It’s a story as old as America, immigrants who have made their home in the United States, reaching out to help those who come after them. This is the case of an Afghan American mother and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida, who are helping with the resettlement of Afghan refugees. VOA’s Zheela Noori reports.
The U.S. government aims to open a new center in Northern Virginia to receive additional Afghan evacuees, according to four sources familiar with the matter, although even before any official announcement the local sheriff in the area raised concerns about the plan.
The center is due to open as the government closes down the last of eight sites on military bases that housed tens of thousands of people evacuated from Afghanistan since August. It would be staffed by multiple U.S. agencies involved with the resettlement effort and could be operational by late February or early March, a senior U.S. official told Reuters.
The site being considered is in Leesburg, Virginia, according to two of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement to Reuters that it was still working to confirm the location of the center.
The sheriff’s office of Loudoun County, where Leesburg is located, issued a statement Thursday saying it was told by DHS that the government planned to bus some 2,000 Afghan evacuees a month, mostly relocating from Qatar, to the National Conference Center (NCC) from nearby Dulles International Airport beginning this month.
Sheriff Michael Chapman raised concerns about a “lack of communication, lack of planning, language barriers” as well as “the NCC’s unfenced proximity to a residential neighborhood and two public schools,” according to the statement.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sheriff’s concerns. Chapman said he had spoken to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the matter.
The remaining Afghans currently housed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey – the last of the eight sites on military bases – are expected to be resettled in communities around the country in the coming days.
Major milestone
The move away from placing refugees in repurposed military installations marks a major milestone in U.S. President Joe Biden’s evacuation operation launched as the Taliban overran Afghanistan in August.
About 1,200 Afghans were still at the base, commonly known as Fort Dix, as of Tuesday, DHS said. The agency told Reuters that the base will continue housing evacuees awaiting resettlement until the new processing center is set up.
About 80,000 Afghans have been resettled in the United States as part of “Operation Allies Welcome” in the largest effort of its kind since the Vietnam War era.
The population passing through bases included applicants to the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is available to Afghans at risk of Taliban retaliation who worked for the U.S. government.
Others were admitted to the United States temporarily via “humanitarian parole” with the option to apply for asylum.
The Biden administration has urged Congress to create a more direct pathway to citizenship for Afghans.
Thousands of vulnerable Afghans are still stranded abroad as the U.S. government evaluates their cases and wrestles with logistical challenges to processing their admission.
Eligible Afghans currently in third countries could be allowed entry through an expedited refugee admission process, Reuters reported earlier this month.
But for Afghans still inside Afghanistan the pathways are limited. As of data from mid-February, the U.S. government had only approved around 170 applications out of 43,000 Afghans who have applied for “humanitarian parole” to come to the United States.
The man dubbed a leader of newly arriving Afghan refugees in Wausau, Wisconsin, was profiled in the local media as a U.S. ally and someone who had been persecuted by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had plans to open a restaurant to give his new community a taste of Afghan cuisine.
But less than two months after settling into a rented apartment with his wife and six children, the refugee was arrested on charges of sexual assault in the fourth degree.
The unidentified victim, according to Wausau police department, was a woman who was helping the family’s resettlement.
Although he has been released on a signature bond, the 40-year-old has not spoken about the criminal charge against him and did not respond to VOA questions. As with all defendants in U.S. courts, he is presumed innocent until convicted.
Tens of thousands of Afghans have been evacuated to the U.S. since the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government last August because of fears they could be targeted by the Taliban.
Aid agencies say many of the newly arrived refugees face primarily housing and employment challenges as they resettle in communities across the U.S.
Some also experience cultural shock as they navigate through the intricacies of life in America.
“[We are] aware that there are cases of Afghan evacuees allegedly committing acts of interpersonal violence,” Emily Gilkinson told VOA. She is a spokeswoman for the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), which has helped the resettlement of some 6,000 Afghan refugees in Wisconsin and other states.
Three aid agencies involved in the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. said they have no records of such incidents. VOA found public reports of four Afghan refugees allegedly arrested on violence and sexual assault charges since September 2021.
Cultural education
Resettlement programs are funded by the U.S. government and one key requirement is cultural orientation.
“We provide robust cultural orientation classes to newly arrived refugees,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS).
Classes take 30 to 60 minutes and deal with health care, employment, personal finance, transportation, safety, education and other topics.
“The curriculum and process of delivering cultural orientation is something that ECDC continues to improve in order to better prepare newcomers for success in American society,” said Gilkinson.
One Afghan refugee in Wisconsin who asked to remain anonymous said his cultural orientation classes were short and mostly dealt with hypothetical situations.
“I think practical learning can be more important. Some of us will need cultural advising even after we settle in our new homes,” he said.
Resettlement agencies say they will continue to assist refugees in finding jobs and learning the necessary skills and knowledge to thrive in their new life in the U.S.
Hate crimes
Refugees and aid agencies applaud what they call a generous influx of support for the newly arrived Afghans from individuals and groups all over the country.
“I’ve never seen as generous and kind people as the Americans,” said Attaullah Rahmani, an Afghan refugee.
But the Afghan refugees are arriving in the U.S. at a time when the FBI is reporting a surge of racially inspired hate crimes, especially against people of Asian origin.
Although there is no aggregated data about instances of hate crimes involving Afghan refugees, there are isolated reports.
In late January, the FBI started investigating an alleged hate crime incident involving two Afghan refugees in Owensboro, Kentucky, local media reported.
In another incident, stickers with the message “Afghan refugee hunting permit” were seen at a university campus in Michigan last year.
Two refugees who spent about two months at Ford Dix in New Jersey as their resettlement cases were processed said they received lectures on racial and religious sensitivities in the U.S.
“They showed us signs which represent white supremacy and said we should avoid those people,” Ahmad Mohib, one of the refugees told VOA.
Domestic violence
Isolated incidents of domestic violence were first reported in refugee processing centers at U.S. military bases.
Afghanistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which prohibits and criminalizes gender-based violence, in 2003. In 2009, Afghanistan also enacted a law on elimination of violence against women. However, human rights organization say violence against Afghan women remains prevalent and the Afghan justice system often fails female victims.
“Domestic violence happens in every community,” said Naheed Samadi Bahram, U.S. director for Women for Afghan Women, a nongovernmental organization advocating for the rights of Afghan women and girls. She told VOA that interpersonal relations among the refugees are particularly strained because of the traumas they have experienced.
Other resettlement agencies have also tracked extreme stress and trauma among the Afghan refugees.
“The impact of losing the only home you’ve ever known, of leaving family behind, cannot be overstated,” said LIRS’s Vignarajah.
Bahram said her organization has offered awareness to some refugees about the consequences of domestic violence here in the U.S., which is different than how it’s dealt with in Afghanistan.
“Our main problem is language,” said Tamana Kohistani, who resettled in Virginia with her husband and three children in December. “Not knowing English here is like we don’t know anything and we can’t say anything as well.”
The United States and other nations helped evacuate some 120,000 Afghans from their country after the Taliban took over last August. In the months since, tens of thousands of former Afghan commandos, translators, journalists and charity workers, as well as their families, have made their way abroad.
The vast majority of them have gained entry to the United States under a decade-old special immigrant visa program open to military interpreters and others who worked on government-funded contracts. A separate refugee admission program appears to have granted admission to just a tiny percentage of those who applied.
In Afghanistan, the situation remains desperate. Scores of Afghans are still trying to relocate to a safer home. A Gallup survey this month indicated that some 94% of Afghans rate their lives poorly enough to be considered “suffering,” with some three quarters of respondents saying they cannot afford to buy food for their families.
Many Afghans who have successfully navigated the chaotic immigration process now face the challenge of starting over in an unfamiliar new country. VOA reporters have followed several families now trying to start over in a new place, navigating strange customs and confusing bureaucracies, while worrying about loved ones back in Afghanistan.
One of the challenges that new Afghan refugees in California face is a tough rental market. Many are staying in temporary housing for weeks at a time. For VOA, Breshna Tahrik has more from San Diego, California.
In August, Jan Mohammad Saber, a former local United Nations employee in Afghanistan, and his five children were evacuated from the country, but his wife was left behind. The children are now trying to adjust to their life in the U.S. without their mother. VOA’s Noshaba Ashna reports from Atlanta, Georgia.
Abdul Kabir Salarzai is hoping to be reunited with his family in the United States, after being evacuated from eastern Afghanistan, where he worked as a local anti-Taliban commander. He left the area with only part of his family after Kabul fell to the Taliban. VOA’s Noshaba Ashna has more from Atlanta, Georgia in this report narrated by Roshan Noorzai.
President Joe Biden is expected to issue an executive order on Friday to move some $7 billion of the Afghan central bank’s assets frozen in the U.S. banking system to fund humanitarian relief in Afghanistan and compensate victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a U.S. official familiar with the decision.
The order will require U.S. financial institutions to facilitate access to $3.5 billion of assets for the Afghan relief and basic needs. The other $3.5 billion would remain in the United States and be used to fund ongoing litigation by U.S. victims of terrorism, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision had not been formally announced.
International funding to Afghanistan was suspended and billions of dollars of the country’s assets abroad, mostly in the United States, were frozen after the Taliban took control of the country in mid-August.
The country’s long-troubled economy has been in a tailspin since the Taliban takeover. Nearly 80% of Afghanistan’s previous government’s budget came from the international community. That money, now cut off, financed hospitals, schools, factories and government ministries. Desperation for such basic necessities has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as health care shortages, drought and malnutrition.
The official noted that U.S. courts where 9/11 victims have filed claims against the Taliban will also have to take action for the victims to be compensated.
The executive order is expected to be signed by Biden later on Friday.
The Taliban have called on the international community to release funds and help stave off a humanitarian disaster.
Afghanistan has more than $9 billion in reserves, including just over $7 billion in reserves held in the United States. The rest is largely in Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland and Qatar.
The Taliban are certain to oppose the split.
As of January the Taliban had managed to pay salaries of its ministries but was struggling to keep employees at work. They have promised to open schools for girls after the Afghan new year at the end of March, but humanitarian organizations are saying money is needed to pay teachers. Universities for women have reopened in several provinces with the Taliban saying the staggered opening will be completed by the end of February when all universities for women and men will open, a major concession to international demands.
The New York Times first reported on Biden’s coming order.
U.S. businesses and Asian Americans are stepping up to help Afghan refugees adjust to life in the U.S. with technology training and tools. One resettlement effort that began at a military base in Indiana has spread throughout the United States. VOA’s Jessica Stone has the story.
Freeze it indefinitely, return it to Afghanistan or give it to 9/11 victims’ families? The Biden administration has until February 11 to tell a U.S. court what it thinks should happen to $7 billion of Afghan government funds currently frozen at the New York Federal Reserve.
Judges twice extended deadlines this year to give the government more time to sort out the legal logistics in the case, but for Andrew Maloney, a lawyer representing about 150 relatives of the 9/11 victims, the fate of the funds should have been decided “yesterday.”
“We’d like it to be done immediately,” Maloney told VOA. “We think it should be immediately put into an account that allows the court to make sure it is distributed evenly and fairly … to families who lost someone on 9/11.”
Others say the funds belong to the Afghan people and should be released to help mitigate economic and humanitarian crises in the country.
“Victims of 9/11 obviously have a legitimate suffering that they’re seeking to address here. We can’t make that the only factor in the decision. That’s a moral imperative, and it’s a practical one as well,” said Stephen Carter, an independent expert who leads the Afghanistan work at the London-based rights group Global Witness.
People in Afghanistan have protested against the freeze, and the U.N. secretary-general has called for a release of the funds.
“The function of Afghanistan’s central bank must be preserved and assisted, and a path identified for conditional release of Afghan foreign currency reserves,” Antonio Guterres said on January 13.
Even a group of U.S. lawmakers has called on President Joe Biden for a gradual release of the funds.
A bargaining chip?
The $7 billion frozen at the New York Federal Reserve is a mixture of cash, gold, bonds and other investments that were made by Afghanistan’s central bank before the Taliban retook power, according to former Afghan officials. Additionally, close to $2 billion of Afghanistan’s financial assets, including private banks’ liquidities, is frozen in European institutions.
“The reserves are a complicated issue,” a spokesperson at the State Department told VOA when asked why the U.S. government has not made a decision about the frozen funds.
The lawsuits by 9/11 victims’ families are one reason the case is complicated. Another is that the U.S. government is trying to ensure the Taliban, its former enemy, will not benefit from the assets.
U.S. military and Taliban fighters fought for almost two decades in Afghanistan, killing thousands. Even before the final U.S. soldier left Afghanistan last August, the Taliban took charge in Kabul despite U.S. warnings not to seize power by force.
“I think these funds are going to be a bargaining chip in the relationship with the Taliban, which I’m sure the U.S. government won’t give up very quickly or easily,” said Carter of Global Witness.
U.S. officials say they’re working in tandem with allies in denying the Taliban every financial incentive.
“We review these issues thoughtfully and in coordination with allies, partners and other countries where Afghan Central Bank reserves are located,” said the State Department spokesperson.
With more than $516 million in assistance pledged since August last year, the U.S. is now the largest humanitarian aid donor to Afghanistan. U.S. officials say they will continue helping the Afghan people and pressing the Taliban to form an inclusive government and respect women’s rights.
VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to this report.
A former senior Afghan official says he has answered questions in a U.S. inquiry into allegations that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took $150 million in cash with him when he abruptly left Kabul last year as the Taliban took control.
Hamdullah Mohib, who served as Ghani’s national security adviser, says he voluntarily met with John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in December at his office in Arlington, Virginia, to answer questions about corruption in the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
“I also gave [SIGAR] my bank accounts and details of all my assets,” said Mohib, who left Afghanistan in the same plane with Ghani and stayed with him in Abu Dhabi for a while. He told VOA that he would continue to cooperate with SIGAR investigations.
The U.S. was the largest donor to the Afghan government until it collapsed, and SIGAR has been tasked by Congress to investigate allegations that Ghani took millions in cash as he fled Afghanistan last August.
“The fact that we’re looking at those allegations doesn’t mean that they’re true or not,” Sopko said at an Atlantic Council event last week.
In addition to the cash flight allegations, which were first reported by the Russian Embassy in Kabul, Sopko said his investigators were looking into several related issues. “Why did the government of Afghanistan fall so quickly? Why did the military collapse so quickly? What happened? All the weapons? What happened to all the money that we were sending right up to the end — money, fuel, things like that.”
SIGAR is expected to find answers to these questions and present a classified report to Congress in March or April this year. There will also be a public report which will be released later, Sopko said.
Ghani not interviewed
Fazel Fazly, another close aide to Ghani who fled with him in the same convoy and now lives in Sweden, told VOA the former Afghan president has not yet been interviewed by SIGAR. “I’ve been in touch with the president,” said Fazly, adding that he also had not yet received inquiries from SIGAR.
In a video message released three days after he left Afghanistan, Ghani strongly rejected the reports that he took cash with him, and later called on the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into the matter.
Like Mohib, Fazly said he is willing to cooperate with SIGAR to prove he was not involved in any corruption, while at the same time admitting corruption infested all layers of the former Afghan government.
“It’s insane to say there was no corruption,” Fazly said. “We expect SIGAR to do objective, comprehensive and meaningful investigations to uncover the truth about corruption in Afghanistan.”
Mohib and Fazley, widely reported to be closer to Ghani than any other Afghan officials, both said allegations that Ghani fled with sacks of dollars were aimed at maligning the former Afghan president as a corrupt U.S. ally.
“Moscow’s relations with President Ghani were terrible and even some Central Asian leaders called him a Western imperialist,” Fazley said.
The Cash
Fazly and Mohib both said they were unaware ofthe existence of large volumes of cash in the Afghan Presidential Palace.
While Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, confirmed that his office received bags of cash from the CIA and from the Iran government, Ghani said on multiple occasions that his office never received cash from the CIA or any other intelligence agency.
Ghani claims he had transferred his executive authority over state funds to a government committee and had no power over U.S. and NATO contracting processes for Afghan military funding, according to Mohib.
Others say the president did not need to personally receive the assistance funds in order to make use of them.
“There was money in the Afghanistan Bank,” said Sayed Ikram Afzali, director of a local corruption watchdog Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Bank building — headquarters of the state-run central bank — is adjacent to the Presidential Palace compound in central Kabul where all funds, liquidities and highly valuable items were stored.
“Moving cash from the central bank to the palace was not a hard thing to do, especially when the governor of the bank was a Ghani henchman,” said Afzali, adding that Ghani had kept Ajmal Ahmady, a U.S. citizen, as governor of the central bank even after his nomination to the post was repeatedly rejected by parliament.
Ahmady, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School who leads a study group entitled “Afghanistan—What Happened & How to Engage the Taliban,” did not respond to an email inquiry.
“Corruption in Afghanistan did not take place only for one day, and we must not be solely fixated on what happened on August 15. Large amounts of money were taken out of Afghanistan for so many years and those involved in high-level corruption were not waiting until the last day of the republic to move physical currency out of the country,” Afzali said.
Accountability
From 2001 to the end of 2021, the U.S. spent more than $2 trillion on the Afghan war, including some $140 billion spent on development projects, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.
At least $15.5 billion of the U.S. development funds went to “waste, fraud and abuse,” SIGAR’s investigations have found.
“Systemic corruption perpetuated an implosion of the system in Afghanistan,” conceded Hamdullah Mohib.
Like others, Mohib said he was concerned that “truly corrupt” individuals who enriched themselves through the U.S.-bankrolled funding and contracting systems in Afghanistan now roam free in different parts of the world.
Since the fall of the Afghan government, tens of thousands of Afghans, among them former government officials and contractors, have sought refuge outside Afghanistan.
There are now growing calls, even by officials of the former Afghan government, for some sort of accountability by their own former colleagues.
“[Former government officials] must be held accountable and tried,” Naseer Ahmad Faiq, chargé d’affaires of Afghanistan’s mission at the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting last week. “It is not fair that 38 million people [in Afghanistan] are starving and mothers sell their children to survive but these corrupt former government officials live in luxurious houses and villas in different countries in Europe and the U.S.”
SIGAR’s investigations have led to criminal charges and trials of some individuals and companies, both U.S. and Afghan, in U.S. federal courts. It’s unclear whether SIGAR would press criminal charges against former Afghan officials, who were previously commended as U.S. partners, if found guilty of fraud and corruption.
“We’re looking at more people than President Ghani about taking money out of the country at the end,” John Sopko said in response to a VOA question.
The Afghan LGBT+ community has faced an “increasingly desperate situation” with serious safety threats since the Taliban’s return to power, Human Rights Watch said in a joint report with OutRight Action International on Wednesday.
The 43-page report titled “Even If You Go to the Skies, We’ll Find You” is based on interviews with 60 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Afghans, residing in Afghanistan or in nearby countries and who have been Attacked by the Taliban or abused by family members or neighbors who support the fundamentalists.
“We spoke with LGBT Afghans who have survived gang rape, mob attacks, or have been hunted by their own family members who joined the Taliban, and they have no hope that state institutions will protect them,” J. Lester Feder, senior fellow for emergency research at OutRight Action International, said in a statement.
“It is difficult to overstate how devastating – and terrifying – the return of Taliban rule has been for LGBT Afghans.”
(…)
Afghan students studying at universities in the U.S. through scholarship programs face a more uncertain future since the Taliban took over and many say they cannot return to their home country because of concerns for their safety.
More than 100 Afghan students came to the United States through the Fulbright program last academic year, some of them only days before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan and the U.S. embassy in Kabul was abruptly shut.
Under the terms of the Fulbright scholarship program, recipients are required to return to their home countries at the end of their academic programs.
Several Afghan students interviewed by VOA said their status as students studying abroad in America endangers their lives under a Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
“I have come to terms with the reality that is going back to my beloved Afghanistan and working there is no longer possible,” said Maryam Rayed who left Afghanistan last August to pursue a master’s degree in democracy and governance at Georgetown University in Washington.
The U.S. government has evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked for or had affiliation with the U.S. in Afghanistan out of fear that the Taliban will target them.
Immediately after seizing power on Aug. 15 last year, the Taliban announced a general amnesty for all Afghans who worked for the previous Afghan government and for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan.
Human rights groups, however, accuse the Taliban of targeting and killing Afghans who had ties to the U.S. and to the former Afghan government.
Before coming to the U.S. to study international affairs at the State University of New York in Albany, Ahmad Raheb Radfar worked as a foreign service officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of what was until August 2021 the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
“My plan was to return to Afghanistan and resume my work at the ministry upon the completion of my program. But now, given the current situation of Afghanistan, I cannot do that,” Radfar told VOA.
Hopes lost
Since 2003, more than 950 Afghans have received Fulbright scholarships, mostly 2-year master’s degree programs. Many others earned sponsored educational opportunities at undergraduate and graduate levels at various U.S. academic institutions. The expectation was that these highly educated Afghans would contribute to the building of a stable democratic system in Afghanistan.
“The return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan has fundamentally altered my personal and professional trajectory and took all my hopes and plans and aspirations for the future,” said Rayed, adding that she wanted to serve as a governance specialist in Afghanistan after her U.S. education.
Under the Taliban, Afghan women have been effectively fired from all government jobs except those working in the health and education sectors.
The Taliban have institutionalized large-scale and systematic discriminatory policies which “constitute a collective punishment of women and girls,” a group of three dozen U.N.-appointed experts warned last week.
“Taliban deprive women of livelihoods and identity,” Human Rights Watch said in a joint report with the Human Rights Institute at San Jose State University on Jan. 17.
One former Fulbright scholar, who did not want to be named out of fear of Taliban reprisal, said she was fired from a prominent job at the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock because of her gender.
“My education, work experiences, skills and dedication to my country don’t matter for the Taliban. They’re only obsessed with my gender,” she said.
Respect for women’s rights, including the right to education and work, is a major condition set forth by the U.S. and many other countries for a possible recognition of the Taliban’s self-declared Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Taliban officials have said the regime is working to facilitate an “Islamic environment” for Afghan girls and women to return to schools and universities but have not committed to giving any representation to women in the government. The Taliban’s leadership, cabinet and senior government posts are entirely occupied by men.
Students in limbo
The U.S. government has offered special immigration and entry procedures to help Afghans settle in the U.S., including a humanitarian parole program which allows individuals to enter the U.S. without travel documents.
Spokespeople at the Department of State and the Institute of International Education, which administers the Fulbright program, could not confirm to VOA whether there was a plan to waive the Fulbright requirement for the Afghan students to return to their home country after their studies are completed.
“We have been in touch with the [Fulbright] program administrators and have shared our concerns with them, but so far, they have not offered any assurance about our future,” said Radfar.
Two other students echoed similar concerns and added they were looking for an extension to their studies, primarily through PhD scholarships, in order to remain in the U.S.
“This ambiguity has affected our academic performance negatively and has taken any motivation from us,” said Rayed.
“We desperately need some clarity on what our future will be. This limbo status is hurting us,” said another student who did not want her name to be mentioned.
While the Afghan Fulbright scholars who made it to the U.S. in the past two years complain about their uncertain future, those selected for the 2022 scholarships are stuck in Afghanistan with no guarantees they will start their classes in the U.S. in the coming fall.
There is no U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan to process visas, and travel from the country is extremely restricted and complicated.
“We are reviewing the significant safety, logistical, and programmatic constraints which must be overcome to successfully implement the 2022-23 Fulbright Program. We are committed to remaining in communication with the semi-finalist group about the status of the program, understanding they must pursue the choices that make the most sense for themselves and their families,” a State Department of official told VOA.
It’s also unclear whether the Fulbright program will continue for Afghan students in the future because of the broken relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s de-facto Taliban rulers.
Until the U.S. and Taliban figure out what kind of relations, if any, they will have in the future, everything remains shrouded in uncertainty for Afghans who have studied or aspire to study in the U.S.
“I cannot foresee anything right now and like most Afghans, I am facing an uncertain future,” said 28-year-old Radfar.
Nike Ching contributed to this story.
Afghanistan’s Taliban confirmed Monday their senior delegates met in neighboring Iran with self-exiled key Afghan opposition leaders to urge them to end resistance to the Islamist group’s nascent rule and assure them of security if they return home.
Taliban Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi led his team in the meeting with Ahmad Massoud, who heads what is known as the National Resistance Front (NRF), and Ismail Khan, a former Afghan minister and provincial governor.
Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi, while sharing details of the first known direct interaction between the rival sides in Tehran, said that Muttaqi renewed Taliban assurances that it is striving to ensure a “secure future” for all Afghans to leave “no reason for any resistance.”
Muttaqi himself confirmed the meeting in video remarks Taliban officials later released at the conclusion of his two-day bilateral meetings with Iranian officials.
“Yes, we met with Commander Ismail Khan and Ahmad Massoud in Iran, as well as other Afghans there,” Muttaqi said.
“We assured all of them that they can come back to live freely and safely in Afghanistan. We (the Taliban) don’t intend to cause any security or other problems for anyone,” the chief Taliban diplomat asserted.
Neither Massoud nor Khan, both ethnic Tajiks, could immediately be reached for comment. The Taliban are largely ethnic Pashtuns, the majority group in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are under pressure from neighboring countries and the global community at large to promote national political reconciliation and form an inclusive government that respects human rights of all Afghans before the world considers granting legitimacy to the rule in Kabul.
The Islamist group seized power in Afghanistan from the Western-backed government in mid-August after the remaining U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after almost 20 years. The NRF opposed the power shift and violent clashes have since taken place between the two sides in and around the resistance’s stronghold of Panjshir, north of Kabul.
Analyst Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan official, welcomed the Iran-hosted talks. “We need Afghanistan’s internal tensions to be solved through talks,” he said.
“The second and most important part will be for (the) Taliban to open the door for political participation to non-Taliban (groups) at decision-making levels. That will ensure long-term stability in Afghanistan,” Farhadi added.
Some analysts remain skeptical about Taliban security assurances, citing an increasing crackdown on the rights of Afghan women and government critics as well as reports of revenge killings of former officials despite a blanket amnesty the group announced after taking control of the country.
“I don’t think they (opponents) will trust any Taliban guarantees. The Taliban have a long history of saying one thing and doing another,” Jonathan Schroden, who directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the U.S.-based non-profit CNA Corporation, told VOA.
“Their actions since taking control of the government—including targeting former members of the ANDSF (acronym for ex-Afghan government forces) in the face of their announced general amnesty and now detaining prominent critics of the regime—are further evidence against a conclusion that they should be trusted,” Schroden said.
U.S. officials confirmed in November that the NRF had registered with the Department of Justice to carry out political lobbying in the United States. A State Department spokesperson at the time, however, explained the decision was made by the registrant. The spokesperson said it did not require any further action or approval by the Justice Department or any other U.S. government entity.
The Taliban reject criticism of their policies and maintain that their government represents all Afghans. Taliban leaders have also repeatedly ruled out the possibility of including in the Cabinet any Afghan political figures who had served in U.S.-installed governments over the past 20 years.
No country has recognized the new Kabul government. The Islamist group’s return to power led the United States and other Western nations to immediately suspend most non-humanitarian funding for the aid-dependent country and freeze around $9.5 billion worth of Afghan foreign cash reserves.
The punitive measures and long-running international sanctions on Taliban leaders have brought the national economy to the brink of collapse, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan stemming from years of wars, natural disasters and poverty.
Foreign governments have since been scrambling to work out how to engage the Taliban to scale up humanitarian aid and help in preventing an economic meltdown in the country while avoiding formally recognizing the new government.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday the Taliban visit over the weekend did not constitute Iran’s official recognition of the new Kabul government.
Iranian media, however, quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian as criticizing Washington over the frozen cash reserves and demanding they be released to help in improving economic and humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan.