From chaos to contradictory positions, Afghan resettlements have never been “dignified”

As Afghanistan barrels towards the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, Western governments are vowing to return thousands of Afghans back to their now Taliban-run homeland – even though not one of them recognises the Islamic Emirate as a legitimate government.

The most alarming reports came from the United States, which launched a 20-year occupation of the country in 2001. The Trump administration is reportedly considering a plan to send 1,100 Afghans from a resettlement camp in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo if they don’t agree to return to Afghanistan. In a rare move, the Islamic Emirate responded directly to those reports, saying Afghans are free to return to “the shared homeland of all Afghans” with “full confidence and peace of mind”.

The 25 April statement goes on to say that if any of those Afghans still wish to head to a third country they will be afforded the possibility to do so through “legal and dignified channels” from inside the country. However, as someone who has tracked and witnessed that process since 2021, I would say the Islamic Emirate is being far too generous with its reading of how resettlement programmes are conducted.

Whether it’s people lining up along the roundabout in front of the street that leads to most foreign embassies, young men clinging to the wheels of the final US military planes as they take off from Kabul International, or tens of thousands of people risking deportation while waiting for visas in Pakistan, nothing about the post-occupation resettlement process has been dignified.

Despite all the talk of Afghan “allies” and concern for groups who may be in “danger,” these resettlement processes remain opaque to this day – not to mention potentially humiliating tests of endurance for those corralled into them.

Sensationalised escapes

After former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the Taliban walked into Kabul on 15 August 2021, the international media landscape was awash with dramatic reports about the “desperation” of Afghans who were on “brutal” journeys while attempting to “escape” Taliban-run Afghanistan – many “with just a suitcase” in hand, as the breathless headlines read. It was all sensation, no nuance: sob stories meant to elicit emotion among Western populaces that seemed less attuned to their governments’ own fervent and violent anti-refugee and anti-Muslim policies.

At the time, the cast of characters was clear: the scared Afghans hiding in the shadows, the turbaned “terrorist” Talibs marching into the halls of power, and the generous Western countries valiantly offering to take in the Afghan masses. Countries who were frantically pulling embassy staff from Kabul as the former Western-backed Islamic Republic lost more and more territory were also making emphatic promises to offer visas to Afghans they felt would be put at risk by the Taliban’s return to power.

What the media reports seemed to overlook was how the slapdash but well-publicised promises of countries who were active participants of the US-led occupation (including those accused of potential war crimes) fuelled the “chaos in Kabul”.

A generation of Afghans who were told that neoliberal democracy would lead them to freedom and advancement suddenly felt the chance to walk along the Champs-Élysées, throw coins in the Trevi Fountain, or stand outside Buckingham Palace was very much within reach. But those vague offers were never followed up with clear instructions, specific websites, or direct phone numbers.

Absent any concrete information, crowds of people were made to wander listlessly along the streets of the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood of Kabul looking for the Italian, British, or French embassies, not realising they were well hidden by massive concrete security walls and numerous armed checkpoints.

A combination of pro-occupation propaganda and the clearly documented fact that the Taliban was consistently responsible for the greatest number of civilian casualties throughout the 20-year war led tens of thousands of people to rush to the airport. The road leading to the north gate of the Kabul airport was transformed into a shanty town where they had to camp out for weeks – made to wait on dusty roads in summer heat as Taliban and highly feared CIA-backed Afghan intelligence forces fired into the air.

People clung to everything from printouts of US visas they found on Google, to copies of various awards and certificates allegedly given to them by NATO countries, to even electricity bills and prescription forms in the hope of gaining the attention of foreign troops stationed high atop giant concrete walls. As the 31 August US withdrawal approached, the CIA-backed intelligence forces were accused of taking bribes in order to let people inside the airport compound.

Then, on 26 August, an Islamic State-led suicide bombing killed at least 175 people, including dozens who were hoping to make their way out of the country.

Chaos endures five years on

This was all in the turmoil of fast-moving events, but the situation isn’t much better today.

Many of those same countries who were quick to promise visas are either already working with the Islamic Emirate to facilitate returns – as Germany has done – or actively looking for ways to cooperate on future returns. Austria says it will use Uzbekistan as a go-between. The European Union intends to invite officials from a government it does not recognise to Brussels. The UK’s defence ministry, meanwhile, has told nearly 9,000 Afghans still trying to get to Britain that they will not assist them in their attempts to get to a third country.

Without outside assistance, however, even getting to neighbouring countries is nearly impossible.

Pakistani and Turkish visas currently cost anywhere from hundreds to well above a thousand dollars. The UAE and India, despite their close ties to the Islamic Emirate government, do not currently grant visas to Afghan passport holders. Iran is in the midst of a US-Israeli imposed war. Flights to Qatar, which does currently offer visas to Afghan citizens, cost between two and three hundred dollars each, a prohibitively high sum in a country where the unemployment rate hovers around 13%.

In the United States, the Trump administration’s suspension of visa processing for Afghans after the shooting of a National Guard officer by a former member of the CIA-backed Afghan intelligence forces last November has left thousands of Afghans susceptible to violent ICE raids.

NGO and refugee sources tell me that the fear of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers has become so bad that many now live in hiding in the United States.

“So many have stopped posting on social media outright,” one NGO source who works with Afghans on the US East Coast said, adding that those living in the state of Virginia will not even make the 30-minute journey into Washington DC. “They say if you go into DC you are at greater risk,” she said. ICE agents have been arresting suspected undocumented immigrants at DC police stations since 2025 when they were first dispatched to the nation’s capital.

An Afghan refugee studying in New York City said the fear really took hold after Trump rescinded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghan nationals in July 2025.

“Even my friends with green cards are freaking out,” the well-known photographer and social media influencer said.

Contradictory positions

These governments that are willing to send Afghans back to a country whose leadership they do not recognise are using the existence of that same Islamic Emirate to maintain banking restrictions that turn foreign investment into a potential sanctions risk, and to deny funds for development projects that would improve infrastructure and provide much-needed civilian jobs.

The Islamic Emirate sees this policy as a cruel irony. “Many of these people are leaving because of the dire economic situation,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told me recently.

Though the World Bank says the Afghan economy grew by 4.8% last year, there has been a nearly 6% decline in GDP per capita amid the US-Israel war on Iran and an 11% increase in population due to ongoing deportations from Iran and Pakistan.

As a representative of the Islamic Emirate government, Balkhi is not likely to admit that a high number of Afghans are leaving due to rights abuses, limitations on press freedom, or restrictions on social life (especially for women and girls), but it is undeniable that the economic situation is clearly a driver of outward migration, particularly to neighbouring countries.

Therefore, Balkhi says foreign governments, including those who were part of the occupation, should be working with the Islamic Emirate to improve the daily life of Afghans not just on sending them back: “Reconstruction, return, and reintegration is now a shared responsibility – not just a burden on Afghanistan,” he told me.

Trump’s DRC proposal has led to an outcry from some US politicians, who say it would force Afghans to make a “cruel and immoral” choice, and from activists, who say potentially sending Afghans, including those who presumably worked for foreign occupying forces, to another war-torn country would be “a failure of policy and of principle”.

The truth is that it’s just the final step in an endless waiting process meant to tire out Afghans – one that began with his predecessor.

In 2023, the Biden administration told thousands of Afghans who spent years in resettlement camps in Abu Dhabi and Doha, where they endured “detention-like” conditions, that they could travel onward to Kosovo for further vetting or repatriate back to Afghanistan.

It’s not just Washington, though.

In the winter of 2021, I attended a gathering of EU immigration officials in Athens where the possibility of Afghan deportations was first raised. In 2023, at a similar gathering in Malta, Finnish officials confirmed to me that they would be willing to resume deportations if the EU agreed.

As the Taliban looks set to extend its length of rule past its 1996-2001 iteration, one thing is abundantly clear: All the talk by Western countries of Afghan “allies” and “vulnerable at-risk” populations is all just words; words that lack any real conviction.