‘What will happen to me?’ An unsure future awaits Afghans who fled

Walking down the tarmac of the U.S. army air base about 2:00 am lately, the Afghan girl lunged for a handgun strapped to an American airman’s leg. As service members rushed to restrain her, she shrieked and thrashed — decided to kill herself. Then, she crumpled right into a ball and sobbed.
Her household had been killed throughout the Taliban’s fast takeover in Afghanistan and he or she had barely managed to get on an evacuation flight out of Kabul. Now, she was lots of of miles from her homeland — on their own.
“Please, please, please,” she gasped, the orange and yellow lights from buses crowded with evacuees flashing throughout her tear-soaked face.
Since the Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan, the exodus of Afghans has swelled like a flash flood, inundating U.S. army bases in locations like Qatar, the place tens of hundreds of evacuees have over the previous two weeks arrived to be screened by U.S. authorities.

But as worldwide evacuations wind down, consideration has turned to the fates of those that have been a part of the sudden and unanticipated mass exodus. In simply two weeks, greater than 5,000 American troops in Kabul helped evacuate greater than 114,000 individuals in a chaotic and sometimes violent effort reflective of the gorgeous tempo at which the Taliban took over.
After the insurgents entered the Afghan capital, Kabul, determined scrums of individuals descended on the town’s worldwide airport, the place they clambered onto evacuation flights. On touchdown in Qatar, which has performed a key function in evacuation efforts, some Afghans fell to their knees in tears after disembarking, considering they’d arrived within the United States.
But that hope was extinguished after they have been shuttled to a refugee processing middle run by the U.S. army in a big plane hangar — their first glimpse into the lengthy, grueling journey towards ultimately being resettled within the United States.
The surge of evacuees has already promised to create quite a few authorized, bureaucratic and logistical issues. Many Afghans who clambered onto flights is probably not eligible for resettlement within the United States. Those who’re danger overwhelming resettlement organizations within the United States which might be tasked with offering for the speedy wants of newly arrived refugees — like housing, medical care and meals — and that usually deal with solely a gradual trickle of newcomers.
And on the processing facilities, the aid of escaping Afghanistan beneath Taliban rule has collided with the hardships of leaving a homeland and beginning life anew. Amid the exodus, individuals’s collective sense of mourning for what Afghanistan as soon as was has given option to worry for what their lives will turn out to be outdoors of it.
“Thinking about my family, their situation, I am not mentally well,” stated Zahra, 28, who left final week on an evacuation flight to Doha, the capital of Qatar. “And then in America, we don’t know what will happen there: Will we find a job, will we settle in a good place, will we make better lives for ourselves?” Like others interviewed for this text, she requested that solely her first identify be used to keep away from reprisals.
Since she arrived in Doha, Zahra has been replaying the warning a Taliban guard gave her: Once she left, she would by no means be allowed again.

In Afghanistan she had readied herself to flee for practically per week as she watched provincial capitals collapse in fast succession. Then, two days after the insurgents poured into Kabul, she rushed to the airport along with her mom, her siblings and their households.
After they pleaded with Taliban guards on the gate for greater than an hour, the insurgents moved apart to permit Zahra’s household by. But as the group behind her surged ahead, she heard the Taliban firing weapons into the air and felt her mom’s hand slip out of her personal. When she rotated, she noticed Taliban guards beating again the group behind her, along with her mom and the remainder of her household swallowed into that crowd.
Only Zahra, her brother-in-law and his youngsters made it previous the gate. Last week, they joined hundreds of different Afghans who’ve poured into the processing middle at Al Udeid Air Base.
Inside the plane hangar, bone-tired youngsters sprawled throughout a patchwork of inexperienced Army cots, some stained from infants in want of diapers. With solely a part of the hangar air-conditioned, the air typically felt thick from the 115-degree warmth outdoors. Plastic bottles and human waste littered toilet stalls. In big tents with fluorescent lights overhead, mattresses lined the ground and lots of of individuals tried to settle in. Outside the tents, a makeshift playground had been arrange for the youngsters.
Overstretched American army personnel have labored across the clock to offer medical care, meals and water to the surprising flood of arrivals whereas immigration officers vet them. But the preliminary inflow of Afghans outpaced the power to display them, elevating considerations {that a} humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding within the processing facilities.
John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, stated Tuesday, “We’ll be the first to admit that there were conditions at Al Udeid that could have been better,” including that poor circumstances have been “facilitated by the sheer numbers, and the speed with which those numbers got there.”
To ease the pressure on the transit hub in Doha, the U.S. army started sending evacuees to U.S. bases in Germany, Italy, Spain and Bahrain, Kirby stated. In Doha, greater than 100 further bathrooms, plus cleansing and catering companies, have been added to enhance circumstances.
After spending hours — or in some instances, days — at Al Udeid, many Afghan evacuees have been transferred to Camp As Sayliyah, a former Army base in a suburb outdoors Doha, which incorporates transport containers remodeled into transitional housing. The camp was meant for the monthslong means of screening Afghans who labored with the U.S. authorities and had utilized for particular immigration visas — a gaggle that, a couple of months in the past, was not anticipated to quantity quite a lot of thousand.
Instead, within the first few frenzied days beneath the Taliban, when rumors swirled of U.S. planes transporting Afghans on to the United States, hundreds of individuals with out passports, visas or identification playing cards flooded Kabul’s airport and have been positioned on Doha-bound planes.
“It was a panic environment; the Taliban had entered the airport, that’s why we came here,” stated Gul, a police officer at Kabul’s airport who was amongst these flown to Doha.
The day after Kabul fell, he stated, he arrived at his regular place on the airport, which felt like a ghost city: Security forces and airline crews had all deserted their posts. By noon, chaos gripped the tarmac as individuals flooded the airport.

Gul joined the frenzy, leaping onto 4 business planes — all grounded by the mayhem — earlier than forcing his approach onto an American evacuation flight. Even when Americans turned off the air-conditioning and informed everybody the airplane was damaged, nobody budged.
Now, settling into life at Camp As Sayliyah, he stated the snap choice to depart weighed on him. His spouse and three youngsters beneath the age of 6 stay in Kabul.
“In the night, I cannot sleep,” he stated. “I was a member of security forces, what if my family is targeted? Who is feeding them?”
He added, “I am here alone, and they are in Afghanistan, where the situation is terrible.”
No one is aware of how lengthy Gul and others must look forward to screening on the camp, unable to work or ship a reimbursement to their households.
Crowds clamber to make use of the few telephone chargers — typically among the many solely objects, aside from the garments they have been carrying, that they introduced with them. People scavenge for cigarette butts on the bottom, salvaging small bits of tobacco. Every day round 5 a.m., a line swells outdoors the meals corridor, with individuals ready hours to enter, sweat seeping by their garments within the unrelenting warmth. Last week, some within the camp complained of meals shortages after being given meals able to eat — or MREs — usually utilized by the army.

Those in line supply a window into the chaotic exit from Kabul: There are shopkeepers whose shops have been subsequent to the airport, members of the safety forces who deserted their posts there and staff of Kam Air, an Afghan airline, nonetheless of their uniforms after leaping on planes.
Mirwais, 31, arrived on the air base in Qatar after clambering onto an American evacuation flight final week. A former translator for U.S. forces and worldwide organizations, he went into hiding when the Taliban entered Kabul and determined to depart after insurgents trying to find him visited his mom’s residence.
“If I were in Afghanistan, I would be dead right now,” he stated. But with every passing day within the camp, he added, hope fades that he is not going to simply survive however begin a greater life.

After days of determined calls to kin to attempt to get his spouse and 10-month-old little one evacuated, Mirwais stated he had all however given up on reuniting with them outdoors Afghanistan. And his capability to journey on to the United States is something however sure.
“I have no passport with me, no papers,” he stated. “But if I can’t go on to the United States, what will happen to me? How will I support my family?”