The Taliban, which rules Afghanistan, said over the weekend that Afghan citizens who fled to Qatar out of fear the Islamist regime would retaliate against them for helping U.S. forces during the war can now return home and be completely assured that no harm will come to them.
The Taliban’s statement came amid concern for the fate of more than 1,100 Afghans living in a refugee camp at a U.S. base in Qatar while waiting for asylum in the United States, after Washington said it would not admit them and that they were being asked to return to Afghanistan or move to war-torn Congo in Africa.
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Afghans try to board US evacuation planes on the day the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021
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Afghan migrants arrive at the base in Qatar nearly five years ago
(Photo: U.S. Army/Sgt. Jimmie Baker/Handout via REUTERS)
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 after the Taliban, which had ruled the country since 1996, refused to stop sheltering al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, and hand them over to Washington as punishment for the Sept. 11 terror attacks. After toppling the Taliban with the help of NATO allies, the U.S. helped establish a pro-Western government in Afghanistan. But the war against the Islamist group continued, claimed the lives of more than 3,500 NATO troops, most of them Americans, and became the longest war in U.S. history.
In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban under which the U.S. military would gradually withdraw from Afghanistan and a joint government would be formed between pro-Western forces and the Taliban. But in 2021, under the next president, Joe Biden, as foreign forces had already begun withdrawing, the Islamist group suddenly launched a sweeping offensive across Afghanistan, entered the capital, Kabul, and seized power again, 20 years after it had been ousted.
Chaotic scenes from Afghanistan at the time showed the remnants of the U.S. military and its Western allies rushing to evacuate by airlift, while thousands of Afghans who had cooperated with them against the Taliban during the war tried to get seats on their planes and leave the country, fearing the restored regime would persecute and kill them. Since then, many have been held in temporary camps around the world while awaiting decisions on their asylum requests.
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Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the PTSD-stricken Afghan who cooperated with the US, was granted asylum and went on a shooting rampage in Washington
(Photo: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Many of the Afghan collaborators whom the U.S. helped leave Afghanistan, many of them translators who assisted the U.S. military and their families, were evacuated to the U.S. base in Qatar. They are now stuck in a kind of limbo at Camp As Sayliyah while awaiting approval to enter America. Under a program led by Biden, more than 190,000 such refugees were resettled in the U.S., but the Trump administration, which has made fighting immigration a central policy, announced last year that it was halting the program.
The decision followed a deadly incident in which an Afghan national resettled in the U.S., who had previously worked with American intelligence and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, fatally shot a National Guard soldier in Washington, D.C., and wounded another soldier. After suspending the program, the Trump administration ordered the displaced persons camp at the base in Qatar closed and directed officials to find alternative solutions for those held there.
Administration on Congo: ‘You can start new lives’
Last week, AfghanEvac, an organization that assists Afghans who helped foreign forces during the war, reported that Washington had offered Afghans stuck in Qatar a choice between relocation to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a war-torn country in Africa, and returning home to the Taliban.
The move sparked outrage. Shawn VanDiver, the organization’s head and a former U.S. service member, said it was unacceptable to send people who helped the United States during the war, including more than 400 children, from U.S. custody to a country already facing collapse. He said the choice could not be considered voluntary when the options were Congo or Taliban rule, civil war or a repressive regime that might kill them, calling it coercion rather than a real choice.
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US President Trump; the 2020 agreement with the Taliban collapsed
(Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Congo is a poor country that has suffered for decades from war between government forces and rebels backed by Rwanda. Sean Jamshidi, an Afghan American who served in the U.S. military and was stationed in Congo, among other places, said he was deeply concerned about the possibility that his brother could be sent there from Doha.
He said he had witnessed the security situation firsthand, including displaced persons camps and sites where the United Nations had counted the dead. Drawing on his experience in uniform, he warned that the Democratic Republic of Congo is not a suitable destination for Afghan allies and their children.
Negina Khalili, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan who fled during the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, told The Associated Press that she, too, is waiting to hear about the status of her father, brother and stepmother since they arrived at the base in Doha in January 2025, days before Trump suspended the Biden-era refugee program.
She said they are under intense stress and fear being sent to Congo, which they also view as unsafe, adding that they do not know whether they would be sent there temporarily or permanently and that they are deeply afraid.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in response that transferring the Afghans staying at the camp in Qatar to a third country was a positive step that would provide them with security, enable them to start new lives outside Afghanistan, and at the same time help safeguard the security of the American public.
Against the backdrop of the dispute, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for the Taliban Foreign Ministry in Afghanistan, said Saturday: “According to media reports, a number of Afghan citizens waiting for U.S. visas in Qatar were asked to choose between returning to Afghanistan and resettlement in a third country. Afghanistan is the shared homeland of all Afghans and invites all those concerned to return to their homeland, whose doors remain open to them, in full security and with peace of mind. There is currently no security risk in Afghanistan.”