Eleven days after the Taliban swept through Afghanistan’s capital in August, Hamed Ahmadi found himself far from the home he fled in Kabul eating cantaloupe, two slivers of chicken and a small piece of bread for dinner at a military base in El Paso, Texas – a meal that made waves on social media after the 28-year-old posted it to his Twitter account.
Ahmadi, who was met with intense backlash on Twitter after posting a photo of the scarce military base meals, found his life thrown into chaos in tandem with the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Once a journalist living with his mother and little brother, he was now forced to leave the job and life he loved in a 10-day period defined by painful goodbyes, two blocked attempts at entering the airport and looming uncertainty.
“Most of the reactions were really negative,” Ahmadi said regarding the controversial tweet, which led to ample media coverage. “And people were like, ‘OK, you’re ungrateful. You’re saved by the U.S. and now you’re expecting luxury food’ and they use very bad language. But there were other people as well that really showed support and they reached out to me saying, ‘Do not let those people get to you. This is only part of the realities in the United States.’”
But the challenges that Ahmadi faced coming into the U.S. did not end when the Twitter responses stopped rolling in. He and other Afghan migrants have been left to deal with the harsh realities of leaving their home country and adjusting to a new one.
“The whole experience of being dislocated from Afghanistan to here is not a pleasant experience because you have a normal life back in Kabul and you have your family there, you have a source of income, you have friends and there is a normalcy in your life,” Ahmadi says. “And then being disrupted, you know, you need to start fresh. And during this transition it’s not really easy to adapt to a new life here, especially knowing that you still have people back in Afghanistan that are in danger.”
After evacuating from Afghanistan with the help of a confidential American agency and spending 44 days in the sweltering Texas heat in the refugee camps at Fort Bliss, Ahmadi was relocated to Silver Spring, Maryland, joining the robust Afghan community that exists in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia – the last of which has the highest rate of Afghan migrant resettlement in the country.
Ahmadi displays identification wristbands he had to wear at various immigration processing sites in Kabul, Qatar, Germany and Texas during his long journey from Afghanistan to the United States.(Yassine El Mansouri for USN&WR)
While Ahmadi knows shifting to the United States has provided him with safety from the Taliban’s brutal rule, he also emphasizes that the difficulties for him and other evacuated Afghans are far from over.
For one, evacuated Afghans have to live with the pain of leaving behind their loved ones, many of whom were ineligible for relocation to the U.S. Ahmadi, who said goodbye to his mother on four separate occasions because of the uncertainty of his escape, was only eligible to enter the U.S. through humanitarian parole because he was working as a fellow for an American organization, the United States Institute of Peace, at the time. While he is able to communicate with his family frequently, he still worries about their safety – especially considering that his sister-in-law was a member of the Afghan police force before the Taliban took power.
He explains that Afghan migrants have “mixed feelings.”
“We are all happy that we are safe,” he says. “But at the same time, we feel guilty – although we are the victims of this situation – but we feel guilty that we left behind our parents or close friends. And we kind of feel that it’s not fair that we are here and enjoying a new life here and our friends or family members are there.”
Beyond the emotional toll that the evacuation has had on those separated from their families, evacuated Afghans also face hardships trying to adjust to life in the U.S. – financially, culturally and in the throes of the U.S. immigration system.
Securing a Legal Status in the U.S.
For evacuated Afghans, coming to America doesn’t necessarily provide a guaranteed future in the U.S. – especially when taking into account the different immigration statuses with which they were permitted into the country.
For those who migrated here under special immigrant visas, which are granted to those who have worked for the U.S. government in some capacity, there is a clear path forward: upon arrival, they are granted legal permanent resident status and receive a resident alien card, or green card, after which they can apply for citizenship in five years, per State Department guidelines.
But for folks such as Ahmadi, who migrated here under humanitarian parole status, the future remains uncertain. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, while humanitarian parole allows parolees to gain “temporary lawful presence” in the U.S., it does not “confer immigration status” nor “provide a path to lawful permanent residence (a Green Card) or another lawful immigration status.”
Ahmadi said that while he and his fellow humanitarian parolees were granted work permits, the uncertainty and lack of communication on what happens to them after a few years has made it difficult to have a “feeling of, ‘OK, we are being resettled in the United States.” While Ahmadi’s future here is shaping up despite the uncertainty, as he was recently accepted into a fellowship program with New York University specifically for evacuated Afghans, he notes that this is not always the reality for other Afghan migrants – especially those without previous connections in the U.S. and those who cannot speak English.
Help From Afghan American Networks
Afghan American communities across the country have stepped up to help the incoming populations navigate the oftentimes confusing immigration and resettlement process – especially in the D.C. area, which has taken in more than 2,000 migrants since evacuations began in August.
Arash Azizzada, the co-founder of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, a group of “progressive organizers in the Afghan diaspora dedicated to a vision for a peaceful Afghanistan,” says that “the events of August 15th forced Afghan Americans … to become kind of community organizers and to find ways to be resourceful to help evacuate either friends or family or other Afghans who were at risk.”
“The Afghan community is doing this on pretty much a volunteer basis,” he explained in December. “We are not doing this with any type of institutional power. We are merely trying to leverage our connections and personal networks to fundraise and to find anybody who can advocate for us in an efficient manner.”
Because of the hectic nature of the migrations, Azizzada says that he and his fellow organizers had to quickly learn how to coordinate evacuation efforts, become familiar with U.S. immigration law, and figure out the complexities of international sanctions and banking laws to provide support to Afghans starting anew in the U.S.
Even for highly strenuous tasks like chartering planes and facilitating evacuations, Azizzada says U.S. governmental organizations and officials were reaching out to his and other Afghan groups to figure out how to locate people in need of evacuation services and get them out of Afghanistan.
“People in need in Afghanistan and beyond came to rely on myself, other Afghan Americans, veterans groups, and other nonprofits who were not trained or well-versed, figuring out how to charter planes and ensure people found a route to safety,” he explains.
For Ahmadi, the efforts of the Afghan community in the D.C. area are what allowed him to rent an apartment just outside the district in Maryland – his preferred resettlement location, as he already had connections there – by finding a co-signer within the Afghan American community and furnishing his new home.
Lapis, an Afghan restaurant located in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was one of the many that stepped up in the furnishing and donation efforts for the incoming migrants. Once evacuations began, the owners of Lapis organized a donation drive for clothes, shoes, linens, towels, blankets, pillows and home appliances to give to resettling Afghans, using their restaurant space to store the donations.
Fatima Popal, one of the owners of Lapis, says while this has definitely been a “difficult time” for the Afghan community, it has also been “beautiful” to see the community come together to support people in need.
“I think it’s the only way that we can channel all of our energy, our sadness, our hurt, our anger, our frustrations is doing this donation drive, which is to help the people that are coming here, to give them a little bit of a second opportunity,” she says. “The amount of people that just come out to donate physical items, gift cards and their time has been just amazing to see.”
Along with business owners and community leaders, student groups also dedicated their limited time and resources toward facilitating incoming Afghans’ migration experiences.
The George Mason University Afghan Student Association – based in Fairfax, Virginia – has mobilized in the months following the onset of evacuations, organizing fundraiser concerts and open mic nights to raise money for refugee families. One concert that the organization held in October with prominent Afghan singer Said Omar raised more than $10,000 for refugee families settling in Virginia.
“It’s been really great to see everyone stepping up, especially within our own Afghan community,” says Nashwa Osmani, the president of GMU’s Afghan Student Organization and a junior at the university.
While the Afghan American community has stepped up as a resource for incoming migrants, neighbors from other communities have come together to welcome this newly displaced population, too.
Religious organizations in the D.C. area have especially provided themselves as resources during this time, including Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area (LSSNCA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing services in refugee resettlement, workforce development, family and child care, and health and wellness.
While the group provides a variety of services to newly arrived Afghans – from partnering with local clinics to get migrants the medical services, long-term care or immunizations they need to enroll in school to collecting donations of diapers, kitchen supplies and more for families in need – members also try to help Afghans adjust culturally to living in the U.S. through job training and bonding activities.
In their job training, the group helps Afghans shifting here in preparing their resumes and interview skills so they can find jobs in the U.S. It also provides networking opportunities and vocational training to newly arrived people to help them achieve financial independence.
For Ahmadi, who migrated to the U.S. under humanitarian parole status, the future remains uncertain. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, while humanitarian parole allows parolees to gain “temporary lawful presence” in the U.S., it does not “confer immigration status” nor “provide a path to lawful permanent residence (a Green Card) or another lawful immigration status.”(Yassine El Mansouri for USN&WR)
In terms of adjusting to life in the U.S. culturally, Lutheran Social Services hosts a peer support group for Afghan women for them to bond over their shared experiences in a safe space while also getting to engage with volunteers who can answer questions about life in the U.S., American working culture and other culture-orientation issues.
“I am so inspired every day and I honestly choke up when I think about it, how much our local community and our community at large has shown up,” says Kristyn Peck, the group’s CEO. “There was a period of time where we were getting so many hits on our website … our website was literally shutting down because it just couldn’t accommodate that.”
Osmani says it’s especially important for people to see “people outside of the Afghan community that are doing this because they have a completely different reach.”
“You never know who in your network could be able to help or donate,” she says.
Calls for More Federal Help
Azizzada calls for more government assistance from the U.S. in helping evacuate Afghans abroad and facilitate resettlement efforts here, especially in light of the slowed action on evacuating those still at risk in Afghanistan since the onset of evacuations.
“Really, what we are trying to do is the job that the United States government is supposed to do in the first place,” he says. “So I think, currently, both the Biden administration and many members of Congress are hoping that this kind of media attention that was there in August just blows over. I think they are hoping that they can get away with not fulfilling the moral and political obligations that they have to the Afghan people.”
He says that he and his fellow organizers call on the U.S. government to “do their job” – meaning continuing evacuation efforts, humanitarian aid, lifting sanctions and “fulfilling their obligation when it comes to 80,000 resettled Afghans in the United States.”
Despite the ways that Afghan and non-Afghan communities alike have stepped up to advocate for evacuated Afghans, their work in bringing Afghans to safety and resettling them is far from over. As Azizzada puts it, “Here we are four months later and we’re doing that same exact type of work.”
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