Left in limbo, Afghans who served with U.S. forces fear Trump could send them back to the Taliban

On a former U.S. military base in Qatar, Afghans who supported the United States in its 20-year war against the Taliban have been left in limbo, living in windowless shipping containers far from the new lives they were once promised in the U.S. Now the Trump administration is presenting them with a stark choice: Move to an unspecified third country or return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where they likely face persecution, imprisonment or death. Camp As Sayliyah, located outside Doha, hosts more than 1,100 Afghan men, women and children, most of whom have been approved for U.S. resettlement after extensive vetting. Instead, the State Department says everyone will be removed from the camp by March 31, making it the latest casualty in the Trump administration’s efforts to block virtually all paths to the U.S. for Afghan allies.

The camp is the only Afghan refugee site run directly by the U.S. government, with its residents among thousands of people stranded across Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere since Trump returned to office and halted all refugee resettlement. Days before the State Department’s self-imposed deadline, they have been given almost no information about what will happen to them next. The people at Camp As Sayliyah include former members of the Afghan special forces, interpreters and others who worked with the U.S. military, and relatives of U.S. service members and veterans.

Their situation has become even more urgent with the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, as the camp is rattled by Tehran’s retaliatory missile strikes on a nearby U.S. air base. Afghanistan is also engaged in its own deadly conflict with Pakistan, with Pakistani airstrikes killing civilians in Kabul and elsewhere. Mohammad, a U.S. Army veteran whose family has been at the camp for a year and a half, said they were offered between $1,000 and $4,500 per person to return to Afghanistan, where they spent three years in hiding after the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in 2021.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a million dollars,” said Mohammad, who declined to be identified by his full name out of concern for his family’s safety.

“How am I going to trade my dad’s life or my brother’s or my sister’s life for, I don’t know, a billion dollars?” A State Department spokesperson said Camp As Sayliyah is “a legacy of the Biden administration’s attempt to move as many Afghans to America as possible — in many cases, without proper vetting.” While the Trump administration has no plans to send anyone back to Afghanistan, the spokesperson said, “it is not appropriate or humane to keep this group of individuals on the platform indefinitely.”

Moving the camp population to a third country represents “a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan,” the spokesperson said. Mohammad, who was gravely wounded in Afghanistan as a combat interpreter for the U.S. military and enlisted in the Army after moving to Texas, said he felt “betrayed — not by my fellow battle buddies, but by the administration.” While he remains proud of his service, his parents and siblings were targeted in Afghanistan because of it, and later evacuated to Qatar by the U.S. government.

He says America has a duty to protect his relatives, instead of “handing my family over to the Taliban.” ” 'What are they going to do with us?' Camp As Sayliyah was the “flagship relocation camp” for people fleeing Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, said Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based advocacy group AfghanEvac. It was a place where they could safely wait as final preparations were made for their U.S. resettlement, he added, and a symbol of the promise America made to Afghans who risked their lives in the conflict.

Now, it is little more than a “prison camp,” said VanDiver, who has visited the site multiple times. Residents are not allowed to leave the camp, where they live in windowless shipping containers designed for temporary lodging. While moving the Afghan refugees to third countries may address immediate safety concerns amid the Iran war, it “cannot be the final step,” AfghanEvac said in a statement.

Staying long term in a third country is not a good option, VanDiver said, with no guarantee that those countries wouldn’t just send people back to Afghanistan.

“It’s untenable for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it’s the wrong thing to do,” he said. The Trump administration has not publicly confirmed any third countries that have agreed to accept people from the camp, and denies that Afghan allies face being repatriated against their will.

“Some have gone of their own volition, but we are not forcing anybody,” Assistant Secretary of State S. Paul Kapur told lawmakers at a congressional hearing last month.

He said he believed about 150 Afghans had accepted the payments, and that he did not know what had happened to them. Those still at the camp struggle to fill their time, resting in the middle of the day to avoid the desert heat, and roaming streets that are named after U.S. states to help them learn about what was supposed to be their new home. Schooling is limited, especially for older students.

Twice in the past year, Iranian strikes have hit nearby in Qatar — once last June in retaliation for U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and again during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran that began Feb. 28. The camp offers poor protection against the strikes, said VanDiver, whose group received multiple recordings from “terrified” residents of missiles being intercepted over their heads. The arrival of Afghan allies to the U.S. had already slowed to a crawl as the Trump administration reshaped the U.S. immigration system.

But their hopes were further dashed in November when a shooting in Washington killed one National Guard member and seriously injured another. The suspect, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, is an Afghan national who served alongside U.S. troops as part of an elite CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan. Lakanwal, who pleaded not guilty to nine federal charges last month, was granted asylum by the Trump administration last year after arriving in the U.S. during the Biden administration.

The Trump administration imposed harsher restrictions for Afghans after the attack, halting asylum decisions, suspending visa issuance for all Afghan nationals, and moving to detain refugees already in the country. Afghans at Camp As Sayliyah condemned the attack, but say it was the act of one individual.

“We want to ask the American government not to link the crime of a single Afghan to all Afghans,” said a woman surnamed Salimi, a lawyer who has been at the camp with her husband and two sons, ages 2 and 4, for more than a year. Salimi, who asked to be identified only by her last name because of security concerns, was approved for U.S. resettlement because her legal work put her at risk of persecution by the Taliban. She had her own legal office, mostly representing women “who were poor, who were physically abused, who were pursuing divorce.”

Many of her clients’ husbands were members of the Taliban, some of whom were imprisoned for physical abuse or other crimes, she said.