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I Watched the Afghan Government Collapse Under the Weight of Its Own Greed (theintercept.com)

Col. Asadullah Akbari was a colonel in the Afghan National Army and worked side by side with Afghan government leaders. In this article, Col. Asadullah Akbar describes the state of Afghanistan right after the United States departed from Afghanistan. Government officials fled the capital and Col. Asadullah Akbar describes the collapse of the government. Col. Asadullah Akbar and his family eventually fled Afghanistan to Jacksonville, Florida. Although this is not current news, this is a firsthand account of the events that led to the Taliban's control of Afghanistan.

This article was extremely eye opening and emotional. I believe it easy to become desensitized to the things that happen on the other side of the world but, reading this article helped me to realize that there were many people who truly believed in the rebuilding of the Afghan government. Many people risked their lives or gave their lives to see this happen and due to the actions of a few people, it resulted in tens of thousands of Afghan citizens being killed or forced to leave the country. I believe that this primary source is the most impactful and informative of all the articles I researched.

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On a normal morning, Asadullah Akbari, a colonel in the Afghan National Army, would arrive at his office in Kabul to coordinate online meetings between Afghan officials and their U.S. advisers based in Qatar. After years of fighting across Afghanistan, Akbari had helped set up his country's special forces training program and risen through the ranks. He now worked near the highest levels of the military, side by side with Afghanistan's political leaders. Morning teleconferences with Western partners were part of his daily routine.

He had grown accustomed to this relatively quiet life. But as the U.S.-backed Afghan government imploded last summer, a thick cloud of fear descended on the Afghan capital. Rumors spread that Taliban fighters were going house to house, hunting down Afghan military officials. Akbari stayed home, texting anxiously with his military and defense ministry colleagues, all of them trying to make sense of the sudden changes. Akbari's future had seemed relatively predictable; now it was difficult to see even a few days ahead.

On August 20, 2021 - five days after Kabul fell to the Taliban - Akbari headed to a well-known mall with his kids. Walking the streets of Kabul, where he'd spent most of his life, he had the distinct feeling that these could be his last days on earth. When his children begged him for candy and ice cream from the vendors on the street, he bought everything they wanted.

Akbari knew in his heart that he and his colleagues had been left to their fate. Many of the senior Afghan officials they'd served under had already made their own arrangements and fled the city. People who had supervised Akbari for years suddenly stopped responding to his messages. It was the last betrayal, after years of corruption and double-dealing that he had personally witnessed from his perch in the Ministry of Defense. The Afghan government they'd spent two decades helping to build had collapsed. Now, its ruins were raining down on top of millions of ordinary Afghans like him.

The fall of the Afghan government triggered a tidal wave of anguish and soul searching among Afghans and Americans who had invested years of their lives in the U.S. mission there. It was also personal for me as an Afghan journalist. For seven years, I worked at Etilaatroz, one of Afghanistan's leading investigative news outlets. I reported and wrote scores of articles on politics and security in Afghanistan, including more than a dozen major investigations. Across all this reporting one theme stood out above all the rest: corruption. The greed, self-interest, and amorality of Afghan elites was like an acid that ate away at the institutions ordinary Afghans had sacrificed so much to build. In the end, that corruption would prove fatal to our hopes for building a free and independent nation.

I was among tens of thousands of Afghans evacuated by the U.S. government when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last summer. Since then, during the nearly 10 months I spent with other refugees in a hotel in Albania and now in the United States, I've been trying to figure out what happened to my country and why. Like everyone, I watched in horror as my Etilaatroz colleagues still in Kabul were beaten by the Taliban for the crime of covering a protest. How could the gains of the last 20 years have evaporated so quickly?

This remains an agonizing question for both Afghans and Americans. In April, the Senate Armed Services Committee announced the creation of an Afghanistan War Commission aimed at establishing why the U.S.-backed Afghan government and its security forces dissolved so spectacularly. The commission plans to provide a "comprehensive review of key decisions related to U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan" and to deliver a final report to Congress within three years, around the time President Joe Biden will complete his term in office.

Eight months ago, I began calling Akbari and other sources in the former Afghan security forces. There were many questions about why the army did not fight that continued to bother me and other Afghans. Why, after years of grueling struggle, did soldiers in many parts of the country put down their guns in the face of the enemy? To find the answers, I started interviewing former military officers and government officials.

They told me that corrupt, inexperienced commanders as well as leaders who valued loyalty above capability had weakened the chain of command. Tens of thousands of Afghans had given their lives for their country. In the end, ordinary soldiers were betrayed by leaders who failed to give them the tools they needed to succeed against a brutal insurgency.

On August 20, the day Akbari walked to the mall, the Taliban were rushing to establish themselves across Kabul, flush with excitement over their victory. They had fought for years, suffering terrible losses themselves, and were now almost certain to take revenge on their enemies. Their knock on his door seemed inevitable. As Akbari walked into his home, he received an unexpected text message on his phone from a U.S. military adviser based in Qatar with whom he had regularly teleconferenced from Kabul.

"Asadullah, where are you?"

Within a few days, Akbari and his family were packed into the cargo hold of a plane with other Afghans who had been lucky or connected enough to make it out. The flight took him from Kabul to Qatar and then on to Jacksonville, Florida, where he and his family are the only Afghan residents in a rundown apartment complex. The speed with which his life had transformed gave it all an air of unreality.

Akbari had spent decades at war, lost many friends, and suffered scars that he will carry for the rest of his life. Looking at Afghanistan today, he cannot escape the feeling that it was all for nothing.

The Fall of the Three-Man Republic

The U.S. is believed to have spent upwards of $2 trillion in Afghanistan - money that was, in many cases, eaten up by graft or funneled back to politically connected U.S. government contractors. Afghan military officers like Akbari saw the rot up close. In the final years of his government, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and a close circle of advisers were widely criticized for monopolizing decision-making and personnel appointments and gradually losing touch with the people they governed. Akbari regularly briefed Ghani, his senior advisers, and the Afghan defense minister; their constant changes to military leadership and their obsession with personal loyalty overshadowed efforts to prevent a Taliban takeover, he says.

"I was 18 years old when I joined the army. I never saw happy days in Afghanistan, only war, blood, fighting, and clashes. And in the end, our leaders betrayed the country," he told me. "I saw myself that we had no honest leaders and no one who was thinking of the national interest. They were only thinking of their own benefit and appointing those who were loyal to them."

"I never saw happy days in Afghanistan, only war, blood, fighting, and clashes. And in the end, our leaders betrayed the country."

Top former Afghan officials painted a picture of increasing paranoia on the part of Ghani and his aides, who feared not just disloyalty, but even a possible coup by officers of the Afghan military. Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat, the last commander of the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, described Ghani to investigators for the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, as a "paranoid president ... afraid of his own countrymen," adding that Ghani was "changing commanders constantly [to] bring back some of the old-school Communist generals who [he] saw as loyal to him, instead of these American-trained young officers who he [mostly] feared."

During the last two years of the Ghani government, power was held by a triumvirate: the Afghan president; his national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib; and his chief of administrative office of the president, Fazel Mahmood Fazly. Many Afghans referred derisively to this group of power brokers as the "three-man republic." Neither Mohib nor Fazly had experience in security or national defense. Mohib had been the Afghan ambassador to the United States, and Fazly was a surgeon who had previously been a political adviser to Ghani. Both men played a critical role in the catastrophic decision-making that led to the collapse of the army, Akbari said.

"What I witnessed was that Hamdullah Mohib was given the widest authority in appointments. All the corps commanders were personally appointed by him and were doing whatever Mohib commanded," Akbari said. "All orders were issued by Mohib and a group of officials in the presidential palace." Mohib, meanwhile, has blamed Western countries for leaving their Afghan partners too abruptly, claiming that the sudden departure of American troops and contractors sapped the Afghan military's morale and deprived it of the material support it needed to fight.

When reached to comment for this story, Mohib referred me to an interview from earlier this year, in which he attributed the collapse of the Afghan government to U.S. political concessions made to the Taliban and Biden's decision, in the summer of 2021, to announce a final withdrawal. While denying that he had enriched himself with Afghan government funds, Mohib pointed to the corrupting impact on Afghan institutions of "exorbitant amounts of unmonitored money" dumped into the country by the international community since 2001.

The final Taliban offensive that toppled the government laid bare this corruption, which my colleagues and I had documented for years at Etilaatroz. At the moment of their country's greatest crisis, many top officials and commanders simply abandoned Afghan soldiers and civilians, focusing instead on their own safety and grabbing whatever resources they could as they fled the country.

By the end, the people in charge had given up on other factors and were making personnel appointments based entirely on what they thought would be their own interests, said Saleh Jahesh, a former head of the strategic planning office within Afghanistan's National Security Council. "The major corps commanders were all known to have luxury houses in Dubai," Jahesh told me.

A Great Crime

Accusations from Biden and others that Afghans failed to fight the Taliban stung Akbari, whose job for years involved maintaining accurate statistics on Afghan security force casualties. The numbers of dead and wounded were sobering. Many of the elite commando units he'd worked with took heavy casualties in the last days of the war; in total, at least 66,000 Afghan police and military service members are estimated to have been killed since 2001.

The U.S. had built an Afghan security infrastructure that was almost entirely dependent on foreign military and contractor support for its own maintenance and logistics. When the U.S. withdrawal began, Afghan soldiers found that they were suddenly unable to call in airstrikes or receive resupply by air, although their U.S.-led combat training had included these as critical components of their style of fighting.

By the end, many Afghan soldiers were stuck holding positions that were impossible to defend and lacked even basic logistical support. The U.S. withdrawal only highlighted the unsustainable nature of the giant Afghan military apparatus that had been built over 20 years.

"It was a myth that the Afghan security forces didn't fight in the weeks before the collapse of the government. A lot of them stood and fought, and they died in huge numbers," said Jonathan Schroden, an Afghanistan expert with the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit military research and analysis center in Virginia. "But once word started getting around that if you stood and fought the Taliban there would be no cavalry to come save you, defections and surrenders began. The Taliban were then able to highlight these instances of security forces surrendering as part of a very successful psychological warfare campaign."

Long before the final collapse of the government, the Afghan security forces had already been struggling under the weight of high casualty rates, corrupt leadership, and low morale.

"The number of new recruits became very low because people were not ready to send their sons to the Afghan National Army. They were aware of the situation and knew that if they send their sons, then they won't go back home alive," Akbari said. "Some soldiers were not able to go to their homes and see their families for more than a year."

Those Afghan soldiers and police who stayed in the fight had to deal with chronic shortages of food, fuel, warm clothing, and ammunition. Corruption in the procurement process steadily ate away at the military's capacity, a systemic problem that SIGAR documented in real time throughout the war but which was never fixed. A 2017 SIGAR report on efforts to reform the procurement process said that the creation of a National Procurement Authority, which centralized contracts under Ghani's office, was "one bright spot" in a system otherwise rife with corruption and graft. But according to Jahesh, the centralized authority slowed resupply missions, reducing transparency and creating more opportunities for corruption.

Contracts sometimes took more than six months to be approved, Jahesh said, and prices were wildly inflated. In one instance, he recalled that the procurement authority approved a contract to buy watermelon for the Afghan army at 70 Afghanis per kilogram, while watermelons in the market cost about 1.4 Afghanis per kilogram, meaning the army paid 50 times more than the going rate.

"The soldiers did not receive anything on time and they had no energy to fight simply because they had no vegetables, fruit, or meat to eat to meet their basic needs for calories," Jahesh told me. "Commanders were being forced to sell military equipment from bases because they were receiving nothing from the government on time. Despite these shortages, on paper senior officials were making it look like everything was being provided for the soldiers."

"Once word started getting around that if you stood and fought the Taliban there would be no cavalry to come save you, defections and surrenders began."

I had witnessed supply shortages and other problems for years in my own reporting on the Afghan military. In October 2018, I visited a military base in a suburb of the city of Ghazni, which had recently been the site of fierce clashes between the Afghan military and the Taliban. Instead of training to fight, the Afghan soldiers I met were forced to spend their time gathering firewood to cook their meals as the government had failed to deliver propane and other vital supplies. A 2020 video shared on social media showed a group of wounded Afghan soldiers surrounded by the Taliban in Wardak Province, just south of Kabul. "We don't have water, we don't have food," one of the soldiers said, addressing Ghani. "We have morals to fight if we receive support."

On top of the brazen economic inequality between themselves and top officials in the Afghan government, the sense of abandonment that many soldiers felt made it seem logical to return to their families rather than die for leaders who they expected would flee to safety in Dubai or Turkey in case of a Taliban victory. Afghan soldiers had been fighting and dying pointlessly for years. Those who perished in what had become a futile effort to stop the Taliban received little dignity, even in death.

"We had many wounded personnel on our bases with wounds that became infected and who later died as a result," Akbari said. "Some of these soldiers were temporarily buried inside the bases and dug up again when transport planes arrived to take them."

In some cases, the bodies of Afghans who died on the battlefield were even returned to the wrong families. "The family held a funeral ceremony for them," Akbari recalled. "But after a while they were found to be alive and returned home."

While some families were mistakenly told that their sons, brothers, and cousins were dead, the bodies of others who had actually died were sometimes simply lost. Akbari says this ate at his conscience, even as he continued serving a government that he saw as the only hope of saving his country from the Taliban. "It was a great crime committed against them and their families," Akbari told me.

Haunted by the Past

Though we came from different walks of life and served Afghanistan in different ways, Akbari and I are now both refugees in the United States. His days are spent looking for work and running through the bureaucratic gauntlet necessary to build a new life for his family. Like many other refugees, he spends his free time on WhatsApp, trying to learn about developments back in Afghanistan. Many nights he can't sleep for thinking about the war.

"Many of my colleagues from special forces units have been persecuted, tortured, and martyred by the Taliban. Their families have been tortured. A number of them are alive in Afghanistan and cannot leave the country; neither can they work nor can they stay in their homes," Akbari told me. "They have a lot of financial and security problems. None of the defense ministry authorities worked for their evacuation to a safe place. These authorities are thinking about how and where to buy a house or car, and they do not think about soldiers, lieutenants, and officers who were on the front lines."

In Akbari's mind, the failure of the war was not due primarily to the Americans, who could have withdrawn in any year since 2001 and seen the Afghan government collapse just as quickly. Instead, it was a product of a corrupt Afghan political class that has still not been held accountable for its failures. Recent news reports of former Afghan officials driving expensive luxury cars and living lavishly in Gulf Arab countries, Turkey, and the West do not surprise him. They are only the crowning insult to the efforts of ordinary Afghans who gave their lives in a tragic two-decade attempt to rebuild their country with international support.

The corruption and mismanagement of Afghanistan by its own elites, enabled, in many cases, by their U.S. partners, has plunged the country into a new era of suffering under the Taliban. One day, Akbari and I both dream of returning. For now, we can only try to learn from what went wrong.

"If I say that Afghanistan was a country during the Ashraf Ghani government, it would not be fair," Akbari said. "Afghanistan was like a joint stock business company, in that every partner exercised as much authority as their share."

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I Watched the Afghan Government Collapse Under the Weight of Its Own Greed

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On a normal morning, Asadullah Akbari, a colonel in the Afghan National Army, would arrive at his office in Kabul to coordinate online meetings between Afghan officials and their U.S. advisers based in Qatar. After years of fighting across Afghanistan, Akbari had helped set up his country's special forces training program and risen through the ranks.

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Thousands of Afghan refugees fled to America in search of a new home. Too many are still waiting. | America Magazine

In this article, a family who fled from Afghanistan to the United States was interviewed about how they fled Afghanistan. Babi (19) elaborates of women's rights in Afghanistan, the Taliban's tyrannical rule over Afghanistan, and how they are now looking to seek permanent residency in the United States.

This article re-affirms to me why the Afghan Adjustment Act should be implemented and used to offer permeant residency for Afghan refugees. Primary Sources for me appear to leave more of a lasting impact on me rather than that of an outside view on a situation that I am not experiencing myself.

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Whenever Bibi dared to drive a car, the neighborhood boys in Kabul would point at her and jeer. While it was legal for her to drive at the time-before the Taliban came back into power-women driving were still shunned culturally in Afghanistan.

Bibi and her family hosted me for dinner this summer at their home in Tucson. Her mother, Fatima, served kabuli pulao, a delicious rice dish, along with mantu, which is like dumplings. She also prepared perfectly seasoned chicken drumsticks. The family shared with me how they fled Afghanistan, where they lived in a much bigger home, and how they nevertheless prefer their life here in the United States, where they are in the process of seeking asylum.

"For women, life is different," said Bibi, who is 19. "Because here in the U.S.A., I work. In Afghanistan, I cannot work. In the U.S.A. I can have a driver's license, but in Afghanistan I cannot drive."

Bibi and her family, given their pending asylum case and their connections in Afghanistan, asked that their real names not be used. After all, they might not get asylum, Bibi said.

"We are afraid of the Taliban," she said. "In the U.S.A. we are safe, but in Afghanistan we have our own house. If the Taliban see us [in the media], maybe they will take our house, or burn it down."

Bibi began learning English while still in Afghanistan. Her father worked for the government. Her head was not covered as she spoke to me. Neither was her mother's. Her father, Noor, who sat next to her, sees things differently than many Afghan men, she said. In Afghanistan, she said she could not dress or act the way she does in the United States.

"We are afraid of the Taliban," she said. "In the U.S.A. we are safe, but in Afghanistan we have our own house.

"If the girls go to school, or if they drive, they bring shame to their parents," she said.

The family is among the more than 75,000 Afghans currently in the United States who are hoping to resettle here. The government has granted most of them humanitarian parole, a temporary permission to be here, but they are hoping to become permanent residents. Some Afghans in the United States, including some who worked with the U.S. military, have special immigrant visas. Those are also temporary. In the months to come, Bibi's family and others like them will need help negotiating the complex U.S. immigration system to find a path toward permanent legal residency. Many faith-based organizations are among those working to provide assistance. Returning to Afghanistan is simply not an option.

A Delicate Alliance

The withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan in September of last year marked the end of a two-decade presence in the country. Military personnel arrived in the country in October 2001, the month after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The U.S. government believed the Taliban were abetting Al Qaeda, the group led by Osama bin Laden that was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The modern Afghan state was established in 1880, though its official independence came in 1919, when the country signed the Treaty of Rawalpindi. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent 80,000 troops to invade Afghanistan. Over the next 10 years, the Soviets attempted to install two regimes that were resisted, in part, by the U.S.-sponsored mujahideen. In 1992, a civil war began between warring factions of ethinic tribes of Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbeck. The Taliban gained control of Afghanistan in 1996.

Growing up in Afghanistan, Noor remembers a cycle of years of peace followed by years of violence. The U.S. involvement in the country, he said, led to the longest period of peace he can remember.

Growing up in Afghanistan, Noor remembers a cycle of years of peace followed by years of violence.

Chaos ensued across the country as the U.S. military pulled out. A terrorist group known as ISIS-K attacked the Kabul airport, killing dozens of people. News coverage depicted Afghans clinging to the outsides of large military planes as they prepared for takeoff. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country as the Taliban took over more quickly than anticipated.

Bibi's family, like many others in Afghanistan, saw the turmoil coming. They spent four days outside the airport, waiting for a flight out, without food or water. They did not have anywhere to lay their heads when they slept, Bibi said. They flew to Qatar, where they spent 15 days in a refugee camp. Then they spent more than a month in Germany before arriving in the United States.

Like many who have humanitarian parole, the family is applying for asylum in the United States. Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona is helping them with that, as well as with cultural orientation courses, food stamps, cash assistance, rental assistance and paying their electric bill.

"It's a lot of work and you need good legal representation to move that type of case forward," Rachel Pollock, director of resettlement services for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said of applying for asylum.

The U.S. bishops' Migration and Refugee Services is one of nine national resettlement agencies. Their network of about 60 organizations has resettled more than 13,000 Afghans in the United States. William Canny, executive director of the office, said multiple agencies and denominations pulled together and collaborated to welcome Afghans in a way he had not seen since the United States welcomed Vietnamese refugees following the Vietnam War.

As they fled to the Kabul airport, many Afghans destroyed documents that would have caused their lives to be in danger if they had been obtained by the Taliban. In many cases, those papers documented participation as human rights activists, journalists, lawyers or women attending the university. But because of their loss, many Afghan immigrants now lack the proof of their activities that is critical for evaluating their asylum cases.

Still, Ms. Pollack noted, the U.S. government recently cleared certain hurdles for Afghans with special immigrant visas.

"But there's still a lot of uncertainty for people. It's a big, bureaucratic system that can be very confusing for newcomers," she said. "And if you're fearing for your life, literally, applying for asylum is a very opaque process that can be really stressful after these folks have gone through what they've gone through. It's a difficult time for them."

A Broken System

It could be a lot easier if Congress passed the Afghan Adjustment Act, according to Christopher Ross, vice president of Migration and Refugee Resettlement Services for Catholic Charities USA. The Senate and House introduced the measure on Aug. 9, which would provide a legal pathway to permanent residency or citizenship for Afghans with special visas.

"This is why people are so frustrated with our immigration system."

"This is why people are so frustrated with our immigration system," Mr. Ross said of the delays and red tape faced by asylum seekers. "Our government brought people over here because they were fleeing persecution. They assisted our military. They were brought here and are new community members."

The Afghan Adjustment Act, or something like it, would expedite the process greatly, he said. And given the number of applicants currently awaiting approval, legislation that streamlines the process would greatly lessen the burden on service agencies like Catholic Charities.

Such a measure is not without precedent. In 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act paved the way for Cuban refugees to become lawful permanent residents. Similarly, in 1998, Congress passed the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act, which provided a path to legal residency for certain Haitian nationals who were paroled into the United States.

Afghan parolees "are regarded as operation allies, they were in the trenches with the U.S. and various military and state department and intelligence capacities," said Don Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York. "To treat them as something less than full refugees, to deny them a path to permanent residence and full refugee benefits, it would be an extraordinary injustice."

According to Mr. Kerwin, the United States was not meant to utilize humanitarian parole as often as it has done since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. That act established a formal process for bringing refugees into the United States and has led to the entrance of more than three million refugees into the country over the last 40 years.

From 1980 until 2016, the year before Donald J. Trump took office as president, the United States resettled more refugees each year than all other countries combined. The Trump administration, Mr. Kerwin said, severely cut back the U.S. refugee program. A third of government resettlement offices -100 out of around 300-closed during Mr. Trump's presidency.

But enough time has passed that Mr. Kerwin believes we should expect more from the Biden administration by now. While Mr. Biden set the refugee cap at 125,000 for 2022, as of June, only 15,000 refugees had been accepted into the United States. For comparison, 110,000 refugees were resettled during the entire year of 2016.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, 85 percent of Afghan refugees are in Pakistan and Iran, where more than two million Afghans have been displaced. The agency estimates that women and children make up more than 80 percent of those forcibly displaced within Afghanistan.

Women and children make up more than 80 percent of those forcibly displaced within Afghanistan.

"Certainly people who are coming into the U.S. from various countries around the world, including across our southern border, face huge challenges in making their claim for asylum and being successful. Afghans have the same problem," said Joan Rosenhauer, executive director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. "We can't forget how many people never made it out of Afghanistan and how much they're suffering and struggling now."

Welcoming Communities

Some local communities have forged ahead to help meet families' immediate needs in the absence of larger government programs. That includes the efforts of the Rev. Rock Fremont, pastor of Shepherd of the Hills United Church of Christ in Phoenix, Ariz. His church teamed up with a Lutheran church, a Community of Christ congregation and a Mormon ward to care for an Afghan family of 10 through Lutheran Social Services.

"Through this ministry of accompaniment, there is also formation or initiation into a deeper witness, to asking larger questions," Pastor Rock said. "Not only teaching someone to fish, but then, beginning to ask deeper questions like who owns the water."

Volunteers with larger vehicles help transport the family's children to and from school. The family also has a newborn baby, so the volunteers are always on the lookout for formula. Some will visit the mother of the family to help her learn English.

While the faith communities can help the practical needs of resettlement, Pastor Rock said spiritual matters are left completely up to the family.

"A lot of these families don't want to connect with the mosque because they're familiar with religious tension back home," he said. "Just like a lot of Americans, they have been deeply wounded by religious institutions.... So they don't want to connect, at least not right now."

Even on the small screen, I could see a bomb and bullets had reduced his wooden furniture to splinters.

The father of the family has a job now and has bought a minivan. But his $450 weekly salary is not enough to cover the family's expenses, including the $2,800 monthly rent for their home. The skyrocketing price of housing has complicated resettlement efforts nationwide.

The faith communities Pastor Rock is working with would like the family to stay in their current home, at least through the end of the school year. It is a pleasant neighborhood, and the children have made friends there.

"What that means is that our congregations are going to have to pick up the payments on the lease," Pastor Rock said.

Both Noor and Bibi also have found jobs. Bibi works as a stocker, and Noor works at a bakery. That in itself has been quite an adjustment. "I used to work simply with a pen," Noor said of his job with the Afghan government, which he held for 38 years. Bibi spent her days as a university student.

The jobs they have in the United States are relatively common among the refugee population. Refugees tend to get hired for positions that do not require language skills, like cleaning rooms at a hotel or working at a car wash.

Noor showed me pictures of his old office on his phone. In some of those pictures, he sat at his desk holding his pen. In others, he was speaking with his direct reports. Then he showed me pictures of his office after it was destroyed by the Taliban in 2018. Even on the small screen, I could see a bomb and bullets had reduced his wooden furniture to splinters. The insides of cushions spilled onto the shattered glass that covered the floor.

At the time, Noor was part of a group that discovered the Taliban were bringing weapons into the country from Pakistan. That is why, he explained, they shot up his office.

Further Challenges

Although the Taliban is not an immediate threat in the daily lives of Afghan refugees in the United States, they still may face challenges to their safety and well-being. Mary Kaech, executive director of Phoenix Refugee Connections, said refugees are often placed in low income housing that is not always safe. "I've heard stories, just recently, of women getting their head coverings torn off and one guy got shot in the foot," she said. "Money is stolen and people get robbed."

"He wants to change the world, and he has a really beautiful heart-a servant's heart."

In her work, she has heard of families driving in circles around the Kabul airport last year for two days straight, waiting for the gates to open. One man she met recently told how he had to decide whether to bring his nephew with him on the plane. The man could not get hold of his brother before he left, but he and his nephew had to take advantage of the small window of opportunity they had to leave and be safe.

"So now they're here and his dad is back in Afghanistan," Ms. Kaech said. "There's very little chance that he'll see his son soon. It'll be a very, very long time."

Over the last 19 years, she has helped Christian communities who want to be more welcoming to refugees. She and her husband are also foster parents for unaccompanied refugee children. Their foster son, who is 18, is about to move into a dorm at a university.

"I'm trying to prepare myself for this," Ms. Kaech said. "He's ready, and I'm excited for him. But I'm going to miss him... He wants to change the world, and he has a really beautiful heart-a servant's heart."

Her foster son, Ali, who asked that his real name not be used, fled Afghanistan when he was 12. In his hometown, Ali and his father ran a grocery shop that sold to local residents. Since it was next to a military base, they also sold to American and Afghan soldiers. The Taliban did not like that.

"They threw a rock wrapped in paper [with a message] to warn us one time. And then they came in person to warn us, 'You should not continue selling stuff to them because you are helping them,'" Ali recalls them saying. "But that brought a lot of business for us, so my father continued selling to them.... It was our only source of income."

His father went out of town one day, and he never returned. Ali and his family searched for him for months but never found him. One day, when Ali was headed to the family's shop, he got a call warning him not to come. The Taliban were there looking for him. He told his mother, who sent him immediately to stay with family members in another city. His mother then sold everything they had to pay for Ali to leave the country.

"In a situation like that, you already know what's going to happen," Ali said. "With little kids, [the Taliban] will take you and put a vest [with explosive] on you. And they will say, 'This is what you have to do to save your family.' They will force you to do what they want you to do. They put a key around your neck and tell you it's the key to heaven. [They say,] 'If you go and explode yourself near to one of the bases, you will go to heaven.'"

Ali said the Taliban would assume a person like his father, who ignored their warnings, was an American spy or ally. "People who do that, they torture them to death. That's what they do," Ali said. "I've never heard from my father since that time. I was hoping I would hear from him sometime, after the Taliban came back into power. It's been six, seven years now that I've been missing him. I don't think he's alive anymore."

"It's been six, seven years now that I've been missing him. I don't think he's alive anymore."

Ali made his way to Indonesia, where he lived in shelters and orphanages for a few years until a United Nations program brought him to the United States. Catholic Charities placed him in several foster homes before he eventually met Ms. Kaech and her husband. With them he finally felt at home again.

His mother is back in Afghanistan with his three younger siblings. "They're in imminent danger," Ms. Kaech said. "And of course, his sister is not able to go to school anymore." Ali sends $500 a month back to his family in Afghanistan.

"They don't want women to go outside," Ali said of the restrictions enforced by the Taliban. He worries for his sister especially.

"They want [women] to stay home and do chores and stuff. They don't hold any rights," he said. "During the war, there were [Taliban soldiers] who went to houses and would take your daughters as their rewards, for fighting to restore Taliban control." Ms. Kaech said they had applied for humanitarian parole for her son's family to come from Afghanistan, but she had little hope that it would be approved.

It is a far different landscape for Ukrainians under a program established by the Biden administration in April, she said. "You can sign up to sponsor a Ukrainian family and bring them here for humanitarian parole. And it's easy. And if my son's mom...." Ms. Kaech's emotions forced her to pause. "If my son's mom had a Ukrainian passport, she'd be here next month. He hasn't seen his mom in years. She hasn't seen the hair on his face."

Ms. Kaech does not take issue with the policy toward Ukrainians, but finds it unjust that the United States has different policies for different countries. "People are fleeing the same threat," she said. "They're fleeing death and the hands of people who have power over them."

Ali wants to become a U.S. citizen and eventually bring his family to the United States. "I want to see my brothers and sister grow up," he said. "I want to see my mother smile at me again and to be in the same house. That's what I want for my family. I want my brothers to go to college. I want my sister to get a good education.... I'll just make a new tree, a new branch of my family here. And that's how we will grow."

A New Home

The week I visited Noor, Bibi and Fatima, we were joined by Chris Rightmer, a case worker with Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona. Bibi calls Mr. Rightmer her "Father No. 2."

"My first dream is to support my family,"

She was preparing to test for a high school equivalency diploma at the time, and the family had an asylum interview later that week 100 miles north, in Phoenix. Mr. Rightmer gave Bibi tips on how to find G.E.D. sample tests online. He also chided her for not making the hotel reservations for herself, which the family needed for the asylum interview. Their case worker made the reservation for the family instead.

"He should have taught you how to do it," Mr. Rightmer said. "What do I tell you in the cultural orientation class? I don't give you fish. I teach you to fish. Did you learn how to make a hotel reservation and how to do transportation?" She said she did learn. The case worker taught her, she said, but Mr. Rightmer did not seem convinced.

Throughout the evening, our conversation covered a variety of topics, including the numerous languages spoken in Afghanistan. The family speaks Dari, for example, but Pashto and Urdu are also quite common. The nation is made up of numerous ethnic groups, with Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek being the most populous.

Bibi was born after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and after the U.S. military began to arrive in Afghanistan. When Mr. Rightmer explained that the United States came to Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden, Bibi seemed surprised.

She had been talking about how, when the American military returns to Afghanistan, the country would be at peace again. "We would be safe," Noor added. Mr. Rightmer explained it was unlikely the U.S. military would return.

Later in the evening, the conversation shifted to their future life in the United States. Once he is more proficient in English, Noor would like a job where he can use more of the skills he used working for the government in Afghanistan. Bibi also thinks a lot about the future.

"My first dream is to support my family," Bibi said.

"That's not a dream," Mr. Rightmer interjected. "That's an obligation."

"In Afghanistan, it's a dream. Really, it's a dream," Bibi responded. "I want to be a doctor in the future. I want to live in California, have my own house, my own car and live with my parents."

But what about returning to Afghanistan?

"Nobody wants to go to Afghanistan again because we would just be hiding from the Taliban," she said. "They will kill us. They know my father. Really, we don't want to. We know the Taliban will kill us."

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Thousands of Afghan refugees fled to America in search of a new home. Too many are still waiting.

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Whenever Bibi dared to drive a car, the neighborhood boys in Kabul would point at her and jeer. While it was legal for her to drive at the time-before the Taliban came back into power-women driving were still shunned culturally in Afghanistan. Bibi and her family hosted me for dinner this summer at their home in Tucson.

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Taliban say Afghanistan secure enough for big projects - The Washington Post

Considering that the Taliban now has control of Afghanistan's war, there is now an absence of war and Afghanistan has an increased sense of security. Afghanistan is now pursuing economic expansion. After the Taliban secured the Afghanistan government, world governments piled on sanctions, halted bank transfers and froze billions more in Afghanistan’s currency reserves. China is backing the economic expansion of Afghanistan, but it remains to be seen how this situation will play out.

I believe that until the extremist group Islamic State is disbanded, it is not in the world's government best interest to invest in an expansion in economy for Afghanistan. This group has been carrying out attacks on the Taliban and Afghanistan is in a volatile position as a country.

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FILE - Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Taliban government, speaks during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 30, 2022. The Taliban said Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022, that there is enough security across Afghanistan to restart major economic projects that stopped due to decades of war, despite a slew of attacks rocking the country since the group seized power a year ago. Mujahid said Wednesday that Afghanistan had the opportunity to connect with the rest of the countries in the region, highlighting China as a key part of the nation's economic development. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

ISLAMABAD - The Taliban said Wednesday there is enough security across Afghanistan to restart major economic projects that stopped due to decades of war, despite a slew of attacks rocking the country since the group seized power more than a year ago.
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The Taliban have struggled in their transition from insurgency and warfare to governing amid an economic downturn and the international community withholding official recognition.

Foreign aid stopped when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. World governments piled on sanctions, halted bank transfers and froze billions more in Afghanistan's currency reserves.

Taliban-appointed government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghanistan has the opportunity to connect with the rest of the countries in the region, highlighting China as a key part of the nation's economic development.

"In the last Cabinet meeting, it was decided that the Silk Road, which will connect Afghanistan with China, must be built. This historic road can play a great role in the economy of the country," he said at a seminar about regional connectivity. "It is a great opportunity, we have good security and it is the time to start major economic projects."

In March this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave his strong backing to Afghanistan, spotlighting Beijing's aspirations to play a leading role in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at the same regional conference, led calls for the U.S. to unfreeze Afghan assets held abroad and end sanctions on the government.

The Taliban's deputy prime minister, Abdul Salam Hanafi, said Afghanistan's role for the connectivity of countries in the region was very important. "Afghanistan can play a great role in creating important corridors. We want to be connected to China through our Badakhshan province."

The geopolitics and geostrategic position of Afghanistan could lead the country to play a positive role in linking neighboring countries in the region and beyond, he added.

He repeated the Taliban's assurances that the group would not allow anyone to use Afghan soil to stage attacks on other countries.

But the extremist group Islamic State, the main Taliban rival, has carried out a series of deadly attacks in Afghanistan as part of a long-running insurgency, dealing a blow to the Taliban, who have been trying to project control and strength since their takeover.

Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan's Shiite minority.

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Taliban say Afghanistan secure enough for big projects

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ISLAMABAD - The Taliban said Wednesday there is enough security across Afghanistan to restart major economic projects that stopped due to decades of war, despite a slew of attacks rocking the country since the group seized power more than a year ago. Are you on Telegram?

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Afghan Adjustment Act: What does it mean for refugees in US? | Migration News | Al Jazeera

After the United States departed from Afghanistan and the Taliban assumed control of the Afghan government, the Department of Homeland Security states that more than 80,000 Afghan citizens have found refuge in the United States under humanitarian parole. Humanitarian parole allows Afghans to live and work in the US for two years but does not offer a clear path to permanent residency. Congress is working on a bill that will offer a permanent path to residency called the Afghan Adjustment Act. Currently it is uncertain whether or not this bill will pass.

I believe that this bill should be passed by congress. The Afghan people who are finding refuge in the United States are citizens who worked with the United States government or the previous Afghan government and in a public poll 72% of American citizens support this act.

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Afghan Adjustment Act: What does it mean for refugees in US?

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Legislation could give Afghans paroled to the US a path to permanent residency after months of uncertainty.

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Syed Zabiullah Langari on Twitter: "UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end &amp; for Taliban to respect privileges &amp; immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff. #Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres https://t.co/VBmh9UtfRF" / Twitter

This post states that there are members of the Taliban that are harassing female workers of the UN. The UN has called an immediate stop towards this behavior and asks for members of the Taliban to respect the rights of the Afghanistan UN staff members.

I believe that this is an effective way to transmit international news and a good use of Twitter. It is a short and concise article that elaborates a problem and resolution quickly and effectively. In terms of the problem, it is obvious that in order for the Taliban to retain international recognition by the UN they will have to display more respect for female workers and women's rights especially those affiliated with the UN.

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.
#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.
#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres https://t.co/VBmh9UtfRF

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#BreakingNews: UN expresses concerns over harrassment of its staffs by the #Taliban: Statement https://t.co/4n8J0hXa9X

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres pic.twitter.com/VBmh9UtfRF
— Syed Zabiullah Langari (@syed2000) September 12, 2022

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.
#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres https://t.co/VBmh9UtfRF

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#BreakingNews: UN expresses concerns over harrassment of its staffs by the #Taliban: Statement https://t.co/4n8J0hXa9X

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.
#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres https://t.co/VBmh9UtfRF

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UN in Afghanistan concerned by pattern of incidents of harassment of UN #Afghan female workers by de facto authorities’ security officials, calls for immediate end & for Taliban to respect privileges & immunities of all @UNAfghanistan staff.
#Afghanistan #UNAMA @antonioguterres

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#BreakingNews: UN expresses concerns over harrassment of its staffs by the #Taliban: Statement https://t.co/4n8J0hXa9X

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Afghan girls take to streets to protest school closure in Paktia | Taliban News | Al Jazeera

After the United States departed from Afghanistan, the Taliban assumed control of the Afghan government but also promised to advocate for women's rights, education, and job opportunities. The Taliban has gone back on this promise and instead require women to cover themselves from head to toe in public and refused to allow them from attending secondary school. Although not all of the Taliban leaders agree with these injustices, they are still imposed on Afghan women so, they have engaged in peaceful protests to reclaim these rights.

I believe that this is a very dishonest set of policies imposed by the Taliban and that the UN should apply some pressure towards the Afghan government in order to reinstate some of these restricted women's rights. I believe that this could and should be done through UN incentives for Afghanistan rather than resorting to conflict.

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Afghan girls protest against school closure in eastern city

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Dozens of girls rally in Gardez after Taliban shuts four schools, which were reopened on intervention of tribal elders.

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CricTracker on Twitter: "A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan. #CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan https://t.co/LIIUpkT3db" / Twitter

In Afghanistan, after the United States left and the Taliban took over, there has been a need for people to step up and help communities, given many earthquakes. This cricket player decided to assist by building houses in the Barmal district of Afghanistan.

I believe this is inspiring and a trend in the right direction for Afghanistan. I believe this action also assists in drawing attention to the needs of the Afghan people while putting international pressure on the Taliban to do more for their people.

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.

#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.

#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan https://t.co/LIIUpkT3db

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/LIIUpkT3db
— CricTracker (@Cricketracker) October 12, 2022

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.

#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan https://t.co/LIIUpkT3db

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.

#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan https://t.co/LIIUpkT3db

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A great initiative from Rashid Khan for the people of Afghanistan.

#CricTracker #RashidKhan #Afghanistan