Consider This from NPR - 100,000 Afghans Were Airlifted Out Of Kabul. What Happened To Those Who Weren't?

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

It's been two years since the Taliban entered Kabul, throwing the final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan into chaos. Crowds of people desperate to leave the country surrounded the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans were airlifted out before American troops pulled out. Many more are still trying to reach the U.S. Some are risking their lives to cross the border from Mexico.NPR's Tom Bowman has the story of one family who traveled from Afghanistan to Virginia, by way of Pakistan and Mexico, to get medical care for their young daughter.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. BH remembers the last time he saw his family. It was two years ago, almost exactly. They were all in the desperate crowd at the Kabul airport, trying to board planes as the Taliban took over the city. And everyone was pushing each other.

And they didn't, you know, care about old people or children. Yeah, everyone was afraid. Were you afraid? Yes. BH told this story to NPR-Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. We're only using his initials because most of his family is still at risk in Taliban-controlled Kabul. That day at the airport, BH somehow made it through the gate, but he was separated from his family in the crush. I called them several times, but no one was answering because they were in the crowd and no one heard the phone ring.

It was a dark day for me because I lost my whole family, you know. His family never made it through. BH, 17 years old, alone, found himself on a U.S. evacuation flight to Doha, where he finally reached his mom back in Kabul by phone. She was crying. That's the only thing she did. There were many stories like this in the chaotic last days of the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan. President Biden had announced in April 2021 that the U.S. would stick with a plan the Trump administration first agreed to with the Taliban, the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home. There was back and forth over when that pullout should happen by.

Biden eventually landed on August 31st. But as that date approached, the Taliban started reclaiming territory in Afghanistan, city after city. By the first week of August, regional capitals were falling like dominoes. A rapid offensive by the Taliban is overwhelming Afghan forces. The Taliban continues to move in, sweeping through the country at a speed terrifying to Afghans. The insurgents say they've captured five provincial capitals just the past three days as government defenses crumble. And then, two years ago Tuesday, the Taliban entered Kabul. People who feared them panicked. You see here crowds of people, they're coming to the airport

desperate to get a flight out on a U.S. military plane. The U.S. military struggled to contain the chaos. Once the American airlift effort got underway, thousands of U.S. citizens and more than 100,000 Afghans were evacuated. BH ended up in the U.S., where he finished high school in Virginia and won a scholarship to study computer programming at a local community college. But many more Afghans could not get out, including BH's mom and other relatives. All the time I'm worried about my family because they are in danger. They have no rights here, no freedom of speech. Our Afghan girls can't go to school.

Consider this. Two years after the American withdrawal, thousands of Afghans are still trying to leave and get to the U.S. But the journey can be dangerous, and even those who make it are not guaranteed a visa. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, August 14th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University.

Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. It's Consider This from NPR. At the end of the U.S. airlift from Kabul, President Biden spoke proudly of the effort to evacuate Afghans who had helped American personnel after the invasion. No country in history has done more to airlift out the residents of another country than we have done. But he also said that though the airlift was over, the effort to get Afghans out of the country was not. We will continue to work to help more people leave the country who are at risk. We're far from done.

Two years later, roughly 175,000 Afghans are still waiting for the U.S. to process their visa or refugee applications. That's according to a report from the Afghanistan Oversight Body created by Congress. That report says that bureaucratic dysfunction and understaffing have put thousands of Afghan allies at risk. Many other Afghans aren't eligible for those programs or haven't applied for them, and some are pursuing other routes to the U.S., including risking their lives by crossing the border from Mexico. NPR's Tom Bowman has the story of one family. And who's this little one? Yusra. This is my daughter.

Shafi Amani holds his three-year-old daughter Yusra outside the Casey Clinic in Alexandria, Virginia. She has a tumble of curls, large brown eyes that roll back at times. Her legs are limp, like a rag doll's. She can't walk or speak or chew food. A feeding tube pokes out of her stomach. Amani carries his daughter into their small apartment just down the street, inside a cluster of red brick buildings.

Yusra was a healthy toddler when she and her family fled Afghanistan more than a year ago, taking a dirt road overland to Pakistan. That's where things got worse. When we were there, my daughter was, her fever goes up, and we didn't understand at the beginning it's a stroke. After some tests, doctors told me this was a stroke. Amani got some medicine for his daughter but decided to leave once more, getting a tourist visa for Mexico. I thought Mexico is best place for me. Arriving in Mexico City with his wife and daughter, they learn it wasn't enough for Yusra.

Mexico was not a safe place for me because it was very difficult. It was difficult because he didn't speak Spanish and there was a lack of medical care during their six-month stay. There was no assistance for my daughter. She needs some treatment, medication, doctors, and these things. He made a drastic choice. The family would be smuggled into the United States. In Mexicali, he found a contact who directed him to a hotel in a secretive woman who would help. $200 for each person. When we crossed the border, believe me, that was the day, the hardest decision for me,

because for my daughter and for my wife and for my life. Two men then showed up and took them to a border wall, nearly 30 feet tall, and fashioned a kind of harness. Amani and his wife Frista just watched. In the wall, they put something like a rope, and after that, they told us, come, first my wife. So they pulled your wife first? Yeah, first she, after that me and my daughter. You held on to your daughter?

Yeah. They were now inside the United States, just as the sun was setting, standing on a long stretch of deserted road. In front of them was the New River, one of the most polluted in the nation, teeming with industrial and farm runoff. They got ready to cross. We didn't know what could happen, how much this water will be, the deep. Suddenly, they could see headlights coming down the road. It was a U.S. Border Patrol, and an officer waved them away from the river.

Twenty feet away, he told me, stand up your hand, and do you have anything? I told him no. And we come, and we sit in the car, and after that, we went to the immigration camp. Amani never planned to come to the United States, even after the Taliban took over. Because they told us everything is normal, stay in Kabul. He's 33 now and was a building contractor working on Afghan army camps. Amani was afraid the government work would get him in trouble. He joined those who escaped to Pakistan and then went on to Mexico, and there was plenty of company. The Department of Homeland Security says in the past two years, more than 2,500 Afghans have made the trip and crossed into the U.S.

But that illegal route means they could be turned away, unless they can prove imminent danger or a medical emergency. U.S. immigration officials could quickly see there was a medical emergency with Yusra. When they told us, we are transferring your daughter, believe in me, as a father, and after that I understand they are human and they will assist us, they will help us. After a month of treatment at a San Diego children's hospital, he decided to head to Northern Virginia, where there's a large Afghan community. They told us we contact with Children's National Hospital in D.C. After that, we will give the paper and your documents and you will go.

That's where the family met Dr. Karen Smith, a one-time Army nurse turned pediatrician at Children's. She is a beautiful little girl that is suffering from a metabolic disorder. And with that, she's weak. She's unable to kind of move a lot for herself, unable to eat. But also knowing that, I would say there's such great hope if we manage that well. And what's the prognosis? So if it's managed well and early on, the prognosis can be very good of a very functional, you know, active individual. But she will have delays,

most like motor she may have in learning. But what's beautiful about, you know, the child's brain, it's still growing and kind of making new cells. Smith and others, including non-profit groups, faith-based groups like Christ Church in Alexandria, have helped the family settle in. She co-signed for his apartment, which is financed by donations that run out in October. Friends provided dishes, silverware, a couch. The chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport two years ago, Smith says, hit her hard. She spent more than two decades as an Army nurse. Her husband did combat tours in Iraq as a Green Beret.

Frustration. It's just frustration, sadness. And again, I think what the Army kind of puts into you is, you know, we're one family. We're a team. And when you're in a foreign country that they're supporting you, helping you stay safe, you don't leave your comrade behind. Afghans who arrived some two years ago in the American airlift got three months of government assistance, Medicaid, a work permit. Amani got none of that because he came here illegally. Back in April, he filed an application for asylum, a status that would allow him to work.

Right now, he has no social security number, so that plus a work permit, a work permit would be great. Eureka Cooper, Imani's immigration lawyer, says even though he has an expedited process, Imani's still waiting for approval. She says with the backlog in asylum cases with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, it's uncertain how long it will take. Imani hopes to be granted asylum and become self-sufficient before too long. He plans to become a mechanic one day. And his wife? She dreams of becoming a doctor. But English classes will come first. Today I'm happy. I'm happy in the United States.

Amani hands Yusra off to his wife and cuddles their second child, a chubby six-month-old with alert eyes. Her name is Ikra. Ikra means reed. Reed. Her name is in defiance of a Taliban regime, he says, in its opposition to educating girls. Taliban closed the doors of school and therefore therefore I put her name, Ekra. That story was from NPR's Tom Bowman in Alexandria, Virginia. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.