Hi Everyone, Sorry for the long delay in writing an update. I remain very involved with helping the Kamran family and other US military interpreters in hiding, along with my full time “day job.” The seemingly endless needs for help with visa applications and humanitarian assistance are overwhelming for the volunteers still helping Afghans.
Here are some updates Muhammad Kamran and his family, the 501(c)3 organization that I am co-founder/VP for (Kurdish Alliance of North America/KANA), as well as the general situation in Afghanistan.
Kamran family:
As many of you know, we filed another Humanitarian Parole case for Muhammad and his family last fall. Humanitarian Parole was originally created to help US allies after the Vietnam war and (theoretically) allows Americans to sponsor a foreign national in imminent danger to come to the US. Under the Trump Admin, most Humanitarian Parole cases were denied, especially for individuals who would likely apply for asylum after coming to the US.
After the collapse of Afghanistan, the Biden Admin promoted Humanitarian Parole to Afghans and claimed that all cases for Afghans would be expedited. We filed cases for the Kamran family in early September when the Biden Admin claimed they were giving special treatment to Afghans for Humanitarian Parole. Then they got 40,000 applications in a few weeks (normally they get 2k per year) and then quietly changed the policies to make it even harder for Afghans to get approved for HP. After 9 months of waiting, they also denied the Kamran family’s case and claimed in a form letter that they are not really in danger in Pakistan. (This was despite extensive documentation to the contrary, i.e., 12 pages of pictures and journals and 5 media stories documenting how much danger they are in.) I processed some data that news organization obtained and made public about Humanitarian Parole for Afghans, and it turns out the approval rate is 1 – 2%. This is absurdly low especially considering that most Humanitarian Parole applicants had US connections. (By comparison, the approval rate for Ukrainians is 77%). Humanitarian Parole cases for Afghans under the Biden Admin was basically a $20 million scam since they made shady back door policy changes to justify denying over 98% of the cases, after promising to expedite cases and collecting $20 million in filing fees.
We do plan to try to work with Congress to try to get information on why USCIS denied the Kamran family’s Humanitarian Parole cases as well as advocate for more fair policies for all at-risk Afghans applying for Humanitarian Parole. But in the meantime we were able to get the documents together to file a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) for Muhammad.
Muhammad had not previously been able to file an SIV case due to the stringent requirements for documentation. He couldn’t meet the documentation requirements since most of the companies he had worked for had gone of out business and deleted their HR records. In recent months through volunteering with a number of organizations assisting left-behind Afghans, I was able to meet some veterans and law students who were trying to help Afghans in a similar situation, some of which worked under the same assignments as Muhammad. So a couple of different people helped me research to piece together enough information for his supervisors to be able to write an employment memo that should be accepted as a substitute for a typical HR letter. We also found four additional supervisors willing to support his case, so he now has 5 letters of recommendation instead of one. The State Department is also being a little more flexible in documentation needed for SIV cases and putting more weight on letters from veterans than before.
So we recently filed what we believe is a strong SIV case for Muhammad (and his wife and children as his dependents). This is by far the most favorable type of case to come to the US since the US government has less discretion in denying an SIV vs. a refugee or humanitarian visa. And the US is actually trying to process SIVs as quickly as possible but leaving other types of applicants in limbo. Although the SIV process is the most favorable process, SIV cases can also be denied, usually for lack of documentation or because the Afghan was fired while working for the US. (Sometimes these terminations were justified but often they were not.) In Muhammad’s case, his service record is now well documented and he was not terminated, so we don’t anticipate either of these common problems being an issue. However, the SIV system now is extremely backlogged and has been for years.
In recent weeks there has been significant progress in catching up some of the backlog though. So we hope that Muhammad’s case gets processed soon and everything goes smoothly. I have asked Congressman Raskin’s office to try to inquire about the case with the Department of State as well. Sometimes having a Congressional office ask about a case can help speed up the processing. We are starting by requesting the easiest thing for them to do to try to help, and then will go from there if a Congressional inquiry doesn’t seem to be helping. (Congressman Raskin’s office has been very involved for quite a while in supporting our efforts for this family, and we hope that with the SIV case it will be much less of an uphill battle than trying to fight the Trump Admin and later the Biden Admin on Humanitarian Parole was.)
Muhammad and family are of course happy to have an SIV case now, which had eluded us for years. However, they are still struggling with the physical and mental toll of living in hiding for so many years now. Both Muhammad and his wife have been having some fairly serious medical conditions related to the extreme stress of their living arrangement. Muhammad’s wife was hospitalized for a few days is recovering now. Their young son also got sick and had to go to the doctor. Muhammad’s wife is now home again but her medical bills were an unexpected expense for us. Any donations to their Go Fund Me and/or my organization KANA on their behalf would be appreciated.
Fundraiser by Kristy Perano : Save Aysha and her Family (gofundme.com)
KANA News:
KANA is hosting a webinar this Sunday, August 28th at 4 pm Eastern/1 pm Pacific time. It will be a panel discussion on Afghanistan and Afghan allies a year after the US withdrawal. I will be one of the panelists. Other panelists will be an SIV applicant that KANA has been assisting (not Muhammad Kamran but also a Mohammad) as well as one or two Afghans who are in the US but still assisting friends and family trapped in Afghanistan. Hopefully it will be informative for those in attendance. It will be a panel followed by Q&A so you will have time to get your questions answered too! You can email Kurdish.Alliance2020 (at) gmail.com if you want to RSVP and get the Zoom link!
KANA has been helping support a number of Afghans in hiding from the Taliban including helping support the Kamran family. Besides the 80% or so drop in Afghanistan’s economic activity since the Taliban takeover, anyone who worked for US forces is at risk of recognition and retaliation by the Taliban if they try to work, so most are in hiding. KANA is sending very basic food packages to some families in Afghanistan, which costs about $85/family/mo for a package. KANA is a fully approved 501(c)3 so all donations are tax deductible. KANA’s website is www.kana.center if you want to read more about KANA.
I also recently registered KANA with Amazon Smile as well as Benevity. Amazon Smile donates a small amount of money to a selected charity of your choice at no cost to you if you shop on Amazon through the Smile version of their website. Here is KANA’s dedicated link to Amazon Smile if you want to add KANA as your non profit of choice.
Benevity is an organization that processes charitable donations from most major US companies. Many companies opt to match donations from their employees. United Healthcare is enrolled in Benevity, as are Google, Coca Cola, and many other large companies. If you or someone you know works at a company that uses Benevity to process/match charitable donations, then you can donate to KANA through Benevity and get a company match.
The Go Fund Me fundraiser for the Kamran family is also still active. Or if you wish to donate to them specifically and want a tax deduction, you can donate to KANA and indicate the Kamran family in the notes.
Fundraiser by Kristy Perano : Save Aysha and her Family (gofundme.com)
Situation in Afghanistan:
The overall situation in Afghanistan remains very bleak. The Taliban’s claims to be “reformed” were all empty promises. They have banned girls from going to school past 6th grade in almost all areas and have “arrested” and often murdered thousands of people who were associated with the former government, former Afghan military, or assisted the US or other countries. Few countries are doing much to resettle at risk Afghans. Some European countries have tried to resettle Afghans who aided them; probably Germany has been the most proactive but still has thousands of Afghans awaiting resettlement there.
Although the US evacuated 10s of thousands of Afghans last year, the evacuation process was very chaotic and corrupt. So the net result was many of the Afghans who were evacuated had no US affiliation, and most of the US affiliated Afghans and Special Immigrant Visa applicants were left behind. The State Department is working behind the scenes to relocate some of the Special Immigrant Visa applicants that are left behind, but they are relocating people at the rate of 200/wk, which means it will take them about 25 years to finish relocating the current backlog of applicants. Obviously most cannot survive that long, especially without sustainment. The visa processing is going faster than the relocation of people, so that is probably a 5 year backlog instead of 25 year backlog. US military interpreters are prioritized within the SIV program, and cases that get attention from Congress can also get priority. So some cases are getting processed faster. But the overall situation is a complete moral failure in that the US had a moral obligation to at least get those who are visa eligible to a safe place to wait for the rest of their visa processing instead of leaving them starving and in hiding in Afghanistan. It is literally written into SIV law that the US government will process SIVs in 9 months and will relocate the applicants to safety if they are at risk, but no admin has taken that legal obligation seriously.
Last week was the one year anniversary of the fall of the Afghan government. For those of us involved with Afghanistan still, it seems hard to believe that it’s been a year and that our government has done so little to save our allies in the meantime. (State Department even shut down private efforts by NGOs to save Afghans, then later admitted that private groups were far more effective than their efforts.) Anti-Taliban rebel groups also used the occasion to flex their power. The National Resistance Front (NRF) is the largest “good guy” rebel group. They conducted an offensive on the Taliban a few days ago and claim to have killed and captured dozens of Taliban in some northern villages and taken control of a few villages. It’s likely that the Taliban will retaliate including by continuing to murder civilians in the northern areas where the rebel groups are. (Media claims that Afghanistan is “more peaceful” are generally based on the Taliban’s self-assessment since few reporters who don’t work for the TB have access to Afghanistan to contest the Taliban's reports of how well they are doing in taking care of the country.) The Taliban is denying and suppressing information on their thousands of revenge killings of former US allies and former Afghan government officials. Most of the Western world is quite happy to look the other way to deflect attention from the humanitarian catastrophe there.
The Afghan branch of ISIS also claims to control a small amount of territory in southern Afghanistan. ISIS has mostly gone for soft targets in Afghanistan so far over the last year (like bombing schools and mosques) but there have also been some Taliban commanders killed in recent weeks likely by ISIS in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban has more or less kept ISIS and resistance groups at bay, it’s not clear how much longer they will be able to continue to do so. Afghanistan could likely end up in a 3-way civil war in the coming months or years.
Take care,
Kristy Perano