- Afghan Americans are distraught by the Taliban takeover but also mobilizing to help people get out.
- They’re calling on the Biden administration to do more to address the escalating humanitarian crisis.
- “The US needs to own up to its mistakes and repair the damage they have caused,” Lida Azim, an organizer with Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, told Insider.
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In 2008, Shafeek Seddiq went back to his native country to help rebuild it. He was part of the US civilian surge in Afghanistan, and he stayed for a decade.
Seddiq, now a Virginia-based lawyer (whose daughter works at Insider), worked to bring legal reform to Afghanistan. He focused on issues ranging from anti-corruption and anti-terrorism to women’s rights.
There was a time when Seddiq hoped Afghanistan would be a “free, modern, democratic” country filled with skyscrapers. He envisioned sitting in his rocking chair on the porch one day and telling his grandchildren he played “very tiny part” in building all of it.
“Now, I am not sure if that will ever come or I can even claim as such,” Seddiq said.
“I am sad and this is tragedy. All what we did was for not,” Seddiq said, adding that the Taliban, which in mid-August regained control of Afghanistan for the first time since 2001, can never be trusted.
Seddiq is not alone.
The escalating chaos in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover has left Afghan Americans feeling exceptionally distraught and pessimistic about the future of the country. While contending with a whirlwind of emotions, many in the Afghan American community have rapidly mobilized to help friends and family desperate to get out. They’re also pushing the Biden administration to step up its efforts to assist vulnerable Afghans as many in Washington are busy playing the blame game over the evolving crisis.
“It’s been absolutely devastating. In the last ten days, members of our community have become immigration lawyers for our friends and family because of the lack of transparency from the Biden administration,” Lida Azim, co-organizer of Afghans For a Better Tomorrow and co-founder of the Afghan Diaspora For Equality and Progress, told Insider. “We are doing our best to be there for not only them but also for the people of Afghanistan.”
‘The US needs to own up to its mistakes’
The Biden administration has faced bipartisan criticism over its handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, particularly in relation to the process for helping Afghans who assisted American forces during the war – and are now primary targets for reprisals by the Taliban. The militant group has vowed to extend amnesty to anyone who worked with the US and the former government, but history offers many reasons to be skeptical.
President Joe Biden and his advisors have responded to much of the criticism over the mayhem surrounding the withdrawal by blaming the Afghan government and military.
“So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” Biden said in a speech on August 16. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
The Biden administration has acknowledged it was caught off guard by the pace at which the Taliban seized control, while pushing back against criticism over its handling of the withdrawal by saying that it was never going to be a smooth process.
“The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened,” Biden said in an interview with ABC News last Wednesday.
But just last month, Biden expressed “trust” in the Afghan military and said it was “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would be “overrunning everything and owning the whole country.”
Biden’s flip-flopping and the more general politicization of the crisis by lawmakers and others in Washington has frustrated many Afghan Americans.
The US is vying to “wash its hands of Afghanistan” after “20 years of failed policies,” Azim said.
“The Afghan military was trained by US forces, the Afghan government was propped by the US government,” Azim added. “The US needs to own up to its mistakes and repair the damage they have caused. They can start by accepting every Afghan seeking refuge because it’s not only their moral obligation but their responsibility.”
Negina Azizi, a 23-year-old Afghan American with family still in Afghanistan, told NBC News she felt betrayed by the US and by “a lot of the things that Biden has said.”
“Biden said, ‘We’re not going to fight a fight that the Afghans don’t want to fight,'” Azizi said, “That hurt a lot because we’ve been fighting in almost the same war for almost 40 years.”
Azim said that the ISIS-K attack in Kabul on Thursday that killed over 170 people, including 13 US service members, “was a sneak peek into the lives of countless generations of Afghans.”
The attack came as the US is scrambling to meet an August 31 deadline for evacuations, and it’s left the Biden administration even more anxious to get out – even if it means leaving thousands of people behind. It marked the deadliest day for the US military in a decade. But for Afghans, the experience was all too familiar. ISIS-K, for example, committed 77 attacks in Afghanistan in the first four months of 2021 alone, according to the UN.
Azim portrayed the distressing situation as an opportunity for self-reflection for the US.
“It’s positive that the world’s eyes are on what is happening in Afghanistan. This misery is what Afghans have dealt with for generations, partially due to the American military involvement,” Azim said. “It’s time for the US to be humble about its military capacity … and to find ways to be a constructive force in Afghanistan, which it can by facilitating and funding an emergency humanitarian aid package to ensure almost 40 million Afghans survive conflict, drought and a pandemic.”
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