Afghans still adjusting to US: New life, new struggles

WASHINGTON >> Taliban forces had taken the Afghan capital. Crowds of panicked people thronged the airport. And a young man who had worked as a subcontractor for the U.S. military faced a terrible choice.

Hasibullah Hasrat, after having navigated the chaotic streets and Taliban checkpoints to make it inside the airport, could either go back for his wife and two young children or board an evacuation flight and get them later. Not taking the flight likely meant none of them would get out of Afghanistan.

Hasrat's decision haunts him. He is in the U.S., one of more than 78,000 Afghans admitted into the country following the U.S. troop withdrawal in August that ended America's longest war. But his family hasn't been able to join him. They're still in Afghanistan, where an economic crisis has led to widespread hunger and where Taliban repression is on the rise.

“My wife is alone there,” he said, his voice breaking as he describes nightly phone calls home. “My son cries, asks where I am, when am I coming. And I don't know what to say.”

It's a reminder that the journey for many of the Afghans who came to the United States in the historic evacuation remains very much a work in progress, filled with uncertainty and anxiety about the future.

Afghan refugees, some of whom faced possible reprisals for working with their government or American forces during the war with the Taliban, say in interviews that they are grateful to the U.S. for rescuing them and family members.

But they are often struggling to gain a foothold in a new land, straining to pay their bills as assistance from the government and resettlement agencies starts to run out, stuck in temporary housing, and trying to figure out how to apply for asylum because most of the Afghans came under a two-year emergency status known as humanitarian parole.

“We are not sure what may happen,” said Gulsom Esmaelzade, whose family has been shuttled between hotel rooms in the San Diego area since January, after spending three months at a New Jersey military base. “We don't have anything back at home in Afghanistan and here we also don't have any future.”