by Khadija Haidary and Atia FarAzar (pseudonym) for Zan Times

Maryam had her younger sister’s bag packed a week before she was supposed to leave for a new life in the United States. She told Zainab that, once there, she must strive to achieve her dreams. 

For Zainab, life in the United States represented a new start. She’d been accepted into the College of Arts at Kabul University before the Taliban assumed power in 2021. But she’d taken part in a one-year internship program in the U.S. Embassy, which made her eligible for a P-2 refugee case in the United States. Maryam, who had worked for four years at the Afghan-American University in Afghanistan, then also succeeded in applying for asylum. 

“My father passed away six years ago. After that, I became the head of the family, but with the arrival of the Taliban, I lost my job, and we were forced to sell everything — including our car and household belongings — and move to Pakistan,” Maryam said.

When the immigration files for both sisters were accepted by the U.S. government, they travelled to Pakistan with their mother and three brothers to proceed with the next steps in the process. 

They’ve been in Pakistan for three years, waiting to complete the elaborate process to confirm their visas. In January 2025, 30-year-old Maryam received news that her immigration file had reached its final stage and that her flight would soon be scheduled. Zainab was due to travel to the United States on February 5. 

But after Donald Trump became president of the United States on January 20, he issued an executive order suspending the U.S. refugee assistance program. As part of that freeze, the administration cancelled the flights of 1,600 Afghans to the United States.

In particular, the executive order affects those with P-1, P-2, and P-3 category refugee claims. P-1 cases — representing “priority one” claims — include individuals with “compelling protection needs” referred by embassies, NGOs, or the UN refugee agency. P-2 cases include those whom the U.S. State Department identifies as persons in specific at-risk groups, while P-3 cases cover those awaiting family reunification
in the United States. 

Afghan-Evac, an organization that works to transfer Afghans to the United States, confirmed that the P-1 and P-2 refugee cases for Afghans have been halted. On January 23, it wrote on X, “This is disappointing to us and to so many of our allies, but we’re going to keep pushing.”

No
one from the U.S. government informed Zainab that her flight had been cancelled. “No one is responding to our repeated calls. We send emails and receive no reply,” Maryam told Zan Times on February 6. “The IOM [International Organization for Migration] office is in a location where, unless you have an appointment in advance, they won’t allow you in.”

When Maryam learned that she and her sister would not be travelling to America, she felt suffocated: “I felt short of breath. I was gasping, my hands were sweating, and I became weak.” It was a feeling she hadn’t had since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Now, the symptoms were back. “I visited the doctor five times; no one understood my pain.
I am suffering, I can’t sleep at night, and I am terribly scared,” she said.

For now, the sisters and their family are living in a one-room house, not knowing whether their flights to the United States will ever be rescheduled. Their Pakistani visas have expired. Given that Pakistan is in the midst of a massive deportation effort focused on Afghan migrants and refugees, they know that the police might arrest them and send them back to Afghanistan at any moment. 

“In Afghanistan, there is no home or place left for us, and here we have no peace,” Maryam said. “We have come to a remote village near Islamabad to hide from the police. Truly, this sense of hopelessness has overwhelmed us.”

Maryam and Zainab are among many Afghan women whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by decisions made by the new Trump administration. 

In March 2022, Rahila arrived in Pakistan after obtaining a Pakistani visa. Like Zainab, she was scheduled to fly on February 5 from Islamabad
Airport to the United States. Her destination was Seattle, Washington. To fund the journey, Rahila sold her new bike and sewing machine.

Like other migrants, Rahila learned about the cancellation of her flight through social media. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and worked for five years with USAID projects and various offices in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover. “When I found out, I was stunned. I went into shock,” she tells Zan Times. “I was out of it for a week. I felt that all doors had been closed to me.”

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, Afghan women have been suffering under a system human rights groups describe as « gender apartheid ». Photo: VOA. Public domain.

By now, Rahila has exhausted her savings and her “family visit” visa to Pakistan has long since expired. As an illegal migrant, she lives with three other women and scrounges for work as a tailor and a weaver. Her unemployed parents and two sisters live in Afghanistan while her 21-year-old brother dropped out of school and moved to Iran for work. 

Rahila wanted to bring her family to the United States but, as a single P-2 refugee applicant, she wasn’t allowed to include older relatives. She sees no future for herself in Afghanistan and hopes never to return to her homeland. Afghanistan is a
country where she has neither the right to work, nor the right to education, nor the right to a normal life.

The impact of Trump’s decisions is widening. A February 19 Reuters report revealed that the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts has been ordered to prepare for closure in April. This shutdown will prevent an estimated 200,000 Afghans in countries like Pakistan, Albania and Qatar, from
being able to travel to the United States.

According to more than ten Afghan migrants in Pakistan who talked to Zan Times, the situation is extremely grim. Obtaining a legal tourist visa — which is valid for six months and costs up to US$1,200 — is out of reach for many who are already struggling with daily expenses. To avoid being caught in Pakistani police deportation sweeps, some Afghans, particularly women whose lives were at risk in Afghanistan, have moved to remote areas to hide. 

Desperation and terror are common. In November 2021, Saideh, her husband, and his entire family arrived in
Pakistan. After working in collaboration with the Americans for 15 years, her husband had received a P-2 refugee claim to bring his entire family, including his married children, to the United States. 

“We sold our household items, gold and jewelry, our caravan, everything,” Saideh explains. That money got them to Pakistan a few months ahead of their trip to the United States. She and eight family members were due to fly to California on February 13. 

Those plans are now in limbo. Saideh hasn’t received any communication from the IOM or the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“Without a visa, we were stuck. We believed we were truly heading to America, where these hardships would be made up for,” she says. Now, she is one of 14 people from three families crowded into a two-bedroom apartment in Pakistan. When they can, they beg neighbours or acquaintances for a place to sleep, if only for a night. 

For 31‐year‐old Saideh, who holds a bachelor’s degree in law and once managed a ministry before the fall of the republic, life is almost too difficult to contemplate: “We never thought it would take this long or that we would have to endure so much hardship. Now, with another three months of suspension looming, we do not know what will become of our cases.” 

– Khadija Haidary and Atia FarAzar (pen name) are Zan Times journalists.

Zan Times is a women-led investigative newsroom that covers human rights violations in Afghanistan with a focus on women and the LGBTQI+ community. They are currently running a campaign to fund their journalism. You can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/g6swq 

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