One year since the Taliban took over Kabul last August 15, at least 74,000 Afghans have applied for a special visa program devoted to bringing U.S. allies like him to safety, and away from the ire of the Taliban.
They already knew his name — and that he worked with the Americans. But when the Taliban broke the locks on his empty home in the Afghan village of Panjshir this June, it was the gun stored inside old quilts and his American embassy uniform that gave him away.
Food is scarce, and as millions of Afghans have fallen into poverty, there is nowhere for Zahir to work. The Biden administration has issued nearly 8,000 Special Immigrant Visas to Afghans and their families since the withdrawal, a State Department spokesperson said. They represent less than five percent of theSince then, the department has continued to get SIV applicants out of the country on sporadic flight to Qatar. The flights are for allies who are in the final stages of the SIV application process, which they can finish at the special Afghan Affairs Unit set up in Doha.
In an interview with Spectrum News, he said the administration had reduced the SIV process — which historically takes years in most cases — to a “month or even less” for some applicants.There is no longer a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan to process applications or conduct interviews. Plus, any flights out of Kabul are limited under Taliban control, and travel remains difficult. The flights to Doha are only allowed because of the group’s diplomatic relations with Qatar.
“It isn't going to be, you know, an operation that's finished this year,” he said. “It's going to be an enduring commitment to do this work and make sure we have the architecture to do it.”There are 16,000 Afghan allies whose applications are “live,” officials said, meaning they have either received or are being reviewed for a key step in the application called Chief of Mission approval. In that step, Afghans must prove they worked on behalf of the U.S. government or military.
“All they're doing is moving the bottleneck — the historical bottleneck — from one part of the system to another part of the system,” she said.
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