Sultan M. Hali
OVER two hundred and fifty thousand Afghan asylum seekers fled Afghanistan following the August 2021 egress of the US-led NATO forces from Kabul. The mass exodus of the Afghans occurred because these Afghans were fearful for their lives with the advent of the Taliban takeover. Most of them were reminiscent of the earlier Taliban rule in which women were barred from seeking education as well as employment. Taliban 2.0 had another target, those Afghans, who had worked for the allied forces or provided them support.
Taliban intelligence had prepared a list of the so called “collaborators” who were considered as traitors and were marked for execution. In their hasty drawdown of the US and NATO forces from Afghanistan, there wasn’t ample logistic support to bring the Afghan supporters to safety, thus they were left at the mercy of the Taliban. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan families marched on to neighbouring Pakistan, to escape the wrath of the Taliban. Most of them had been promised visas and the means to seek asylum in the west.
The thousands of Afghans remain stranded in Pakistan for more than twenty months after their escape to Pakistan. Unfortunately, they feel betrayed by the west, because of the incessant visa processing delays. Running short of funds to even eke out sustenance, most of these stranded Afghans are at the end of their tether because they face deportation to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where they face the peril of being captured and killed.
The plight of the stranded Afghans is aggravated by the inherent delays. The U.S. established Priority 1 and Priority 2 (known as P1 and P2) referrals under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in August 2021 amid the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resurgence of the oppressive Taliban. These visas were meant to help Afghans who were in danger of retaliation from the Taliban because they had collaborated with U.S. government agencies and nongovernmental organizations but were ineligible for the traditional special immigrant visa, which was primarily granted to Afghan interpreters and translators.
The processing of P1 and P2 referrals usually takes a designated Resettlement Support Center (RSC) 12 to 18 months. Despite the passage of this prerequisite time period, Afghan applicants in Pakistan still haven’t received the preliminary interview necessary to begin the visa application process, mainlybecause there is no RSC in the country.
Upon inquiry from a State Department spokesperson, it was informed that the US government has yet been able to process Afghans in Pakistan with Priority 1 and Priority 2 referrals. The spokesperson stressed that resettling eligible Afghans from Pakistan is a department priority, and the US State Department is exploring all options to enable USRAP processing.
The State Department declined to provide any information regarding ongoing discussions between the two countries on the issue or the duration of the processing time. In contrast to the special immigrant visa program, there is limited public information and official statistics available regarding the P1 and P2 referrals.
To add insult to injury, the U.S. government has said it is unable to offer protection or assistance to P1 and P2 applicants while they are waiting for a decision on their refugee case. Thus, they are left to the mercy of inclement weather, food shortages, epidemics and even crackdown by Pakistani law enforcing agencies. SIGAR (special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction) released a report earlier in 2023, which discloses that there were 45,000 applications worldwide for P1 and P2 referrals as of July 2022. Among these, 8,600 individuals with their families had left for Pakistan and were experiencing various difficulties. The report shows that in the fiscal year 2022, the program managed to resettle a total of 1,618 Afghans, and in the ongoing fiscal year 2023, the number has reached 2,980 cases. However, all of these cases have been processed in countries other than Pakistan.
In February, a large group of Afghan applicants — frustrated by being in limbo for so long — protested in Islamabad. The delay in approving visas and resettlement has left Afghan applicants in a highly vulnerable position as they contend with economic hardship and lack of access to health, education and other services in Pakistan.
The U.S. should inform applicants where they could go to have their cases processed if the government isn’t able to process them in Pakistan. It is essential because the applicants can’t decide to return to Afghanistan because that would signal to the U.S. that they didn’t feel like they were in danger, she said.Moreover, Afghans must maintain their Pakistani visas at all times or risk being deported; it takes money to get a visa and additional money to renew it every six months.
To make matters worse, Afghan employees of the United Nations have been “stranded” in Pakistan for more than a year, harassed by law enforcement, robbed by armed assailants, and forced to pay thousands of dollars in fines as they endure a stalled effort to be resettled in the United States, according to two confidential emails written to U.N. leaders by a representative of the employees, Sayed Lutfullah Barez. And the U.N. leadership in New York has ignored their pleas for help, he claims. The fourteen Afghan workers with the U.N. have been trapped in bureaucratic limbo since they were evacuated with their families from Afghanistan, following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. military forces in August 2021, according to Barez, a U.N. public information officer with the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA.
They face the constant threat of violence, their tenuous visa status has prevented their children from attending school, and “chronic stress and depression are rampant, and in some cases, to the point of suicide attempts,” Barez wrote in a Jan. 27 email to Rosemary DiCarlo, the U.N. under-secretary-general for political and peace building affairs. The plea for help came as Pakistan is reeling under a barrage of terror attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Thus, the Afghans stranded in Pakistan feel frustrated since they feel betrayed by the west.
