Flights for more than 40,000 Afghans approved for special US visas have been suspended due to President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid and the threat of retaliation by the Taliban looms large, a prominent lawyer and a US official said Saturday.
The blockage was triggered by Trump’s order to freeze foreign development assistance for 90 days pending a review of the efficiency and sustainability of his “America First” foreign policy.
Experts and advocacy groups say the foreign aid freeze has thrown US and international aid operations into chaos and halted nutrition, health, vaccination and other programs.
The order also triggered a suspension of funding by the State Department to groups that help Afghans with special immigrant visas (SIVs) find housing, schools and jobs in the US.
Trump promised to crack down on immigration during his victorious 2024 re-election campaign.
Shawn VanDiver, head of #AfghanEvac, the main coalition of veterans and advocacy groups working with the U.S. government to evacuate and resettle those SIV holders, said he does not believe the flight suspension was intentional.
“We think it was a mistake,” Vandiver said.
He said he hopes the administration will waive approval orders for the SIV for Afghans because they worked for the U.S. government during the 20-year war that ended with the withdrawal of the last U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021. .
“They fought with us. They bled with us,” said Vandiver, who noted that thousands of other Afghans are waiting for SIV applications to be processed.
The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The UN mission in Afghanistan reports that the Taliban detained, tortured and killed former soldiers and officials of the former US-backed government. The Taliban issued a general amnesty for former soldiers and government officials and denied the charges.
VanDiver and the US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the flight suspension has left more than 40,000 Afghans, including SIV holders, stranded, waiting to be flown to the US from visa processing centers in Qatar and Albania.
He said this number also includes Afghans approved for SIV who are waiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be placed on US-funded flights to Doha and Tirana processing centers to receive their visas.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been resettled to the US on SIVs or as refugees since the chaotic US withdrawal of 2021.
In a separate executive order signed hours after his inauguration on Monday, Trump suspended all US refugee resettlement programs.
That order resulted in hundreds of Afghan refugees losing their seats on flights, including family members of active-duty Afghan U.S. military personnel, former Afghan soldiers and unaccompanied children.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
