“They will describe us as spies”: the abandoned Afghan students by America

When she finds it difficult to focus, NILB has ridiculed her concerns about paper vouchers and predicts her wall, a strategy she took at a symposium on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.

It indicates a mental note to deal with issues at a specific time and then returns to the study. I kept a sane when The US -backed Afghan government was overthrown in 2021When the Taliban made it illegal for women to obtain education and when she left in July 2023 to study on the campus in Qatar.

Now, in the bedroom in NILAB in Doha, small notes accumulate. The Trump administration’s closure of external aid and entry to refugees has left her to be forced to return to Afghanistan.

There, it will be alone and depriving any rights as a woman. Her teaching on the American -based American way will be of all value.

She imagines the worst. “How can girls return to Afghanistan?” Nilp, 30, who asked to use her first name only to protect her identity. “What will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death.”

On January 20, just as Nilp was planning her final project to obtain her testimony in cybersecurity, President Trump signed an executive order. Refugee resettlement suspension. The US government promised to put refugees to her and her classmates, but Nilp’s hopes of joining her family, who received asylum in the United States after the Taliban took over.

A month later, her university lost most of her financing when Mr. Trump dismantling US foreign aid programs, to re -spend in line with the administration’s foreign policy objectives. Funding was partially recovered on March 16, the university administration said, but only enough to work in June. If the university closes, students will lose their housing, cafeteria meal plans and Qatari students’ visas.

The third thunderbolt came on March 15, with the word that Mr. Trump was thinking about putting Afghanistan on a existing One of the countries whose citizens will be prevented from entering the United States. Nilp does not know when to see her family again, and much less than resettlement with them.

While she and other Afghan students find their lives in chaos, they are arrested between the infinite possibilities that university education and the overwhelming feeling that there are no doors to open it.

She said, “I thought this long journey had ended.” “I was wrong.”

As mid -time approaches, Nilp has a little time for her fears. It has a presentation on the streams and algorithms scheduled soon.

So she writes her fears and predicts her to her advertising board.

America’s piece

The American University was founded in Afghanistan in 2006 as a joint college of liberal arts, with an English education. It is designed to educate the next generation of Afghan and innovative leaders, saturated with western ideals of justice, freedom and democracy. Students called the Little America.

The US government has invested more than $ 100 million at the university, until last month, covering the financing of the United States for International Development, or the United States for International Development, covered more than half of the operating costs.

(The agency also provided a scholarship for more than 100 Afghan women – including Nagy’s sister – to study at universities in Amman and Qatar, including the American University, and these students face a similar freezing of the budget.)

When the US military withdrew in a hurry from the country in August 2021 and the Taliban returned to power, the American University was a clear goal. The gunmen wandered through his buildings, slipping on the walls that mocked the students as “the spies of infidels trained in the United States” and “Wolves in the skin of sheep”.

Officials worked to remove more than 1,000 students from the country as soon as possible. Nearly 700 were evacuated to sister universities in Iraq, Kazakhstan and the United States.

The Qatar government agreed to Host A temporary university campus in exile. One hundred students arrived for the semester that begins in August 2022, and 100 others – the Naval Group fell – a year later.

Most students eventually left the United States with visas of the so -called first states. When Mr. Trump took office in January, the remaining 35 were waiting for final interviews and medical examinations before launching. Some have already had aircraft tickets.

They are now wandering in the empty halls of their temporary campus in a surprising astonishment, who do not know what will happen next.

“We thought that all our shocks were finally approaching, so we can start breathing again,” said Waheeda Babakarkhail, 23, a programmer who dreamed of as a White infiltrator of the Camel.

She said, “I accepted that I couldn’t stay in Afghanistan, but so far in the future I thought I was wasted.”

The aspirations have come out through the campus. Abbas Ahmedzai, 24, a business leader, had a job in New York Event Management. Bezl Popalzai, 23, hoped to have a job in Microsoft. It has developed a computer program with AI that can identify potential fraudulent financial transactions. The app, called Hawks.ai, won the Microsoft Hackathon Award last year in Doha.

It is logical that the United States will close its doors.

“Trump complains that the Americans have left valuable military equipment when they left Afghanistan,” said Mr. Bubalzai. “Well, he is about to leave another valuable investment behind: our minds, which it pays for by the American people.”

Dread

If the university is forced to close in June, students face an anxious possibility.

They will lose their student visas and their right to stay in Qatar within weeks. If they cannot find Qatar’s employer to take care of them, or get a job or scholarship in another country, they will have to return to Afghanistan.

They are very aware that “the way we learned is a contradiction with everything that the Taliban represents.” “We learned to speak freely, to be independent. No one in the Taliban government wants it.”

University officials say that there have been no documented persecution of its graduates since the Taliban acquired. But students are afraid to be seen as a threat.

“If we go back, they will classify us as spies, they are sent to the Afghans against the Taliban with our American ideology,” said Mr. Popalzai.

For students, the risks are clear. The Taliban has Prohibited education For women and girls after the sixth grade and banned women of most forms of employment. They cannot travel without a male relative, asking them to cover their faces outside the home, and their voices should not be heard in public places.

“Maybe we will not be killed if we go back,” said Rawena Amiri, 24, a businessman who dreams of becoming a professional volleyball player.

“Does this mean that we should accept the violation of our rights?” She added. “We have the right to learn, contribute, and work. Do people in the United States expect to abandon these rights because the Americans promised us a visa, then they changed their opinion?”

Nilp is still forgetting in the American visa process. On Tuesday, the American Court of Appeal Committee Ruling The Trump administration should recognize thousands of people gave the position of the refugee before January 20, which can include many university students. But the ruling is first and it can be reversed.

What really gave Nilp to the episode is the possibility of inserting Afghans in the travel ban.

She has not seen her parents and her young siblings since they moved to northern Virginia. They gave asylum because her parents worked in the United States government in Afghanistan. But because she was adult, she was not eligible to join them.

Nilp is trying to adhere to hope, and to rely on the confrontation skills that she picked up as a new student four years ago. She applies for scholarships in Europe even while studying her exams.

She said: “The Qur’an says that when a door is closed, another opens.” “But if you are not cut, the doors will not open.”