A Trip to Afghanistan in August 2021
By Marisa Tesoro
August 2021 was harrowing for tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan as well as many people in the U.S. worried about loved ones there. MO-ORA’s IT Coordinator, Mohammad Tamim Afghanzada, was one such person. His wife, Wahida, and their daughter had traveled to Afghanistan days before the Taliban’s takeover.
As we find ourselves in the midst of another humanitarian crisis—this time in Ukraine—we can’t soon forget the one that reached a fever pitch in August and continues today: the withdrawal of American troops and our allies from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover.
Local resettlement agencies across Missouri rose to the occasion, receiving and resettling record numbers of Afghan refugees for weeks near the end of 2021 and into 2022. They worked around-the-clock to best support these new arrivals and welcome them to their new homes.
But as they picked up newcomers from the airport, arranged housing, went grocery shopping, and took families to the doctor, some of these same resettlement workers also worried about loved ones in Afghanistan.
It was August 16, and Tamim hadn’t slept for days.
His wife, Wahida, had left a few days before and travelled to Kabul for her sister’s wedding, taking their almost 2-year-old daughter with her.
Tamim, MO-ORA’s IT Coordinator, had been watching the news and checking social media, and had seen it all unfold. The Taliban had made it through Afghanistan’s borders and outer provinces and into Kabul.
There would not be a wedding.
A Good Place to Start a Life
As a child, Wahida wasn’t allowed to play outside with the other kids. At 13, she looked older than her age, and her family worried about this. So they “pushed her to wear a burqa.”
“All the children got to go outside and play together,” she said. “But I couldn’t, and this is the bad thing I never can forget.”
Tamim had no such experience. He had an older brother who took on the family obligations, so Tamim spent his teenage years in Pakistan, playing soccer, cricket and attending school.
Tamim and his family on vacation in Chicago in 2021.
He returned to Afghanistan in 2005 “after the Americans took over,” he said. He got his degree in Information Technology and moved on to a job with an American organization working with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education.
He worked with them for 9 years, during which time he crossed paths with Wahida. The two met through Wahida’s sister who was attending the university where Tamim was working.
Later in 2015, Tamim and Wahida married, and Tamim applied for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV). Finally, in May 2019, he completed the process, and he and then-pregnant Wahida came to the U.S.
They traveled directly to Missouri to join Tamim’s brother, who convinced them to come to St. Louis, saying, “It’s a good place to start a life.”
In Kabul
Wahida, her sister, and her parents were diligently checking Facebook.
Originally together for a celebration, they were instead huddled around phones, sorting through propaganda posts on social media for updates about the Taliban’s movements, and gathering family members to flee.
They knew they had to leave. So Wahida, her daughter, her father, two sisters, two brothers, and one brother-in-law made their way to the Kabul airport.
“I went because of a wedding, and then I bring the bride with me here,” Wahida said.
What would have normally been a 15-minute journey turned into an hours-long trek as the roads filled with people all trying to get to the airport.
This was the first time Wahida had seen anything like this, she explained. When the Taliban were last in power in Afghanistan, she was only 6 years old.
Now 28, she had to press on with her family into the fray.
At the Airport
When they finally made it to the airport, armed Afghan and U.S. forces were attempting crowd control as the tension and desperation boiled.
Wahida recalled:
“They had some kind of sound bombs. They explode, and my ears cannot hear anything for like 3-5 minutes.
One [Afghan soldier] put the gun in my father belly, they said, ‘If you try to come in front, we will shoot you.’
My father said, ‘I don’t want to come to airport, but my daughter, she came from America. Her daughter has the passport; she has the green card.’
And they said, ‘Show your passport and green card to the Americans.’ But there were no Americans, and we cannot reach an American from the U.S. army because they said, ‘Don’t come to the front.’
We can blame no one because there were suicide attacks. [The soldiers] were afraid for their lives.”
They attempted to get inside the airport for 5 days. Each day they waited among the crowd for hours outside the airport.
Help from Home
Meanwhile, Tamim was on the phone with the embassy.
“I was just calling Wahida and giving the instructions on where to go to find people to just get out of Kabul,” he said. “I was communicating with [the embassy] and then sharing information with Wahida.”
That information proved to be vital.
Through Tamim, the embassy was guiding them on how to enter the Kabul airport, directing them on exactly which door to enter.
It wasn’t easy to follow their instructions, though. At one point, the group needed to wade through and wait in water to get from one side of the airport to another.
“Finally, you know, she found some way,” Tamim said.
As the night wore on, Wahida grew increasingly desperate. With a backpack on her back and her daughter in one arm, she began to frantically wave her daughter’s passport and her own green card in the air with her free hand, hoping to get the right person’s attention.
Finally, a distant U.S. military member’s flashlight illuminated the American passport. They called out to Wahida and her family, signaling them to come forward. She and her family were assisted out of the water and let into the airport.
“It was 2 a.m. at night when they entered,” Tamim said. “And once she entered, she called me and say, ‘We are in, and I cannot talk anything else. We are safe.”
Bittersweet Relief
Once relatively safe inside, the first of many instances of waiting began.
Her family stayed in the airport for one night and two days, enduring hours-long lines for food, before boarding a plane to Qatar.
“When we entered the military plane, we were too happy and also so sad because when we see other people that did try to come inside…” She trailed off, taking a moment.
“It was very horrible,” Tamim continued, “because everybody was trying to save their life.”
Still, they tried to be grateful as they were crammed into the plane. There were no seats, and passengers had to sit on the floor with their knees pulled into their chests for a 6-hour flight, Wahida explained.
“We came like this from Qatar to Germany, too,” she said.
When they finally made it to Germany, they hoped they were in for some comfort. Instead, they endured more long lines for food, which eventually turned out to be spoiled.
“They bring some food, and I become so happy, but when I open it, it was really bad,” she said. Determined to get some nourishment for her daughter, she pointed out the problem and asked for better food.
“And then they never bring us food again,” she said. “We stayed two days in Germany. They just bring us some snacks, and that’s all.”
Finally, it was time to come home to the U.S. And with that, came some relief in the form of spaghetti.
“We say thank God,” she said. “From Germany, when we came to U.S., they bring us some spaghetti on airplane, and it was really delicious for us because we were hungry.”
Restarting Life
Because Wahida is a green card holder, and her daughter is a U.S. citizen, they were able to return home to St. Louis shortly after arriving in the U.S. Her family members, however, we were sent to a military base in Virginia for further processing due to their Afghan Humanitarian Parolee status.
Tamim continued to try to help “his parolees,” as he warmly called them. He was able to find an interpreter to help deliver care packages to them before a delivery system was up and running at the military base.
He and Wahida continued to help their family get their footing in the U.S. once off the military base. They helped them find jobs at Walmart and McDonald’s as well as apartments for their family.
There’s still plenty to navigate—the U.S. healthcare system, schools, English classes, job training and recertification—but now they can all work through that together, as Tamim and Wahida have.
Amidst all this loss and chaos, the pair look toward the future and are trying to build the life Tamim envisioned.
“It was my dream to come into U.S. to study,” Tamim said, and he’ll be starting courses in private security soon.
Wahida started college classes in January. She has 12 English credits to get through and then will start classes to become a dental hygienist.
“We are trying our best to catch up with our studies,” Tamim said, “because in the U.S., we have to make a career for ourselves, a bright future for us.”
That future might also include some math classes.
“You know what I’m thinking, I’m not good at mathematics,” he said. “So I’m trying to take some mathematics class, not for myself, but only to be able to help my daughter.”
Resettlement agencies, Afghan program managers, case workers and a variety of service providers in the resettlement network continue to support new Afghan arrivals. The energy has shifted from warp speed airport pickups and housing setups to program development, helping folks acclimate to their communities, job and skills training, school enrollments and more.
Additional hurdles remain. On top of trying to find affordable housing during a nationwide housing crisis, tens of thousands of Afghans who arrived in the U.S. since August have Afghan Humanitarian Parolee status, which allows them to live and work in the U.S. for two years.
On March 16, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to these individuals, allowing them to stay and work temporarily in the U.S. without fear of being deported for 18 months. But they still lack a pathway to permanent legal status.
Resettlement agencies have set their sights on preparing to apply for asylum for these newcomers to help them remain in the U.S. and thrive beyond the short-term.
As of December 2021, the asylum backlog had reached more than 432,000 pending applications.
While Missouri has been able to welcome about 1,750 Afghans so far, tens of thousands of Afghans were unable to be evacuated.
To learn more about what’s happening in Afghanistan: Check out the latest from Al Jazeera
To learn more about how to help newly arrived Afghan refugees in the U.S.: Welcome.US
To learn more about helping Afghan refugees in Missouri: Follow our partners.