“In the first Taliban era, I can say that psychologically, all women died. They were alive only physically,” said Nasiba Maqsudi from her home in northeast Philadelphia. “I was one of those women.”

Nasiba was a doctor in Kabul, Afghanistan, when the United States pulled its support from the country. Her husband, Muhammed Khan Maqsudi, had worked for the UN, and with its support, the two fled with their son to Pakistan in October of 2021.

After two years of waiting with a pending asylum-application, the family was able to move to the US in July of 2024. Nasiba said that she goes out as often as possible, trying to improve her English-language abilities and learn about American culture.

Now in the US, she is grateful despite difficulties, and wants to use her position of power to support those she left behind. “As far as myself, I’m not going to Afghanistan anymore,” Nasiba said. “I hope I will be able to help out women from here.” 

 

Nasiba Maqsudi was born in 1989, in the Ghazni province to the Southeast of Kabul. She’s ethnically Hazara and a Shiite muslim, two historically targeted minority groups in Afghanistan. 

In the 1990s, the Sunni Taliban government oppressed and committed mass violence against the Hazaras, who are of South Asian descent. By 2001, violence against Hazaras was mounting in Central Afghanistan and was receiving international attention.

Nasiba and Muhammed, who’s also a Shiite Hazara from the Ghazni province, remember the repression brought on by the Taliban. “The people of Afghanistan were totally hopeless,” he said. He remembers the Taliban cutting off access to food and medical supplies. 

During this time, Nasiba saw countless women sick, without access to proper medical care. “I witnessed myself losing four siblings that my mother lost during the pregnancies,” she said. 

“When the US came to Afghanistan in 2001, the situation totally changed,” remembered Muhammed. “We exercised peace, security, dignity. We became very very happy.” 

“When the Americans came to Afghanistan, I feeled I was born again,” Nasiba said. “It was so wonderful for me, I never will forget that time.” With new freedom for education and enfranchisement, Nasiba returned to her memories of the Hazara repression. “When I was looking at the women suffering from different diseases and problems, my plan was one day to be able to start treating these poor people and poor communities without any payment,” she said. She enrolled in Kateb University in Kabul, to study medicine. 

After graduating in 2019, she started working at the renowned Istiqlal hospital in Kabul. “I had the plan to build my own clinic, and I was working on the building,” she remembers. “But unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”

In 2021, when the Taliban took control of Kabul, Nasiba remembered feeling as depressed as she had when the Taliban was first in power. “I lost hope. I was only thinking about my husband and my children and there was no ambition,” she said. Since 2001, protections for women, Shiites, and Hazaras had increased, and 2021 brought with it aggression against all three groups.

In October of 2021, the UN helped Nasiba, Muhammed, and their then-thirteen-year-old son flee to Pakistan. Nasiba remembers her time in Pakistan anxiously, saying that she was so worried they’d deport her back to Afghanistan that she never left the house. Muhammed submitted a P1 asylum claim with the UN’s support, and the family was finally accepted in June of 2024. 

After a month in Qatar where they were interviewed and further background checked, Nasiba and her family flew to Philadelphia. There, they were connected with the Nationalities Service Center (NSC), who helped them with medicaid, food stamps, and housing. 

After three months, NCS connected the family with their Matching Grant program, an effort to connect immigrants and refugees with suitable jobs in their fields. “They couldn’t find a job for us,” Muhammed said. 

 

Nasiba and Muhammed are not alone in their job-search difficulties. According to a study by the Immigration Policy Institute, only 61% of Afghan immigrants were employed in 2022. Facing ill-equipped job training programs and difficulties with English, many educated Afghans refugees are either jobless, or employed at menial positions. 

The job-search difficulties among Afghan evacuees are worse for women, complicated by many factors. According to the Immigration Policy Institute’s study, only 37% of Afghan women were in the American labor force in 2022, compared to 57% of all foreign-born women. 

Dr. Abha Rai at Loyola University and Dr. Mary Held at the University of Knoxville argue that economic pressures in the US put strain on traditional Afghan gender dynamics.

They see cultural differences as central to the general difficulties in integrating. “In the US, because of how expensive things are, sometimes men and women both have to work,” said Rai. “Maybe they didn’t do it like that back in Afghanistan.”

“Coming into the United States, Afghan women have gained freedoms,” adds Held. “But also by working, and through these freedoms, have gained power and agency in the household.”

Rai and Held admit that the job-finding process has been less-than-perfect for Afghan refugees. “Coming from that structure, males had greater agency and greater power in the home, so just by women gaining power, it can shift men’s sense of power,” said Held. “The difference in the responsibilities, respect, and power between Afghanistan and the United States,” she continued, “can lead to interpersonal conflict and stress within the family.

The Maqsudi are relative outliers in this trend – Nasiba worked the last ten years, and Muhammed moved to Kabul full time when she began school at Kateb University. But still, they haven’t been exempt from culture shock.

“Since we came here,” said Nasiba. “I realized that I used to live in a very traditional country. So slowly I realize that men and women have the same rights here in the US.”

“Women can go and find jobs and go out and walk the same as men are doing. This is something very promising for me,” she continued. Still, she acknowledges that NCS and Matching Grant have failed to place her with a job that uses her experience and education.

 

“We failed Afghans, we continue to fail Afghans,” said Shayan Davoudi, immigration lawyer at the HIAS refugee resettlement organization. Since 2021, he has worked on the asylum cases of over 100 Afghans, and said he consistently sees them being passed over for job opportunities, without viable paths towards career success. 

“Think about a young Afghan who couldn’t continue his education back in Afghanistan. Could that person realistically in this country continue education? Obviously the answer is no,” explained Davoudi. “An American citizen in this country post high school, you either got to have money, or get admitted to a school that can get you some scholarship.” And without green cards, he explained, Afghans have few opportunities for scholarships. 

“The majority of my clients, they were educated people, they had their whole dreams,” he said. Here, he continued, “they have to start from zero.”

Nasiba remains optimistic, despite lack of help from job-agencies.  

“I hope that here I can change my life by pursuing my education, and hopefully by becoming a doctor,” she said. While as a P1-visa holder, she can enroll in medical school, the economic challenges create mounting difficulties. 

She said that regardless of her circumstances here, they are incomparable to the challenges that Afghan women are facing. She keeps in contact with her sisters, parents, and friends, all of whom have stayed in Afghanistan. “Part of our heart is allocated to the country and the place that we’re from,” she said. 

Just as she’d first hoped to open a free clinic in Afghanistan, she now wants to help others with her medical abilities.  

“I hope that one day I’ll be able to do something here and through here I can help many women in Afghanistan,” she said. Before that, she’s looking for a job that will help her stand on her own two feet.