The United States left Afghanistan a year ago, and nearly 100,000 refugees followed. We hear some of their stories.
One year ago this month, U.S. forces left Afghanistan after 20 years of war. Some 94,000 Afghan nationals, American citizens and lawful permanent residents have arrived in the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Today, we hear some of their stories. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times diaspora reporter Sarah Parvini and photojournalist Marcus Yam
More reading:
They escaped Afghanistan for California and beyond. But war’s struggles followed them
The things they carried when they fled Afghanistan
The cadence of war and its human toll: A photojournalist’s perspective
A Times journalist’s diary inside the fall of Afghanistan
Gustavo: One year ago this month, U.S. forces left Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
President Biden: I was not going to extend this forever war. And I was not extending a forever exit.
Gustavo: The evacuation was chaos. Especially for Afghans fleeing the Taliban's new rule.
Meena: I could not believe it. No, it is not true.
Mehran: We lost our friends, our father and mother. We lost all of them.
Gustavo: Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees have now settled in the U.S.
Gustavo: And starting over brings its own battles.
Gustavo: I'm Gustavo Arellano. You’re listening to The Times, essential news from the L.A. Times. It's Monday, Aug. 29, 2022.
Gustavo: Today, some 94,000 Afghan nationals, American citizens and lawful permanent residents have arrived in the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome.
Gustavo: They’ve settled across the U.S., with the largest populations in California and Texas.
Gustavo: Reporter Sarah Parvini and photojournalist Marcus Yam profiled some Afghan nationals who came here following the withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
Gustavo: Sarah, Marcus, welcome to The Times.
Sarah: Thank you.
Marcus: Thank you for having us on.
Gustavo: Sarah, California has one of the biggest communities of Afghan asylum seekers in the United States but also long-standing communities too, like in Fremont and in Orange County. But the newer arrivals, they're coming up against one of the state's hardest issues right now for everyone: housing.
Sarah: Absolutely. So in speaking with some folks at resettlement agencies, I mentioned Mary earlier, she mentioned to me that there are people, for example in Orange County, maybe not a ton of them left, but who are still living in hotels. There's also in Sacramento, it's not much easier than it is in Southern California to find affordable housing. And there's one person that we interviewed, his name is Ali Zafar Mehran, goes by Mehran …
Mehran: I have lots of things that should share with you, but sometime my English is not good to explain.
Mehran: I have a master's degree in finance and accounting. We were trying to build our country, our society, our culture.
Sarah: He had a little bit of a difficult time, just not only finding housing, but also setting up some of these social and, like, welfare benefits that folks get, things like Social Security.
Mehran: I don't have car. I don't have license. I don't have, I have nothing. I don’t have money.
Sarah: And when he first arrived in California, he, his wife and daughter lived with a friend in Modesto for what he said was more than 20 days. And it's not like his friend was living in a giant home. They were all crowded into a small apartment together. And his wife was about to give birth.
Mehran: The problem was that in this country, when we go to a hospital or a clinic to take care of our wife, they don't accept. In emergency room also, they don't accept. They say, your wife is OK.
Gustavo: What did Mehran expect when he arrived to the United States?
Sarah: I think he expected a, um, resettlement system that in his eyes would be more organized. When we spoke with him at his apartment, he mentioned that, of course, he's grateful to be here on SIV, the special immigrant visa that is awarded to certain Afghan nationals who meet specific requirements, including having been employed in Afghanistan for at least one year by or on behalf of the U.S. government, among other criteria. It's such a difficult system to navigate. And at times it just, to him, it felt so unorganized and sort of hit or miss, in that people could fall through the cracks.
Mehran: This is the challenges that I faced here. I have lots of other problems. I must earn money to send to my parent in Afghanistan.
Sarah: Some people could get so much help from resettlement agencies and get help having their homes furnished with used furniture and things like that while others, like him, are pulling things from the trash, or if they see someone else throwing out a table for the kitchen, he goes and grabs it. Something like that.
Mehran: I have more than 10 years’ professional experience, job experience. I have, uh, skills and abilities and, uh, I will go to United States and I will have a very good life there – but it was not like that.
Gustavo: Marcus, when you hear these stories, how does that make you feel?
Marcus: I mean from my conversations from many Afghans, their idea of America is the land of the plentiful.
Marcus: And it's just the complete polar opposite of what they thought America would be, in a sense. They thought America would have their s– together. And to their surprise even after they got out of their temporary camps and on to their new lives, the whole process of building a new life is so unorganized
Marcus: As Sarah has pointed out, it’s so discombobulated. That's probably the best word to put it.
Gustavo: After the break, Marcus and Sarah talk to women about life during and after the Taliban.
Gustavo: One of the most harrowing consequences that we've seen since the United States left Afghanistan was what happened with women. The Taliban said that they would keep certain freedoms for them, but Marcus, what ended up happening?
Marcus: The tales that women heard from their mothers, or have experienced 20 years ago, are all coming true. You know, women are getting restricted from certain grades of education. There is a law that prohibits women from being outside on their own and requiring a male companion, that is a family member, to be outside. There is an uprising right now in Afghanistan where women are protesting on the streets, but then also, women are also getting arrested.
AP TAPE: Sound of women chanting in Dari
Marcus: These protesters are getting discovered and arrested and forced to sign these, like, waivers or documents saying that they will not protest again. And a lot of activists have gone into hiding. I spoke to some of these women who were left behind, who refused to leave because they wanted to stay and, in a sense, protest. And they were moving from safe house to safe house. They were meeting in secret. And that was at the beginning. And now that a year has gone by, I don't think anything has gotten better.
Gustavo: Sarah, one of the Afghan women that you talked to was a former journalist, Meena.
Meena: We came to U.S.A. on Oct. 31. (Oh, OK.) Yeah. And then we stay in New Jersey camp for three months.
Sarah: Meena Mosazai, former journalist and also NGO worker after her time as a journalist, she fled Kabul essentially because she worried that her years in the media would make her a target, would make her unsafe, if she were to stay behind.
Meena: Even when there were, um, government, we had democracy. Even in that time, it wasn't easy for women. Some women, when they make it to the top, they sacrifice lots of things. And so we can imagine it when, after Taliban came.
Sarah: She has a husband and a very young daughter who is turning 1 this year. And she said that, if it was just her, maybe she would've felt a little bit differently, but she was at the tail end of her pregnancy and then had just given birth as all of this was happening. And she felt that she certainly could not leave a little girl to grow up under a Taliban regime.
Meena: It's in danger now, even they lost it. They, they don't have it anymore. And most of the women, they, they lost the hope, which is the biggest thing. And so it changed for worse.
Marcus: Sarah, the thing that struck me about Meena was that her story is very emblematic of a lot of the experience that I've heard in Afghanistan that, like, most of them were used to these freedoms, right?
Meena: Some of girls, when they were biking on the roads of Kabul and I was like, oh really? They are doing this, in this community, and these people around? I did not have that much courage
Marcus: They would walk outside on their own, they would take buses on their own, they would be in the public sphere, basically. That's been normalized. And I think the thing that struck me about Meena was that she said that one day on her way somewhere, on foot, she'd run across a stranger who basically warned her to not go to work and warned her not to take this path.
Meena: I did not take it seriously and I just moved on. After a few days in the same spot, that person came to me again and told me, um, “I told you it's not suitable for you.” I should not do this job anymore.
Sarah: That was when she was still working as a journalist. That was something that stuck in the back of her mind after all of this was going down a year ago as well. She's 30 years old, so she’s old enough to have seen what life was like with the Taliban previously, and then to grow up in a world where she could have this education that she says she prizes so much.
Meena: It was like a dream. And at that time I was pregnant with a daughter. I didn't want her to be in this country, to the Taliban because I experienced it myself when I was child. And when I grew up, I knew, and education is very important for me, especially for girls. I'm so, so grateful that I’m – I can read a book.
Sarah: And then now sees it crumble one more time. And I think that's a really interesting perspective, but unfortunately not unique because there are so many women who are 30 years old, who grew up in Afghanistan, who could probably relate to that.
Meena: We try to be happy here, but…
Sarah in interview: …But your heart is over there?
Meena: Yeah. I'm not only thinking about my family, the entire generation is in a bad situation.
Gustavo: Another woman that you talked to, Sarah, was Seema. What's Seema’s story?
Sarah: Yes. Seema Rezai, she's 19 years old and she is a boxer.
Seema: I was not interested about education, I just was about, uh, to do only boxing. Our gym was really good gym. It was a perfect gym for training. I had lots of partners, they were male, but I was relaxed with them….
Sarah: She was a member of the national boxing team. And her story is obviously one of a young woman who did not ever know a Taliban rule.
Seema: I have lots of male friends in Afghanistan. We went hiking every Friday. I miss my hiking. We went to restaurants every weekend with my friends. I miss it a lot, you know, it's really hard for me. In Afghanistan it was really good life for me.
Sarah: Although she mentioned it was never necessarily easy for her to go out as a young woman and go to the gym and train alongside men without people giving her looks or her feeling like she's judged.
Seema: I started training with my coach and then, uh, Taliban came inside our gym, because people told them that here is a girl that’s training inside the gym. They talked with me, they talked with my coach, you know, they took all of my information, my name, everything. They said, where do you live at? I was afraid, and I gave them all of my information. And the next day they came to our home. They knocked on the door, they talked with my dad and everything. And they said, you should not let your girls go to gym anymore.
Sarah: For her to have that stripped, to have it ripped away from her, was very traumatic.
Seema: And that time I was broken and I was like to kill myself, but then I said, I need to control myself. And then, I, I just locked myself in my room and every night cry, and I was so sad, and it was hard for me to accept that situation.
Sarah: When Seema moved to America, she sort of had to support her parents and her siblings for the first time. When they moved to Washington state in the Seattle area, she had to find a job. I think she first worked at a Macy's and I think she said she worked at a shoe store before finally getting this job at a hotel in Seattle.
Sarah in interview: And which neighborhood do you and your family live in? How do you like it there?
Seema: You know, I, I really don't like that area because it's really far from my friend, from my gym. But for now, uh, we are good there. And then when I buy a car, it's going to be easier.
Sarah: When she’s not working, she’s still training at the gym in pursuit of her goal of joining the Olympic Refugee Team as a boxer in 2024. It’s a position she said she hopes will put Afghan women, and their struggles, in the spotlight.
Seema: I wish I could help them to get out from Afghanistan, but I know that I cannot do anything unless I can do my boxing – so when I, uh, when I can be a champion, so then world can listen to me. And then this is the time that I can help them.
Gustavo: More after the break.
Gustavo: One of the most impacted groups of Afghan refugees were those who worked with the United States military. Marcus, the people who you were able to keep in touch with from that group, what are their stories right now?
Marcus: It's a very, in a way, like multi-layered story. Not only are they soldiers who served alongside our troops, you know, they protected our troops, they guided our troops. These sort of folks that translated for us, you know, facilitated cultural understanding.
Safi: And I used to wonder, how would they look at me? Like this person, the terrorists took over their land and all of a sudden, you know, they flee and now they're here. And would they ever know that, you know, I had a life, I had my own experiences?
Marcus: So in the process of our reporting, I had met Shir Agha Safi in Des Moines, Iowa.
Marcus: He's a very unassuming man, and when I met him, he was helping volunteers in Iowa translate for refugees, basically. And upon learning his story, I invited him out to lunch and I heard this amazing tale. He was once a commander in Helmand province, you know, led a couple hundred men, and basically had a kill rate of over 90 Taliban per day in his entire group of men.
Gustavo: Wow.
Safi: I believe that we have a fighting chance. We've given 175,000 soldiers, you know, have, they've given their lives to, to protect the land, right? No matter how much, you know, corrupt the system was, there were people with solid commitment to the country.
Marcus: So he's basically a very wanted man by the Taliban. And he is, in a sense, a very effective soldier. They were conducting anti-terrorism missions every day alongside U.S. troops. He commanded a unit that flew drones for reconnaissance and all that. And for a man this intelligent and for a man this capable and gifted, he's now in Des Moines and can't find a job.
Safi: When I was in Afghanistan, I had groups of friends, They used to smoke hash and we used to just chat nonsense, and s—, and the days would pass by and I would have a good laugh and I was ready for the next day. In Afghanistan, it didn't cost money to be happy. In here, it does.
Marcus: And the reason why he went to Des Moines in the first place was because he was so traumatized by the war that he wanted to go as far away as possible from everybody else, far away from the coastal cities. And when he got there, he was alone for a few days in his thoughts.
Safi: I wanted to flee from Afghanistan. The help came from people that I didn't know. So there is goodness in the world.
Marcus: And then soon enough, like, Afghan refugees started pouring in. And the thing that struck me about him was that he told me that within the first couple days of their arrival, one of them tried crossing the road and didn't know how to cross the road properly. And he was hit by a car and died. And he realized then that if he didn't do anything to help, you know, his fellow Afghans, that more people would die crossing the road, or get lost in the system. So he eventually started to lead again.
Safi: Cause if it's not the community that helps each other and, you know, tries to be there for one another, it's going to be very tough.
Marcus: He created a nonprofit in Des Moines that serves to train Afghans to help Afghans. So they need to identify Afghans who speak English and recruit them to help other Afghans to navigate this new world.
Gustavo: Finally, Sarah and Marcus, this country always goes hot and cold when it comes to refugees. There was definitely a chill under the Trump administration, and Joe Biden vowed to reverse that. But for the Afghans that the both of you talk to who are now in this country, do they feel welcome here in the United States?
Sarah: I would say that the folks that I've talked to, at least, they feel welcome. The question is not a sense of whether or not folks have been nice once they have arrived. It's more a question of organization, of proper function, of feeling as if the process is in place to ensure that they can properly begin and adjust to their lives in the U.S. It is a question of whether or not the system is so overwhelmed that people are just not being met the way that they need to be.
Gustavo: Marcus, from the Afghans that you talked to, do they still think of the United States as a place of opportunity?
Marcus: There's a slight growing resentment in the conversations that I've had with Afghans, not so much for America, but for the process itself, as Sarah has said. Shir Agha Safi basically expressed that, the fact that Afghans felt abandoned when America withdrew and upon arriving here, they once again feel abandoned.
Safi: The system that's in place is in shambles. The people that are working in these resettlement agency, some of them might have the best intentions, but other are, um, you know, incompetent, if not lazy.
Marcus: And I feel like for the folks in all these different categories, from SIVs to asylum seekers, it seems like this convoluted process is stacked up against them, basically. They can't find jobs. They can't find housing in the middle of a housing crisis. They can't pay for attorneys. They can't get a uniform response from all the resettlement agencies. And every state has different kinds of resources, different kinds of laws. Some of them don't even know how to pay parking tickets.
Sarah: I will say this: From a lot of the women that we spoke with, both in Seattle and in California, there is a sense of feeling welcome in America to walk down the street on their own and not be judged by people for doing that in the sense that they are afforded certain rights that their counterparts currently in Afghanistan are not being afforded.
Gustavo: Sarah, Marcus, thank you so much for this conversation.
Marcus: Thank you so much.
Sarah: Thank you.
Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of The Times, essential news from the L.A. Times. Denise Guerra was a jefa on this episode and Mike Heflin mixed and mastered it. Our show is produced by Shannon Lin, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistant is Madalyn Amato. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.