sarabi is U.S.-educated and has established her own development consultancy in addition to working as a fellow at Brookings Institution. But she said those without such strong English skills or whose professional credentials aren't accepted in the U.S. have struggled to earn enough to pay their bills.

“I knew I was going to a new country just a week before, and the next week I'm on a plane going to the U.S. I had no plan. I came with a backpack. It's really difficult to build a life based on a backpack,” she said.

She said many are still in mourning over their past lives.

“For some of us who have come who had leadership roles, it's not about having a comfortable life here, although we are very thankful about it, but it's also the burden of what we have lost in our country. For me, that's heavier than my challenges in the U.S. to be honest,” Sarabi said of her long career in development work.

“Every day I think about Afghanistan, where I had an impact. I think, what impact do I have here? ... It’s not about having power or having positions. It's just about the impact that you make in your everyday life.”

Many are also struggling with the weight of hearing about the dire situation faced by friends and relatives. 

“Every day, [you're] hearing about your country, about your relatives being in distressed situations, the poverty level. Every day, I get calls and text messages from my former coworkers that they need help, they need money. And there's a limit that you can help personally, to be honest,” she said.

“So there's a lot of trauma and burden on you to function as you're already trying to be settled in a country that you don't know.” 

For those left behind

In Afghanistan, quality of life under Taliban rule has plummeted across the board, but most acutely for women.

A United Nations report from last year concluded that Taliban rule has “ushered in a new era characterized by rapid economic rapid economic decline, hunger and risk of malnutrition, inflation driven by global commodity shocks, drastic rises in both urban and rural poverty, a near-collapse of the national public health system, a stifling of the media and civil society sectors, and almost-total exclusion of half the population – women and girls – from public life.”

People who helped the U.S. when it was in Afghanistan, including former interpreters or military contractors or those who worked on democracy and civil rights efforts, face hurdles to reaching the United States even if they are eligible.

While there are procedures in place to process visas for allies, the more than 135,000 who may be eligible face what could be a decades-long backlog.

Some are getting out. About 14,600 Afghans have arrived in the U.S. and applied for temporary protected status, which bars deportation from the United States, when the process opened anew in September of last year.

But the U.S. has processed just under 2,000 SIVs so far this year of allies still in Afghanistan, according to the latest data available through the end of March, a pace advocates see as too slow given the demand. The report notes the average processing time for the visa is 569 days.

Much of that is done under the auspices of the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE), which contends with the complications of arranging relocation from a country where the U.S. no longer has an embassy.

“CARE team gets a slap on the shoulder. They're really trying. They've done a good job. They put something in place that is working. Yet overall, no one has a right for any victory laps in this. And there's a lot of people that are trying to put a little victory lap out there right now. And it's not earned. It's absolutely not earned,” said Kim Staffieri, director of the Association of Wartime Allies.

By her own estimates, Staffieri said current processing rates mean the government will take at least 15 years to offer an SIV to those who aided the U.S. during the war.

Getting an SIV is a complex process that involves securing proof of employment from supervisors as well as getting through a series of government hoops and stages of approvals. Staffieri said the slow processing is leaving the vast majority of applicants unsure of whether they will ultimately qualify. Meanwhile, she’s seen unusually high denial rates lately — leaving her wondering if the government is taking the time to validate each applicant’s employment credentials.  

“All these people that should be coming here, we're not going to get them here. We're not going to fulfill our promise in time for them. That's what keeps me up at night. We're not going to fulfill this promise in time. It's getting so bad over there that we're going to lose folks. And that's — it's wrong,” Staffieri said. “It's just so wrong.”

Staffieri said it’s clear the government needs to invest more in the program — something that’s been evident well before the evacuation when government watchdogs expressed alarm over slow processing.

“They know what they need to do. They need to surge staffing, they need to put the budget in place, and they need to get the f‑‑‑king job done,” she said.

“And that's all there is to it.”

For advocates

Perhaps the biggest setback to security for Afghans is inaction from Congress.

Advocates have organized around the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would allow evacuees to remain in the U.S.

The bill is modeled after past legislation that helped groups in large-scale evacuations to start their journey to U.S. citizenship.

“We were told at the beginning that this act would be approved and everybody would have a path towards residency. But the bill was never passed,” Sarabi said.

At various turns, Congress has failed to advance the bill or attach it to a must-pass legislative vehicle.

There are a few lawmakers who have opposed the legislation over concerns about vetting — even though allowing Afghans to seek citizenship would kick off additional security reviews for a group of people already in the U.S. as it is.

But much of the GOP’s interest in Afghanistan has been focused on investigating the withdrawal itself. Congressional Republicans have long used the issue to attack President Biden, while more recently the Trump campaign has been hitting Vice President Harris over the issue. While the attacks focus on Democratic leadership, it was the Trump administration that first agreed to leave the country.

This has left advocates for some of the Afghan refugees and allies frustrated.

“Congress loves to blame Biden for all of these problems. And yeah, fine, yes, a lot of the issues that we're facing now are because of the withdrawal and blame deserves to go around,” said Chris Purdy, founder of the veterans organization Chamberlain Network, who previously lobbied to improve processing of Afghan evacuees.

“But the policy can't be just to blame the administration. Like you gotta fix it, right? And sometimes you gotta fix problems that you didn't create. That's what being a grown-up is. And hopefully we have grown-ups in Congress,” Purdy said. “They have real pieces of legislation that could make things so much better, and they just don't — they just don't do it for a variety of reasons.”

This result is that Afghans’ future is very much in the hands of the next presidential administration. 

“We'd love to see Congress act statutorily, so that the next administration, whoever they may be, can't just come in and say, ‘All these good things that we've done over the past three years, we're just gonna kick it to the curb,’” Purdy said.

But he added that he’s concerned a Trump administration would not take action to help those in asylum limbo.

“What we do know is that the people who he intends to stack his administration with on immigration are not friendly to immigration … it's highly unlikely that Stephen Miller will want to continue these efficiencies.”