“We had sold our TV and refrigerator,” her husband, Samir, advised me right through an interview for my dissertation venture on Afghan migration to The united states after the 2021 U.S. army withdrawal from Afghanistan. “We had told our landlord that we were vacating our apartment. Then it was all canceled.”
The U.S. withdrawal in August 2021 brought on a fast political cave in that left hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians in limbo. Because the Taliban swept around the nation and reclaimed energy, Afghans who had labored along U.S. forces and global NGOs confronted speedy threat.
Girls, minorities and human rights advocates feared the lack of fundamental freedoms and imaginable Taliban reprisals. With evacuation pathways unclear and protections erratically implemented, panic unfold as households attempted to flee earlier than they have been bring to an end totally.
Seema, Samir – pseudonyms to give protection to their id – and their youngsters are amongst tens of hundreds of Afghan refugee households who straight away fled to neighboring Pakistan in overdue 2021 at the U.S. executive’s advice for Afghans to procedure their immigration circumstances in 3rd nations. On the other hand, many Afghans quickly encountered Pakistan’s mass deportation marketing campaign, underway since 2023, as they awaited U.S. resettlement.
The prices of suspension
Till lately, some Afghans ready in Pakistan was hoping they might sooner or later be resettled in america in the course of the few humanitarian pathways nonetheless open to them. On the other hand, that hope has dimmed.
The suspension of U.S. refugee resettlement right through the primary days of Donald Trump’s 2nd presidency, together with further immigration restrictions issued after the November 2025 capturing of Nationwide Guard group of workers in Washington, D.C., have frozen the processing of all Afghan circumstances – together with the ones already authorized.
The Trump management has justified those measures as essential to give protection to U.S. protection and nationwide pursuits.
For households like Seema’s, U.S. coverage selections have left them insecure and deserted. As a pupil fascinated about global migration, I consider Seema’s tale highlights a commonplace thread amongst many Afghans stranded in Pakistan: A lot of those that supported the U.S. are wondering the price of the U.S.’s decades-long project for selling safety, democracy and human rights in Afghanistan.
Uncovered to the Taliban’s retaliation, regional deportation regimes and a collapsing refugee coverage device, Afghans are preserving the U.S. and different global governments liable for leaving behind them.
Stuck between abandonment and deportation
Skilled as a gynecologist, Seema labored at a personal health facility in Afghanistan. And along her husband Samir, she served as managing director of a company that led U.S.-funded initiatives for girls and kids.
“We took two projects from the U.S. Embassy,” she advised me. “We established a resource center, bought computers, gave girls internet access and trained them in digital literacy.”
Many Afghans stranded in Pakistan worry being focused by means of the Taliban, pictured right here in December 2024, if they’re pressured to go back to Afghanistan.
AP Picture/Saifullah Zahir
That paintings, funded and promoted by means of the U.S. executive, made Seema and Samir objectives. Even earlier than 2021, they gained threats from the Taliban. After the Taliban takeover in 2021, the threats escalated.
Fearing for his or her lives, they fled their house and tried however failed to go into the Kabul airport a couple of instances right through the chaotic U.S. evacuation in 2021. They in the end escaped to Pakistan.
In Pakistan, a former colleague on the U.S. embassy really useful Seema for a Precedence 2 visa – an immigration pathway created in particular for Afghans who supported U.S.-funded systems.
But if she and Samir attempted to apply up with the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan in 2022, they gained no reaction. A couple of months later they discovered that adjustments to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in early 2022 most likely brought about their referral to be misplaced.
As U.S. processing stalled, Pakistan’s stance towards Afghan refugees hardened. Since overdue 2023, the Pakistani executive has speeded up deportations beneath its “Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan” that objectives each undocumented Afghans and those that as soon as held criminal refugee standing. Greater than 1 million Afghans have already been deported.
Human rights teams warn that those removals violate the primary of nonrefoulement, which prohibits returning folks to nations the place they face critical hurt. Underneath Taliban rule, ladies’s rights, employment alternatives and private protection in Afghanistan had been systematically reduced.
But whilst Pakistan deports, the U.S. and different nations the place Afghan refugees had as soon as been in a position to resettle, together with Germany, proceed to near their doorways.
A promise made, then suspended
In 2024, the united statesgovernment accredited Seema’s refugee resettlement case, which she submitted in overdue 2022 with the help of SHARP, an area group in Pakistan that works to give protection to Afghan refugees amid the rustic’s intensifying immigration crackdown. After a number of rounds of interviews, background exams, biometrics and scientific checks, she and her circle of relatives have been advised they might quickly depart for the U.S.
Seema and her circle of relatives worry for his or her protection and their youngsters’s long term. Their youngsters can not move to a faculty in Pakistan, as many Pakistani faculties refuse to sign up Afghan scholars.
Afghan refugees dangle placards right through a meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, on July 21, 2023. Masses of Afghan refugees dealing with excessive delays within the approval of U.S. visas have been protesting in Pakistan’s capital.
AP Picture/Rahmat Gul
Police raids throughout main towns have additionally pressured Afghan households to stick indoors, afraid to paintings or transfer freely. With out a strong source of revenue, Seema and Samir fight to fulfill fundamental wishes.
“When I came to Pakistan, I was 40 years old,” Samir mentioned. “Now I’m 44. Four years of my life have gone waiting for the U.S. case.” His voice hardened with anger. “We worked with the U.S. for 20 years. We fought terrorism. We supported democracy. What was the benefit?”
For many years, the U.S. executive relied at the essential management of Afghan civilians like Seema and Samir to advertise peace, safety and girls’s empowerment.
Those partnerships weren’t symbolic. They have been deeply embedded in on a regular basis Afghan existence.
With a grin on her face, Seema mentioned that earlier than 2021 “it never crossed my mind to leave Afghanistan because we were helping people in our country.”
Seema now fears being pressured to go back to Afghanistan, the place her paintings and id position her at grave possibility of being focused by means of the Taliban. Her request is inconspicuous. “At least let those whose cases were approved, whose flights were booked, resettle in the U.S.,” she mentioned.
Her plea echoes throughout Pakistan, the place hundreds of Afghan households stay stranded.
Their lives now hinge on coverage alternatives that can resolve whether or not america honors the tasks it made right through 20 years of intervention that reshaped Afghan lives and livelihoods.
