With Apologies To Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Countries

May 18, 2025 08:38 PM EDT, Sun

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a weak jaw, with orange hair, and a spray-on orange tan and a queen with a fair face with a vacant gaze with ice-cold blood, but surgically enhanced knockers, on the throne of the United States; There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of The Resistance; there was a king with a smirking mouth and a queen with a frozen gaze, presiding over the empire of exceptionalism. In both nations, the stewards of privilege and power—safeguarding their storerooms of favors and fortunes—declared, with unshaken certainty, that the hierarchy of human worth was inscribed for eternity..

It was the year of Our Lord two thousand and twenty-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to the wind, as were laws, at that dark period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of Washington DC and California. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the United States and The Resistance, from a congress of American subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

Trump’s plan to deport Afghan refugees is a national disgrace

There’s no group more deserving of TPS than the Afghans who are now on the fast track to deportation.

May 16, 2025, 3:19 PM EDT By Matt Johnson, writer and journalist Earlier this month, the United Nations published its latest update on human rights in Afghanistan. Here are a few of the findings: On Feb. 23, 18 people were flogged for “crimes” ranging from homosexuality to extramarital affairs. They then received sentences of between one and five years in prison. On March 3, “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” agents made a surprise visit to a hospital and ordered staff not to attend women who weren’t accompanied by a male relative. Between Jan. 17 and Feb. 3, 50 men from the Ismaili community were abducted and interrogated on religious subjects. Those who refused to convert to Sunni Islam were beaten and threatened with death.

This is Afghanistan under Taliban rule rule, and it is where the Trump administration plans to send Afghans who are now living safely in the United States.

The order means that over 9,000 Afghans will be vulnerable to deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security recently published a news release stating that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans in the U.S. will expire on May 20 and be terminated on July 12. The order means that over 9,000 Afghans will be vulnerable to deportation. According to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem: “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent[s] them from returning to their home country.”

The per-capita gross domestic product in Afghanistan’s “stabilizing” economy is around $415 — nearly 200 times lower than in the United States.

The Afghan economy has only “stabilized” after a period of immense economic pain due to the suspension of foreign aid and sanctions on the financial sector following the Taliban’s return to power. Billions of dollars in Afghan central bank assets remain frozen, and the United States doesn’t recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government.

“We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners,” Noem says, “and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation.” There’s no group more deserving of TPS than the Afghans who are now on the fast track to deportation. The idea that “conditions in Afghanistan” have improved so dramatically that the United States has to send Afghans back to one of the most impoverished and tyrannical countries on Earth — where they will instantly have targets on their backs for fleeing to America — is worse than absurd. It will put thousands of people who sought refuge in the United States in grave danger and condemn them to lives of fear and oppression.

Reprisal killings are a permanent feature of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Former Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and government officials were repeatedly targeted between Jan. 1 and March 31. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented 23 instances of arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as torture, abuse and killings of former ANSF members. The [CEO] of AfghanEvac (which helps the U.S.’ Afghan allies and other refugees relocate), Shawn VanDiver, observes that the returning Afghans won’t be safe: “By nature of them having been in the United States of America for the last three and a half years, they’re now in danger.”

The entirety of the Trump administration’s approach to Afghan refugees has been a national disgrace.

On the day Trump took office, he signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, an order that prevented Afghans from moving to America — including those who were in the final stages of the arduous approval process. He also rescinded funding for Special Immigrant Visas, which Afghan employees of the United States received. In February, Military Times reported on “U.S. service members whose families are stuck in Afghanistan,” and who have “shared stories of individuals being hunted — and in some cases murdered — prior to evacuating.”

A former captain in the Afghan National Army who worked with the U.S. military says his mother, five brothers and three sisters all fear for their lives in Afghanistan. The Taliban shot his brother.

One of these soldiers, an Afghan who immigrated to the U.S. and joined the Army, said the Trump administration’s order prevented his sister from escaping Afghanistan. Many of the soldier’s other family members have relocated to the United States, and two of his brothers also worked with the U.S. military during the war — which puts his sister in even greater peril.

There are many similar stories — an Afghan interpreter who worked with the United States is concerned for his family’s safety. A former captain in the Afghan National Army who worked with the U.S. military says his mother, five brothers and three sisters all fear for their lives in Afghanistan. The Taliban shot his brother.

As the Trump administration eliminates TPS for Afghans, it has enacted a policy to take in white South Africans who say they confront racial persecution. As Afghans who face the possibility of torture and murder confront imminent deportation, the images of refugees from South Africa arriving in the United States make for a striking contrast. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau went to Dulles Airport and told the new arrivals: “I want you all to know that you are really welcome here.” They were flown in on a plane chartered by the State Department.

This is the height of cynicism. It isn’t just the conspicuous exception for a group that happens to be white, and whose situation is an obsession of Trump’s biggest financial backer — Elon Musk, who is originally from South Africa and has claimed that a “genocide” is being perpetrated against Afrikaners. It’s the vast discrepancy in how the Afrikaners have been treated compared to all other groups of immigrants — while the Trump administration is sending Afghans back to a country where they could be killed, the administration doesn’t even ask its preferred immigrants to fly commercial.

The administration is daring critics to attack the U.S. flag-waving South African families who by all indications came to America for the same reason as so many others — to seek a better life. Those families should be embraced just like any other group of new Americans. But this doesn’t change the fact that the Afrikaners are being used as political props. Sen. Mike Lee (T-UT), posted a video of the new arrivals waving flags and said: “Take note: They’re flying our flag.”

What’s his point? Every U.S. naturalization ceremony — for new citizens from around the world — is a sea of American flags. Meanwhile, Afghans who served in or with the U.S. military are desperately struggling to get their families to safety in the United States.

Americans owe a special debt to our Afghan partners, who served honorably in and alongside our armed forces and trusted the United States to stand by them instead of abandoning their country to the Taliban. The Trump administration’s decision to betray the Afghans who thought they were safe on American soil is an act of supreme cruelty and callousness. Our Afghan friends don’t deserve a one-way ticket back to the theocracy they left behind — they deserve to be Americans.

Matt Johnson Matt Johnson writes for Haaretz, The Bulwark, The Daily Beast and many other outlets. He’s the author of “How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment.”

Trump’s claim that Afrikaners are fleeing genocide in South Africa is an outrageous lie

If the Episcopal Church had agreed to resettle South African Boers, then it would have elevated a lie that will affect refugee resettlement for years to come.

May 16, 2025, 9:15 PM EDT By The Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu, Priest Associate at All Saints’ Church Atlanta

The combination of the Trump administration granting expedited refugee status to white South Africans and the Episcopal Church the Episcopal Church ending a 40-year partnership with the federal government rather than help resettle fake refugees leaves me with contradictory feelings.

As an Episcopal priest and a dual citizen of the United States and South Africa, I am proud of the Episcopal Church for standing up and speaking out about the U.S. government’s lies of a white “genocide” in South Africa. In equal measure, I am devastated that the work our church has done for decades, giving hope and care to people forced to leave their homelands, is ending because of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

I am devastated that the work our church has done for decades is ending because of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

Our parish, All Saints’ Atlanta, has a vibrant refugee ministry, and this year, in response to the end of government funding for refugee resettlement, the parish committed to continue to support the refugee families the government had abandoned and to actually increase the number of families it’s supporting. The mission of showing “hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels” (Hebrews 13:2) or treating “the stranger who sojourns with you as a native among you … for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34), is central to our faith community.

The denomination’s decision to end a decadeslong partnership with the U.S. government that offered support to people fleeing oppression and war was not taken lightly. But I applaud the Episcopal Church answering the call and standing up to powers and principalities that oppress and call it freedom and lie as they call it truth.

If the Episcopal Church had agreed to resettle South African Boers, then it would have elevated a lie that will affect refugee resettlement for years to come. If white South Africans are experiencing genocide, then it is truly an enviable genocide. White South Africans, who are about 7% of the country’s population, own about 75% of South Africa’s farmland and control a great majority of senior corporate positions As I write this article, I realize how angry I am:. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters would likely be happy if they had control over 30% of their ancestral land.

The U.S. government’s sudden concern with the possibility of land confiscation without compensation leads me to ask: Where was this outrage in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s when Black communities were forcibly evicted from their ancestral home and their land given to whites? There are Black communities who had their land taken by the apartheid government on the eve of our first democratic election in 1994 and are now expected to pay market rates for the land that was stolen from them. And yet the U.S. is granting refugee status to those who benefited from apartheid? Where is the logic?

The Episcopal Church has taken a moral stand. The Boers who arrived on U.S. soil this week are not refugees. They are white people using their privilege to leap over legitimate refugees who have been waiting to escape political repression and life-threatening situations. In welcoming them and expediting access to the U.S., the Trump administration has proved its racist bona fides. It has stopped the asylum of Afghans and Iraqis who fought alongside American troops only to resettle a group that views the loss of absolute domination of South Africa’s Black majority as oppression.

Earlier this year, I said to some friends that the deafening silence of Americans after masked men abducted a young woman off the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was proof to me that people in this country do not recognize a police state when they see it. The insufficient outrage to the resettlement of 49 Afrikaners, who landed with huge amounts of luggage, tells me that we as a country are not willing to face up to the reality that white supremacy is now the order of the day. The Episcopal Church has spoken. When will the rest of the country step up and say enough is enough?

  • angry that people who abused and oppressed my people for generations and are still benefiting from that abuse and oppression are claiming victim status
  • angry that the country that offered me an education (at Berea College in Kentucky) when my native land had closed those doors to me is now selling the myth of oppressed whites in South Africa
  • angry that there is not a more forceful reaction to the U.S. attempting to change and degrade the definition of what it means to flee your home in fear.

As a Black woman, I’m glaringly aware of how my anger will be perceived. I considered tempering it. But this is a holy anger.

And if I silence it, I harm not only myself but all those who are harmed by this grotesque falsification of what it means to be a refugee. I would be untrue to thousands of Black, Coloured, Asian and white South Africans, forced into exile by the evil that was apartheid. It would be untrue to the millions of Palestinians who have been refugees for generations, especially poignant as May 15 is 77 years since the Nakba. Untrue to those all over the world forced to flee their homes and communities because of violence and oppression.

So I speak today, as the Reverend Nontombi Naomi “Angry Black Woman” Tutu. Praying that other people of faith will be angry too and that they channel that anger into actions for the common good. Far too often, we as the human family look back at injustices and evil and say, “We did not know.” Future generations will not allow us to make that claim about our inaction in 2025.

The Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu The Reverend Nontombi Naomi Tutu, who serves as Priest Associate at All Saints’ Church Atlanta, is a dual citizen of the U.S. and South Africa who works for racial and gender justice. She is the third child born to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nomalizo Leah Tutu.

Trump’s white South African refugee plan is not going over with the Episcopal Church

The administration’s embrace of white South Africans as refugees, while rejecting so many others, paints a disturbing portrait of Trump’s approach to Christianity.

May 14, 2025, 3:53 PM EDT

By Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, vice president of programs and strategy, Interfaith Alliance

Fifty-nine white South Africans arrived in the United States1 this week aboard a U.S.-chartered plane to be granted refugee status. Upon the group’s arrival, President Donald Trump stated that the members of the ethnic minority called Afrikaners, who ruled the country during apartheid, have been subject to “a genocide” and that “white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated” by the South African government. No evidence has been found to back up those claims.

Meanwhile, also this week, the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for Afghans.

A seemingly “whites only” refugee program is a morally bankrupt inversion of the Christian call to welcome the stranger and aid the most vulnerable

The move has been denounced by many — of particular note, the Episcopal Church in the United States’ presiding Bishop Sean W. Rowe, who in a letter to his congregation sent Monday said the church’s migration ministry would not help resettle the Afrikaners, as requested by the Trump administration, “[i]n light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.” Rowe announced that, after nearly 40 years, they will stop receiving federal grants to resettle refugees by September.

A seemingly “whites only” refugee program is a morally bankrupt inversion of the Christian call to welcome the stranger and aid the most vulnerable.

The administration’s response to the Episcopal Church was swift and vicious. Vice President JD Vance called the decision “crazy” and White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said it “raises serious questions about its supposed commitment to humanitarian aid.”

Yet there is nothing “crazy” about the Episcopal Church’s decision to not aid the Trump administration’s abhorrent spin on refugee resettlement.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa once said. “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

“Desmond Tutu was a teacher to us, and we were a partner to him,” Bishop Rowe told NPR. “In fact, his young seminarian, I remember driving him around Washington, D.C., during one of his visits. We have strong ties to that country and to that fight against racism and the apartheid regime. And the idea that we would be somehow resettling Afrikaners at this point over other refugees, who have been vetted and waiting in camps for months or even years, is unfathomable to us.”

Plus, the Episcopal Church isn’t ending its ministry with migrants — just its ties to the federal government. “We can’t be partners with the federal government at this point, but we will continue our work and our advocacy to the most vulnerable,” Rowe said. “That’s what Jesus calls us to, to care for the poor and the most vulnerable.”

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his followers that nations will be judged by how they treat the hungry, the stranger, those needing clothes, the sick, and those imprisoned.

A policy favoring white South Africans over all other refugees is not a policy aligned with Jesus’ teaching. In South Africa, whites make up about 7% of the population of the population, yet account for about three-quarters of land ownership. Recent attempts at land reform and addressing systemic racial injustice in South Africa are not “genocide,” as Trump claims — and not giving into this rewiring of refugee resettlement is a faithful response by Christians.

This isn’t the first time the Trump White House has singled out a particular denomination for rebuke.

This isn’t the first time the Trump White House has singled out a particular denomination for rebuke. Vance, who is Catholic, questioned the U.S. Catholic Bishops commitment to aiding refugees and migrants by asking, “Are they actually worried about their bottom line?” Trump took aim at the Episcopal Church in January when Bishop Mariann Budde pleaded for mercy for immigrants and LGBTQ people at the inaugural prayer service. The consistent battles with non-MAGA Christians paints a disturbing portrait of Trump’s approach to Christianity, which includes tapping Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead a task force on supposed “anti-Christian bias” in the United States.

“We are appalled by the hypocrisy of the Trump administration in shutting the door on our siblings in Christ who are attempting to flee real Christian persecution around the world, and call on the administration to restart the U.S. refugee resettlement program,” a group of 26 Christian leaders wrote in a statement denouncing the task force, organized by my place of work, Interfaith Alliance. “Far from Trump as a protector of Christians, the major threats to Christians in the United States are coming from Trump’s own administration,” the statement reads.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC6), who leads the Democratic Faith Working Group, reacted to Rowe’s letter on X, writing, writing, “I commend the Episcopal Church for modeling integrity in the face of injustice after the Trump Admin favored white South Africans while suspending refugee resettlement for others.” Clyburn quoted 1 Corinthians 16:13: “Stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.” It’s a memorable call on Christians to ground our obedience to Christ — and not to Trump.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance and the author of “Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity.”

As white South Africans arrive, Trump admin. ends temporary protected status for Afghans

Donald Trump has largely closed the doors to the United States for refugees — with one big exception for Afrikaners.

May 13, 2025, 11:21 AM EDT By Steve Benen

It wasn’t long after Donald Trump’s second inaugural when the Republican president and his team announced a dramatic reversal on refugee admissions: In practically every instance, the administration said, the doors to the United States would be closed to refugees2.

The policy apparently included one striking exception. NBC News reported:

American officials welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday afternoon, in a ceremony greeting them as refugees under the argument that they are fleeing discrimination and racially based violence in their home country. The newly arrived people are from the ethnic minority of Afrikaners, the group of whites who ruled South Africa during apartheid. The dozens that came Monday, including families with young children, arrived via a flight chartered by the State Department.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar were personally on hand to welcome the Afrikaners to American soil.

While refugees from many countries have been forced to wait literally for years for resettlement assignments, the Trump administration adopted an expedited process for white South Africans, who were bumped to the front of the line, skipping past many who’ve been undergoing extensive vetting. The New York Times reported last week, “While the program remains suspended for refugees across the world, such as Congolese families in refugee camps and Rohingya seeking safety, white South Africans were processed much faster than is normal for these cases.”

Asked why refugees fleeing war, famine and natural disasters are being turned away while the administration welcomes Afrikaners, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the white South Africans “faced racial persecution” under a recent land expropriation law. The president added that those being welcomed “happen to be white.”

Apparently, the public is supposed to believe that it’s simply a coincidence that Trump is blocking refugees from entering the U.S. except for a group of white people.

Episcopal Migration Ministries, which has maintained a decadeslong partnership with the government on refugee resettlements, apparently isn’t buying it. The Associated Press reported, “The Episcopal Church’s migration service is refusing a directive from the federal government to help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status, citing the church’s longstanding ‘commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.’”

Making matters worse is the companion bookend: On the same day the Trump administration welcomed white South Africans, it also announced that it’s ending temporary protected status for Afghans after determining that conditions in the Taliban-led country “no longer meet the statutory requirements” for the designation.

If there’s a defense for the White House’s competing standards for those in need of rescue, I can’t think of it.

Steve Benen Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

These brave Afghans helped the U.S. after 9/11. Now the U.S. wants to deport them.

The Trump administration claims Afghans in the U.S. under temporary protected status no longer meet the threshold for protection.

May 3, 2025, 8:54 AM EDT

By Muhammad Tahir, nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center

It was a bitterly cold evening when I arrived in Kabul on a U.N.-chartered flight in early 2002. The city, like much of Afghanistan, was in turmoil. The trauma of Al Qaeda’s deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States was still raw, U.S. forces were advancing from the north, the Taliban was retreating south, and ordinary Afghans in the middle were torn between fear and the first flickers of hope.

‘You’re finally here,’ an old man outside Bagram Airfield told me. ‘Maybe now my grandchildren will have a future.’

U.S. airstrikes lit up the sky, but it was Afghans opposed to the Taliban who moved on the ground — risking everything to help the U.S. pursue justice for 9/11. Armed with little more than battered rifles and unshakable hope, they stepped into the fight, driven by a belief in a future they were told the U.S. would help them build.

“You’re finally here,” an old man outside Bagram Airfield told me. “Maybe now my grandchildren will have a future.”

In the weeks that followed, I reported from the front lines as Kabul bureau chief for Turkey’s Ihlas News Agency. Embedded with U.S. troops, I watched Afghan civilians — students, farmers, former resistance fighters — step forward to support the U.S. mission.

Now, the United States is telling Afghans who resettled in the U.S. after helping it fight the Taliban that they’ve got to self-deport by May 20 — back to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. “If America can’t honor its word to those who bled for it,” a retired U.S. colonel told me, “why would anyone trust us again? This isn’t just immigration policy — it’s a test of our moral credibility. And we’re failing.”

The Afghans who aided the U.S. during its war in Afghanistan weren’t just interpreters or cultural advisers; they were bridge builders in every sense. They helped restore America’s credibility, one act of courage at a time. With their support, the Taliban was driven out — temporarily, at least — and a U.S.-backed government took root.

“Ahmad” (not his real name) was one of them. Now living in the U.S. under temporary protected status (TPS), he spent years serving in nearly every role imaginable — interpreter, logistics officer, project coordinator — all under the U.S. flag.

“It felt like our chance to shape a better future,” he told me. But that future came at a steep cost. “As the Taliban turned to guerrilla tactics, we were constantly on the move — new cities, new homes. I tried to stay invisible, but the threats never left.”

The Afghans who aided the U.S. during its war in Afghanistan weren’t just interpreters or cultural advisers — they were bridge builders in every sense.

Another Afghan — I’ll call him Murtaza — was a former English teacher I met in 2002 who stepped up. He used his language skills as an interpreter, serving alongside U.S. forces in some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous terrain.

Murtaza and Ahmad survived countless attacks — but more than 241,000 others didn’t, including 71,000 civilians and 2,442 U.S. troops. Still, like many Afghans, they remained committed to the U.S. mission.

That loyalty was shattered on Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized Kabul and U.S. forces withdrew in chaos, leaving thousands of allies behind. Branded as traitors, many Afghan partners went into hiding before eventually making it to third countries — holding on to the promise of U.S. resettlement.

Murtaza, like thousands of others, has spent three and a half years stranded in a third country. His special immigrant visa (SIV) — once a lifeline to safety in the U.S. — remains stalled, and the State Department’s recent decision to suspend the refugee admissions program has indefinitely blocked his path.

That decision now leaves him — and thousands like him — facing imminent deportation, as their stay in their host countries was based on the promise that they’d eventually resettle in the U.S.

With the SIV pipeline already clogged, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced April 11 that it’s terminating TPS for more than 9,000 Afghans like Ahmad who are in the U.S. They’ve been given that May 20 deadline to leave or face removal. Some were coldly notified of their fate by email.

Both men — one stuck abroad, the other inside the U.S. — face the same looming betrayal.

These aren’t undocumented migrants. They were vetted and approved for resettlement after risking their lives alongside American forces in our longest war. Now, with the deadline fast approaching, they’re being told: Get out — or face consequences.

We’re not just abandoning them; we’re throwing them to the wolves.

In doing so, we’re not just abandoning them; we’re throwing them to the wolves.

“TPS exists for moments like this,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a refugee rights group. “It’s designed to protect people whose return would place them in serious danger.” She added, “Make no mistake: Afghanistan remains under Taliban control, gripped by humanitarian crisis, economic collapse and brutal extremism.”

The latest situation update from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), covers January to March 2025 and delivers the grim assessment that the Taliban continues to hunt, torture and execute former government officials and military personnel.

Women are completely erased from public life, and girls remain barred from school beyond sixth grade. LGBTQ Afghans face public floggings, and religious minorities endure constant persecution.

On Jan. 23, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and his chief justice for alleged crimes against humanity, specifically gender persecution.

Is this the regime the U.S. expects our Afghan allies to return to?

Ahmad, who’s still in the U.S. but is staring down the May 20 deportation deadline, is terrified. “It’s not just about me,” he said. “If I’m forced to leave, my family loses our only income — and given our political background, my entire extended family could be in danger.”

The Trump administration claims Afghans in the U.S. under TPS no longer meet the threshold for protection. But Ahmad firmly rejects that. “Safety isn’t just about bullets,” he said. “It’s the right to live with freedom and dignity, the right to learn, to travel, to speak. I invite President Trump to see what life actually looks like on the ground.”

This isn’t just about Afghans — it’s about every partner we’ll need tomorrow.

This isn’t just about Afghans — it’s about every partner we’ll need tomorrow. If we abandon them today, future allies in Ukraine, Taiwan or anywhere else in the world will think twice about cooperating with the U.S.

“This is cruel and chaotic,” Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, a nonprofit supporting the resettlement of Afghan allies in the U.S., told NPR. VanDiver, a military veteran, said, “It shatters everything America claimed to stand for when we promised not to abandon our allies.”

There’s still time to do the right thing. Congress must reinstate TPS, clear the SIV backlog and pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would give Afghans who helped the U.S. in Afghanistan a path to permanent, legal residency. People like Ahmad and Murtaza didn’t just work for us; they fought for us, bled for us, believed in us.

We owe them more than empty promises. We owe them protection. We owe them our word.

Because if we fail them now, we’re not just abandoning Ahmad, Murtaza and thousands like them — we’re telling the world that America’s word means nothing.

Muhammad Tahir Muhammad Tahir is a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He previously held key roles at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Washington, D.C., and Eastern Europe and served as bureau chief for IHA, the Turkish media, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most recently, he led media strategy at the nonprofit Corus International. His work has been published by CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post and The New Atlanticist, among others.

  1. @RalphHightower: They could be Elon Musk kids. His Wikipedia page states that he has at least fourteen kids. ↩

  2. @RalphHightower: As long as they’re white… ↩

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