Calculating the human toll of the US exit from Afghanistan three years later

Three years after the United States left Afghanistan devastated and in chaos, the trauma continues to be felt around the world. Afghans, including refugees and asylum-seekers, carry a heavy burden of pain. So, too, do the veterans , volunteers, Gold Star family members, and advocates who have desperately tried to rescue whomever they can.

To show the scale of the withdrawal’s impact, the Washington Examiner has gathered accounts from some of the hundreds of thousands caught in the upheaval. Because they and their families remain at great risk, most Afghans asked to use a pseudonym to protect their identity.

Veterans and Gold Star families

The Americans who bore the battle during our nearly 20-year conflict in Afghanistan continue to be emotionally affected by the Taliban ’s return to power. Tom Schueman is a veteran of the Afghan war and author of Always Faithful , an account of efforts to save his interpreter in August 2021. Schueman has also seen the effects of the Afghanistan withdrawal on veterans through his role as founder of Patrol Base Abbate , which gives veterans a space to reconnect and discover purpose after service.

“Those of us who served there, I think, felt a unanimous sense of moral injury because we were told we were winning, we were told that this cause mattered … that we would do this by, with, and through our counterparts until we achieved the mission,” Schueman told the Washington Examiner. In the end, he explained, “we were actually willing to abandon our allies.”

Schueman said he believes that veterans’ “delayed ability to heal” emanates from the feeling that “no one has accepted responsibility” for the withdrawal’s fallout. In the military, “you’re accountable for everything your unit does or fails to do,” Schueman said. “There was a time when I was in the Helmand river. I was drowning, and I thought it would be better for me to drown and at least have all my gear than to drop my gear and have it not accounted for."

Schueman suggested that the outcome of the withdrawal should not fuel a feeling of failure among veterans. “The veterans of Afghanistan didn’t lose the war,” he said. “We went there and violently executed the mission with great success. We don’t have to be defined by how the chapter ended.”

Those who served at Hamid Karzai International Airport in August 2021 and enabled the unprecedented evacuation of 124,000 innocent lives may also struggle.

Joe Laude was a Marine Corps infantryman when he arrived at the airport during the withdrawal. He founded Operation Allies Refuge Foundation to help these veterans find healing. On his organization’s website, Laude explained that some face “the psychological, emotional, and spiritual impact of having transgressed [their] moral beliefs or having witnessed others do so” at the airfield, which has led to “deep-seated feelings of guilt, shame, and disillusionment.”

In addition to supporting these veterans in telling their stories and taking on restorative service, Laude also supports the search for answers about what took place at the airport, including during the Aug. 26 ISIS-K suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and around 170 Afghans at Abbey Gate.

The Gold Star family members of the fallen, such as Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, also seek the truth about what occurred.

Shamblin told the Washington Examiner that she is grateful to have had “productive conversations” about the withdrawal with American leaders, but she said the process is “longer than I would prefer” to “find answers that will prevent this kind of avoidable tragedy from happening again.”

Within the last year, Shamblin honored her daughter-in-law’s legacy by creating the Sgt. Nicole Gee Memorial Foundation. Gee was a “positive light,” Shamblin said, “and to the end of her life, when she was in the middle of hell and surrounded by the Taliban, she took a moment to celebrate how much she loved her job.”

Afghan allies

Approximately 96% of women and 93% of men in Afghanistan feel they are “suffering,” according to a November 2023 Gallup poll . There is no end to the indignities Afghans endure, with looming food insecurity , ISIS-K attacks on the populace, and the oppressive strictures and unfettered terror of the Taliban, who pluck ever-more freedoms from the Afghan women they abuse .

Our left-behind allies must manage the additional horror of trying to stay a step ahead of the Taliban as the terrorists slowly but surely find and pick off their former enemies. Many who were lucky enough to qualify for a Special Immigrant Visa, a referral to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or humanitarian parole still find themselves at risk while they await administrative processing.

Special Immigrant Visa program

The Special Immigrant Visa program has been beset with difficulties since its inception, particularly with adjudicating SIVs within the ambitious nine months mandated by program guidelines. According to the latest SIV quarterly report , processing for visas takes an average of 569 days.

The historical difficulty of finding old employers to supply letters of recommendation and employment verification plagues applicants today, as do several wrinkles that emerged in recent months.

In late 2023, the State Department began to deny and revoke Chief of Mission approval, the first step in the SIV process, from applicants whose recommenders had issued a large volume of recommendation letters. Advocates for SIV applicants decried the practice, saying it violated the requirement that the State Department determine SIV eligibility based on an applicant’s individual merits.

A State Department spokesperson clarified the rationale behind spates of denials and revocations, telling the Washington Examiner that “employers who author even one employment letter for an Afghan who did not work for their company, and supervisors who author even one letter of recommendation for an Afghan not in their chain of command, risk causing withdrawal of COM approval for Afghans for whom they previously wrote letters and denial of COM approval for Afghans for whom they subsequently wrote letters.” The spokesperson emphasized that “all COM decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.”

Adam Bates, supervisory policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, called foul on the explanation, telling the Washington Examiner it is “tantamount to an admission that the State Department is in fact not making individualized assessments of Afghan allies but is instead using contractor/supervisor blacklists to reject entire swaths of SIV applications without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing or ineligibility on the part of the applicant.” Bates said this “collective punishment violates both the letter and the spirit of the Afghan Allies Protection Act.”

Several volunteers assisting applicants facing COM denials or revocations told the Washington Examiner that applicants have made new COM petitions. None of them have yet achieved approval.

Maissam Saee spoke to the Washington Examiner in March about having COM approval revoked after being notified to prepare for a flight out of Afghanistan. Saee said he and 80 fellow employees of Global Technology have now been notified that their work with the company does not qualify them for SIVs. If they wish to reapply to the program, Saee said they must demonstrate other qualifying employment. “How can we reapply with new documents if we only worked for Global Technology?” Saee asked.

In the last four reported quarters, the State Department issued 5,864 SIVs. Per the latest report, more than 124,000 Afghans still remain in the earliest stages of the SIV process, with about 11,000 Afghans awaiting interviews and administrative processing at later stages. This leaves around 19,000 available SIVs for 135,000 hopefuls.

Though the number of available SIVs is dwindling, 18-year-old Yama is still fighting for his father’s visa. After over 200 days with no information about his father’s case from the State Department, he told the Washington Examiner that his family is suffering. His home is a “place of fear and silence,” and his well-educated mother is “just a shadow of who she used to be.” For Yama, the “hardest part is the silence of the world that has moved on.”

Humanitarian parole

Thousands of Afghans filed requests for humanitarian parole to find temporary safety in the U.S. when their country came under Taliban control. Few have received it.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s questions about the numbers of submitted and approved Afghan humanitarian parole petitions. January 2024 correspondence from Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) to leaders at USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security said Afghans had submitted about 52,870 requests for parole since Aug. 1, 2021. With fees of $575 per applicant, USCIS took in as much as $30.4 million from Afghan petitioners.

Only 1.04% of applications were granted between November 2021 and July 2022. By the time of Markey’s letter, just 16,470 cases had been adjudicated. Of these, only 1,860 cases were conditionally approved.

The lag time between submitting a parole request and receiving approval has created difficulties for Afghans like Fazluddin, a well-respected journalist. Fazluddin applied for humanitarian parole in late 2021. He moved his wife and children to India, where they gained protection from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Because financial prospects in India were poor, Fazluddin took a job in the United Kingdom. With only one visa allotted to him, he left his family behind.

Several months ago, Fazluddin got word that his humanitarian parole application was approved. Thrilled at the prospect of being reunited with his family after 11 months apart, Fazluddin hit a new snag: After giving up UNHCR protection, he could not legally return to India for his consular interview. The lawyer assisting with his case has been unresponsive, and Fazluddin has been unsuccessful at changing his interview location, leaving him concerned about when and how he might see his family again.

U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

For Afghans referred to the Priority 1, 2, and 3 programs within the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, processing presented a tremendous hardship in the years following the withdrawal. Cases could only be processed in countries with a functioning U.S. Embassy, leading many applicants to cross the border into Pakistan. There, higher costs of living, extortionate visa costs, harassment, and a lack of access to work or education presented serious difficulties.

Processing for USRAP applicants had commenced by summer 2023, but in October, Pakistan began systematically deporting millions of Afghan refugees to Afghanistan. Afghans who hold assurance letters verifying their pending applications for U.S. programs are meant to be protected from deportation. Some sources indicate that Afghans in the USRAP pipeline were deported as recently as July .

A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that more than 56,000 Afghans have been referred to the USRAP. The spokesperson said 20,000 Afghans have been welcomed to the U.S. since 2021, with 11,000 “arriving in this fiscal year.” More than 28,000 primary applicants are still undergoing processing.

Caroline Marks is the president of Jewish Humanitarian Response, an organization founded by Orthodox rabbis who gathered donors to assist women leaders persecuted for their position and gender by the Taliban. Marks told the Washington Examiner that the organization now supports Priority 1 applicants in the justice sector “whose work challenged corrupt Taliban rule.”

Marks has witnessed many Afghans face immense difficulties in reaching and remaining safe in Pakistan. Marks said single Afghan women face harassment from Pakistani men and fear being raped. One prosecutor gave birth in Pakistan, but her child tragically died at a month old. “There’s enormous pain for her,” Marks said, “knowing that she and the family will be leaving and won’t have anyone to visit” the baby’s grave.

At least two applicants have died while awaiting assistance. One female prosecutor was tracked down and assassinated in Afghanistan. A judge died from a heart attack, which Marks said she believes was brought on by stress. Her children were left stranded in Pakistan and hope to access her USRAP case.

Marks said she is grateful for increased USRAP processing speeds in the past year, though some applicants have still endured long waits with no explanation. One judge who arrived in Pakistan in 2022 “just received flights to the U.S. after more than two years in limbo in the asylum process,” Marks explained.

“It has been punishing for them,” she said.

The Brazil route

Born of desperation, a fourth option for reaching the U.S. has emerged, fraught with danger and legal uncertainties. After acquiring humanitarian visas to Brazil, Afghans are traversing the deadly Darien Gap and traveling through Central America to plead for asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.

As use of the Brazil route increased, so too did encounters with Afghans at the border, rising from 36 in fiscal 2021 to 838 in fiscal 2022 to 5,095 in the first 10 months of fiscal 2023. U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Washington Examiner that the U.S. Border Patrol alone had encountered 2,185 Afghans from the beginning of fiscal 2024 through July 31.

Afghans who request asylum at the border are sometimes subject to incarceration and possibly deportation.

The Washington Examiner spoke with Michael Neal, an attorney with the International Rescue Committee, who was able to assist five Afghans successfully in achieving asylum after they were apprehended by Border Patrol in Del Rio, Texas, in 2022.

Neal said he was surprised to learn that his clients had been charged not with the misdemeanor offense typically doled out to first-time border crossers but with a weightier offense carrying double the prison sentence. His clients’ time in federal detention was difficult. “A lot of them do not want to talk about what happened [in detention] ever again because it re-traumatizes them,” Neal explained.

Shala Gafary, a managing attorney at Human Rights First, told the Washington Examiner about the case of an Afghan asylum-seeker, a human rights advocate and law professor from the persecuted Hazara minority, whom she called Mohammad. After Mohammad reached the border and claimed asylum, a judge denied his claim, disregarding evidence that he had survived ISIS-K and Taliban attacks and arguments that he would be targeted again if he returned to Afghanistan. By the time Human Rights First became involved in his case, Mohammad was scheduled to be deported to Afghanistan.

Gafary reported that Human Rights First attorneys and their pro bono partners were “able to have Mohammad’s case reopened and his asylum application granted.” They achieved his release in December 2023 after Mohammad spent 618 days in U.S. custody. Mohammad awaits reunion with his two small children and his wife, an SIV applicant in her own right, who stayed behind in Afghanistan while he pursued the dangerous route to Brazil.

Gafary said other Afghans might not have been as lucky. “I’ve talked to other Afghans who are in detention, and they’ve told me that some of the Afghans they met while in U.S. custody were deported.”

The terror within Afghanistan still motivates Afghans to pursue the path through Brazil.

The Washington Examiner has covered Nasrin’s story since December 2021. Forced to wed at age 10, she endured marriage to an abusive spouse until she finally received a separation in 2011. Post-withdrawal, Nasrin has been on the run between Afghanistan’s neighboring countries to keep her Taliban-affiliated former husband from selling their daughter into marriage. Nasrin has finally obtained a Brazil visa and will depart soon to make the perilous journey to the U.S.

When she told me of her plan, I warned Nasrin and asked if she knew about the pitfalls that may be ahead.

“I know all the dangers,” she told me. “You know more than anyone what problems I went through since 2021, and it is still going on.”

Refugees, green-card holders, and asylees in the US

Jill Marie Bussey, director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, spoke to the Washington Examiner about difficulties for the 160,000 Afghans who have made a home in the U.S. subsequent to the withdrawal, including about 35,000 who arrived in the past year.

For Afghans who arrived in the summer of 2021, Bussey said an extension of their parole status will be required next year, as not all new arrivals have green cards. Bussey also warned that funds for pro bono immigration services provided during Operation Allies Welcome “are winding down.”

A number of Afghans who fled to the U.S. left behind spouses and children. While they can petition to bring their immediate family in Afghanistan to the U.S., Bussey said the process for reunification “is clear as mud.” She explained that reunification difficulties still cause “significant mental stress and anxiety” for families, case managers, and legal teams.

Echoing the calls of many resettlement support groups scattered across the U.S., Bussey said Afghans are also in dire need of increased mental health support to overcome “significant trauma [experienced] before, during, and after evacuation.”

Among those struggling with her mental health as a new arrival is Zara, who received humanitarian parole in December 2023. Since moving to the U.S., Zara and her family have lived with the relatives who sponsored them. Because they arrived under private sponsorship on parole, Zara cannot receive any of the resettlement support, including job placement assistance, that has been granted to SIV and USRAP applicants.

Zara’s stresses are vast. Her son has cerebral palsy and autism. Because of his challenges, Zara’s relatives have asked Zara’s family to leave their home. Zara was a university professor in Afghanistan and speaks elegant English, but she has been turned down for around 50 retail positions she has applied for. “I have talent, but people are not hiring me,” she told the Washington Examiner.

Without work, Zara has no ability to find a more supportive environment that will help her family thrive in the U.S.

The long toll

Whether our allies are in Afghanistan and third countries or adjusting to life in the U.S., they face myriad issues with adjustment that necessitate additional congressional support. Evacuate Our Allies, a coalition of groups supporting efforts to aid Afghans, released a letter on Aug. 15 calling for the “swift passage of critical legislation, including the Afghan Allies Protection Act and the Afghan Adjustment Act.” Among the goals of these pieces of legislation is to expand support for refugees and include additional categories of protected groups in the SIV program.

In its letter, the coalition asked leaders to honor America’s commitments to its allies, stating that “the protective measures we have been fighting for over the last three years are not merely policy issues; they are moral imperatives.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal, advocates who stepped up to help the Afghans scattered across the world, clamoring for assistance. That atmosphere of constant pressure and hardship has forged alliances and deep friendships.

To honor those connections, I staged a gathering of activists from a variety of backgrounds at a bar in Old Town Alexandria on Aug. 8. Cordoned off from the rest of the world, we laughed wryly over harrowing stories of war, terror, persecution, and exfiltration that any uninitiated onlookers would have likely found impossible to believe and difficult to stomach.

As the night wore on, I scanned the handful of people around me and did a simple mental calculation that together, they had saved more than 3,700 lives during the withdrawal and buoyed untold thousands more facing the deepest despair in its aftermath.

There has been a cost in sleep lost, stomach-churning diets of nicotine pouches and caffeine, and the compromised sanity that comes from battling both a complex American bureaucracy and a terrorist organization.

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Three years on, a tremendous weight remains. I spent the hours before our meeting contemplating ways to raise awareness about the three Americans suffering greatly in Taliban detention. One friend comforted a young Afghan refugee struggling with suicidal ideation. Another friend, an aesthetician by day and a pugilist at all hours, was staging a cross-border exodus for an Afghan doctor who had landed on Taliban radar after covertly assisting dozens of Taliban rape victims. Still another friend told me that he “feels like Sisyphus most days” amid the constant failures, setbacks, and frustrations of advocating for our left-behind allies.

When our brief respite ended, another anniversary was upon us. Amid the pain, we all prepared to keep fighting on.

Beth Bailey ( @BWBailey85 ) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.