Roya was the face of the modern young Afghan woman. As leader of
a girls’ club funded by the
US government, she gave her troops a script for
their lives that their mothers could not pursue: They were just as powerful as
boys in their ability to change their communities, she taught them. Working for
another small nonprofit, she helped build connections between American and
Afghan girls.
اضافة اعلان
“I taught them that no one could silence us or tell us something
wasn’t possible just because we were girls,” she said.
After Afghanistan’s government fell to Taliban insurgents, Roya
and some of those she worked with knew they could be targeted. But without
direct ties to the US military, they had no hope of boarding a government
evacuation flight out of Kabul. Instead, their nongovernment organization
partners in the United States engineered a harrowing escape for Roya and some
of her friends and family to neighboring Pakistan.
“The Taliban were searching for people who had worked with
foreigners, and they were capturing them,” Roya, 20, said. “I had to save my
life, and my family’s life.”
Among vulnerable Afghans left behind after the US withdrawal
last month were thousands of people who worked for small nonprofits, many
funded by the State Department or agencies like the US Agency for International
Development to promote women’s rights, education and civic engagement. With
many of their employees just as threatened as those employed directly by the US
government, these cash-strapped organizations have had to find their own ways
to get people out.
Thousands of miles from Afghanistan, using their phones and
laptops, American NGO leaders have been scrambling to raise money, secure
documents, find lawyers and arrange travel for staff members and their
families. They are also helping evacuate women whose jobs have landed them on
the Taliban’s list of potential targets, including some women who trained
Afghan policewomen, lawyers and politicians.
“It’s like an underground railroad,” said Stephanie Sinclair, a
photojournalist who founded Too Young to Wed in 2014 to empower girls and end
child marriage. She orchestrated safe passage for 45 people last week from
Afghanistan to Pakistan, where they were waiting for transfer to Albania, a way
station for those hoping to resettle in the United States, Canada or another
country.
Among them was a lawyer who had prosecuted cases of spousal and
child abuse, a girls’ rights advocate who had received death threats and a
woman who had served in the gender unit of the national election commission.
“Small, grassroots NGOs are the ones moving mountains and doing
the heavy lifting to get people to safety,” Sinclair said from New York.
For help, Roya and her colleagues turned to Ben Schumaker, who
had employed them in Kabul for the art nonprofit he runs out of his garage in
Madison, Wisconsin.
“Our group is trying to fulfill the promise made by our
government to bring them to America,” he said.
With others from his organization, the Memory Project, Schumaker
arranged furtive transport for Roya and the others to a safe house in the
Pakistani capital of Islamabad. All told, he arranged for 27 people connected
to nonprofit groups to escape.
Several leaders of these groups said that the Biden
administration raised false hopes when it announced in early August that it
would expand access to the U.S. refugee program for their Afghan employees who
did not qualify for the special immigrant visas being offered to people, such
as interpreters, who had worked for the military. These workers could apply for
a new “Priority 2” designation, the State Department said.
“They were rejoicing that they would get on a plane to the
U.S.,” Schumaker recalled. “The reality was, they were never close to being
eligible for an evacuation flight. It was an empty promise.”
To even apply for the program, applicants had to be outside
Afghanistan, they were told later, and they would have to wait at least a year
for U.S. authorities to review their cases.
“The program was a huge red herring; a PR stunt,” said Marina
LeGree, founder of Ascend, a mountaineering program that aims to develop the
physical and mental strength of teenage girls and young women through athletic
activities and community service, like mentoring orphans and teaching
illiterate women to read. The administration has acknowledged that resettling
can be a lengthy process.
Ascend managed to place eight women instructors who were
featured prominently on the group’s website, along with some family members, on
an evacuation flight to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Aug. 22. They
accomplished it with help from a U.S. military special forces veteran whose
sister is a rock climber. Two of the families have been accepted by Denmark;
four others by Germany. Two others hope to make it to the United States.
LeGree then expanded her effort to others at risk, like the
organization’s driver and guards, as well as athletes, many of whom are members
of the Hazara minority.
The mother of small children, LeGree has been up at all hours,
she said, calling every personal and professional contact she had ever made,
and banking on the goodwill that people have felt for the mission of her
organization.
Sixty-eight people have been evacuated thus far. Eighteen
arrived Wednesday in Chile, which offered them permanent residency. Ireland has
said that it will accept 20 girls, and Ascend is hoping that Poland and New
Zealand will take others.
“By hook and crook, we are getting people out,” she said.
The Taliban has not banned nongovernmental organizations from
working in Afghanistan, and most groups are hoping to remain there even after
removing staff members who felt their work to advance gender equality would be
banned under the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam, which frowns on public
roles for women.
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