Afghan residents who fled the nation with American help after the US’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan stay stranded in third international locations, new paperwork shared completely with the Guardian recommend, some at prison-like services and plenty of with no readability about their prospects for resettlement.
US officers gained’t say precisely what number of Afghans stay at such websites, the place they had been taken after the withdrawal that noticed lots of of 1000’s fleeing for his or her lives through the Taliban’s lightning takeover in 2021. Some advocates estimate that “lots of” stay stranded in momentary services in as much as three dozen international locations.
A set of presidency data printed on Tuesday gives beforehand undisclosed particulars concerning the US authorities’s involvement with operations at these websites. The data describe household separations, deteriorating psychological well being situations, insufficient services and fears of forcible repatriation.
The paperwork, which provide a snapshot as much as the autumn of 2023, had been obtained by the Heart for Constitutional Rights, Abolitionist Regulation Heart, and Muslim Advocates following litigation in opposition to the Departments of Protection, State, and Homeland Safety.
Sadaf Doost, an lawyer and human rights program supervisor at Abolitionist Regulation Heart, instructed the Guardian that advocates filed the data requests to hunt details about situations at a half dozen websites the place they knew Afghans had been being held. However the paperwork they obtained point out that evacuated Afghans with pending purposes to enter the US have been “detained, held, or in any other case compelled to stay in limbo” in at the very least 36 international locations, the teams wrote in a briefing information.
“Different data we’ve obtained reveal letters upon letters of tireless appeals Afghan nationals made to US authorities officers – from detailing the shortage of entry to US embassies, attorneys, and humanitarian and immigration-rights organizations to the untenable situations to the collective trauma the neighborhood continues to endure,” Doost added.
It isn’t clear from the paperwork how lots of the 36 international locations are housing the evacuees in holding services; the advocates say they know of 5 services in 4 international locations – the UAE, Qatar, Kosovo and Germany. As of April 2023, data present that 2,834 Afghans with pending US purposes had been in Qatar, 1,256 within the United Arab Emirates, 259 in Kosovo, and dozens extra in different international locations.
The Departments of Protection and Homeland Safety didn’t reply to requests for remark. A spokesperson for the state division wrote in a press release to the Guardian that US authorities efforts to resettle eligible Afghans have been ongoing since 2021. Whereas officers course of their circumstances, candidates are “allowed to be current on third nation platforms with the permission of the host nation”, the spokesperson stated, with the US protecting the prices. The spokesperson added that the US issued greater than 33,000 particular immigrant visas for Afghans within the fiscal yr 2024.
“US authorities efforts to resettle eligible Afghans with a authorized immigration pathway to the USA have been ongoing for the reason that suspension of operations at Embassy Kabul in August of 2021. These efforts proceed as we speak.”
‘Appears merciless to me’
Greater than 1.6 million folks left Afghanistan within the chaotic aftermath of the US’s announcement in July 2021 that it will go away the nation after preventing a two-decade struggle there. Within the last days of the withdrawal the next month, US officers coordinated a rushed evacuation of some 120,000 of individuals to dozens of nations all over the world.
Greater than 190,000 Afghans have been resettled in the USA since then, in accordance with the state division spokesperson, however the newly launched data recommend that a lot of these caught overseas have pending purposes to enter the US on humanitarian or different grounds. A unique public data request printed in 2023 by the American Immigration Council exhibits that from January 2020 to April 2022, solely 114 of 44,785 purposes for humanitarian parole – which permits people in pressing conditions to enter the USA when they don’t seem to be in any other case eligible – or lower than 0.3%, had been authorized. Officers are additionally at the moment processing greater than 20,000 “particular immigrant visas” purposes by Afghans who labored for the US authorities, and have rejected about 40%, Reuters reported.
Little is understood about what US officers have known as the “lily pad” websites the place a few of them stay. The time period can also be used to informally consult with overseas international locations’ services with a brief presence of US personnel. A few of the websites are makeshift, government-run refugee housing services, others are on former US army bases. (The division spokesperson stated the websites at the moment are known as “platform places”.)
Human rights advocates have beforehand raised considerations about a few of these websites, within the UAE, Kosovo and Qatar. In 2023, Human Rights Watch warned that as much as 2,700 Afghans had been being arbitrarily detained at “Emirates Humanitarian Metropolis”, a logistics hub in Abu Dhabi the place Afghan evacuees had been “locked up for over 15 months in cramped, depressing situations with no hope of progress on their circumstances”.
The group discovered that Afghans at that camp had been subjected to around-the-clock surveillance and constraints on motion and denied entry to authorized counsel, guests and journalists, whereas poor medical care resulted in typically life-threatening issues. A number of folks instructed human rights investigators on the time that they weren’t allowed to go away the positioning.
Different websites had been no higher, with reported suicides and starvation strikes by Afghans at processing websites in Qatar and Kosovo. The Kosovo web site earned the nickname “little Guantanamo” amongst residents as a result of these held there have been instructed that in the event that they left the premises, their purposes for US resettlement can be thrown out.
In a single case described within the paperwork, an aged girl with dementia was dropped at the US whereas her “caregiver” remained within the UAE, a state division official wrote in an e-mail to colleagues, indicating that the plan was to maneuver the girl right into a nursing house. “Which appears merciless to me,” the official wrote. One other e-mail trade references somebody who made it to the US whereas their “weak mom and brother” remained within the UAE.
Greater than 17,000 folks moved by the UAE web site between August 2021 and January 2022 however fewer than 50 stay there as we speak, in accordance with the division spokesperson, who stated that the US is “working with the UAE to find out resettlement choices for the remaining inhabitants”.
US officers have denied previously having a presence at websites the place Afghans are being held overseas, however the data present they had been concerned within the institution of at the very least a few of them. The paperwork embody agreements between the US and 5 international locations – Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Italy and Germany – detailing situations for what the US referred to as on the time the “momentary” relocation of Afghan residents to those websites. Within the agreements, US officers pledged to contribute to the “security and luxury” of Afghans held in third international locations, together with offering for meals, medical care and academic wants. They promised the host international locations to assist keep “order” on the websites, together with by conducting “joint” patrols.
Such agreements had been to be “short-term”, starting from one month to underneath a yr. However the data present that at the very least some had been formally prolonged, in a single case – in Qatar – at the very least by September 2023.
‘They made guarantees to prioritize Afghans’
Laila Ayub, an immigration lawyer and co-director of Venture ANAR, an advocacy group based by Afghan American girls to assist Afghans resettling within the US, instructed the Guardian 1000’s of people that had been promised pathways to particular visas in return for his or her work with the US stay in Afghanistan or third international locations. Many, she added, have grown so determined that they’ve chosen to make their option to the US by way of treacherous routes by Latin America and the US-Mexico border. Others have returned to Afghanistan, regardless of the dangers they face there.
“Many years of US overseas coverage immediately displaced many Afghans,” she added. “[US officials] made particular guarantees that they’d prioritize Afghans and that they’d give them a pathway, and we simply haven’t seen that promise fulfilled.”
This week, a bipartisan group of greater than 700 US veterans and present and former officers wrote a public letter urging the incoming Trump administration to protect particular visa and resettlement choices for Afghans in danger, enhance assets allotted to their processing, and shield them from broader immigration enforcement, which Trump has stated can be his administration’s precedence.
Shawn VanDiver, a US Navy veteran and founding father of #AfghanEvac, a gaggle that works with the state division to assist resettle Afghans and arranged the letter, stated that he fears that Donald Trump could shut down refugee arrivals like he did throughout his first time period in workplace.
“We’d like a greater wartime allies program,” VanDiver stated, praising officers’ efforts to resettle an infinite variety of folks whereas noting that the method stays flawed. “The system is working as designed, however the system is designed to be troublesome. It’s designed to make it arduous.”
Supply hyperlink
