[I am hoping that my article will be able to begin with a scene about Maryam Yusufi and her friends. Maryam was a journalist in Kabul, now she’s an influencer in the United States. Ideally one of her friends is seeking asylum or on humanitarian parole – i can then introduce the threat that the Trump administration poses, while talking about the forced roles of American society]

 

The history of US-Afghanistan relations begins in the 1980’s, but the conversation about Afghan refugees is most often framed by the United States’ withdrawal from the region in 2021. 

When US troops stopped supporting the Afghan government, many knew the Taliban would take control, but the immediacy of the invasion was without precedent. As the Taliban stormed Kabul in mid-August of 2021, the outflow of Afghans skyrocketed, airports overrun and refugees fleeing to wherever possible. 

In an attempt to salvage a dire situation, the Biden administration expedited resettlement processes for Afghans; Special Immigrant VISA programs and humanitarian parolees were transferred to secondary vetting sites en masse, bringing 76,000 Afghan evacuees into the US. Popular media scolded the government’s failure of a withdrawal, while decrying conditions at the military facilities that Afghan evacuees were held at; the number of evacuees falls far behind the number of eligible refugees. 

Now in the United States, many of these Afghan refugees fail to find work and integrate. According to a study by the Immigration Policy Institute, only 61% of Afghan immigrants in the U.S. were employed in 2022. Other figures were equally grim: the median household income for Afghan families was $48,000, compared to $75,000 for the average immigrant household. 

 

[I’m not sure whether Zahra is the best person to go with, considering she’s spent most of her time in Canada] 

Zahra Nader is part of an earlier group of Afghan immigrants. In 2017, she moved to Canada with her husband. The first female foreign correspondent in Kabul, with experience at the New York Times, she didn’t expect the job-search to be so difficult. She recalls asking around, about how to find work. “I was often told that you don’t necessarily come from Afghanistan and, you know, become a journalist here,” she said.

“I was very depressed,” she remembers. “Suddenly, because I’m living in a safe country, that meant that I was no longer relevant.” Her experience is not uncommon. Many members of the upper-middle class evacuated after the fall of Kabul, as they immediately faced threats from the Taliban. Here, English-language difficulties and a lack of job-training make employment difficult. 

Hope for Nader wasn’t lost: In 2021, she used her savings (which she had intended to use for the construction of a new home back in Afghanistan) to open The Zan Times, a newspaper that highlights Afghan women’s stories in Afghanistan and abroad. 

But she knows her success story isn’t common. “When you’re an immigrant, and things are very tough here too, especially with the new American administration, you can imagine how much it will become more difficult for people to risk their lives to come and then be sent back,” she said. She, like many Afghan immigrants who have found success in the US, is worried about what the new administration means for them.

 

“We feel like we’re stuck in between a rock and a hard place,” said Arash Azzizada, co-founder of the non-profit Afghans for a Better Tomorrow. “Which is a US that harms our community and a gender apartheid being instilled by the Taliban.”

Azzizada’s organization works with recent Afghan refugees, most of whom resettled in New York City. He said that increasingly, he’s seeing Afghans who qualify for SIV status coming through the US’ Southern border, with or without documentation. The process of applying for asylum takes a long time – even when expedited – and for many Afghans facing the threat of violence, that time could cost them their lives.

Now in the US, Azizzada sees these migrants (regardless of how they enter the country) struggling to find suitable work. “They’re civil rights leaders, you know. Women’s rights activists, diplomats, people who were really big deals in their home country,” he said. “And now, they’re sitting in a city run shelter.”

He, like all the Afghans I spoke to, insists on the gratitude felt by evacuees and refugees. Conditions in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate. “Our people were fleeing famine, Taliban persecution,” he said. As of May 2024, more than one third of Afghans are experiencing acute food insecurity. And conditions, especially for women, continue to deteriorate. Girls are denied access to education after the sixth grade, and a recent law outlawed women’s voices in public places. 

[Here could be a good place to include the story of women currently in Afghanistan once Wahid connects me with them]

Azzizada, Nader, and Yousufi all decry the conditions in Afghanistan. But, Azzizada continues, that doesn’t excuse the way Afghans are treated in the US. “You said you stood with us, and then with the way the withdrawal happened, and with the way you’re treating us now,” he said. “It’s just a sense of deep betrayal.”

Azzizada points to the Trump administration as a further threat for Afghan refugees. He said that while Afghans themselves are a divided voting block – many older Afghans immigrants dislike the democratic party and voted for Trump in this election [i would like to expand on this point, if it fits into the article at large.] – refugee-aid organizations like his are very concerned for what the Trump administration’s policies will look like.

In Trump’s first term, he failed to bring Afghan voices (especially those of women) to the negotiating table with the Taliban; his promises to end humanitarian parole and deport undocumented immigrants now threaten the livelihood of many Afghan-Americans, who wonder where they will go, with Afghanistan impossible to return to. 

Trump’s administration poses an even stronger threat to women. Facing gender-apartheid at home, Azzizada said that many Afghan women refugees are coming to him asking how Trump could possibly be in power. “I think the Trump administration poses a threat to women worldwide,” he said, “And that includes Afghan women.” 

Between encroaches on bodily-autonomy, migration persecution, and public statements that belittle female colleagues, Azzizada said Afghan women are shocked by what they’ve heard from Trump. Hearing about what’s happening in Afghanistan, he said that Trump’s administration is “a subtle reminder of what they fled in the first place.”

 

[really hoping i can get some scenes while in Virginia this weekend. Eating dinner with Maryam and co on friday night, that could be a good lede. I will try to meet with them again on sat or sun (potentially a place to return to, as a closer? Also going to meet with some less privileged (more recent) Afghan evacuees there (either through AWA, VACC, Wahid, or Azzizida). Hoping to find someone who would be a good stand-in for Zahra. I also have my interview with Nasiba Maqsudi and my talk with Davoudi from HIAS – I didn’t want to use either of those scenes in this, because I’ve already written them. But hopefully i will also get a lawyer to talk about the specific challenges threatening Afghan migrants, I’ve written a couple and will follow up. Right now, it’s hard to focus my article specifically onto the points i want to be making, so I assume much of this will be cut]