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.
That's when they tracked Ahmad Zahir to his rented house in Kabul, where he’d already escaped to his sister’s place to hide.
“They are asking about you,” people in his village had warned him.
Just before Afghanistan’s capital fell to the Taliban one year ago, Zahir asked his supervisors for documents to prove his years of working with Americans, including 12 years as an interpreter and adviser on USAID projects.
“Otherwise, when you guys leave, they will kill us,” he told his employers.
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He asked Spectrum News to use his first names only because he says the Taliban are still searching for him, one of the Afghans they consider a traitor for aiding the U.S. military.
Zahir is now hiding out in a Kabul safehouse with his wife and five children, like many other interpreters who served alongside U.S. forces as interpreters, cultural advisers, drivers and engineers during the two-decade conflict. He got help from an underground network of Afghans and Americans organizing and sponsoring safehouses for allies at risk.
Food is scarce, and as millions of Afghans have fallen into poverty, there is nowhere for Zahir to work.
One year since the Taliban took over Kabul last August 15, at least 74,000 Afghans like Zahir 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.
“We made a promise to them,” said Kim Staffieri, co-founder of the Association of Wartime Allies. “That if you give us a service –and we know you're going to put yourself in danger by doing it — we promise, we will bring you out of harm's way and bring you to the United States.”
That promise has largely not been kept for the tens of thousands of allies left behind when the U.S. left Afghanistan last August. Admissions have slowed to a trickle under Taliban rule, complicated evacuation logistics and a visa program long plagued by inefficiencies and red tape.
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 the up to 160,000 the department has said could be eligible for a visa.
Last summer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised that the U.S. commitment to Afghan allies “has no deadline.”
Since 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.
U.S. officials have also sent a total of 60 rotating staff overseas to help process SIVs, a State Department spokesperson said. Plus, they got rid of one of the immigration forms required, a change that could shave off at least a month of time for applicants.
“We have a lot of confidence that the administration has been following through on their work, that things are getting better every week,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder of the AfghanEvac coalition who regularly meets with administration officials.
One of those officials is the National Security Council’s Curtis Ried, who became the point person for Afghan refugee resettlement in December.
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.
“We're going to try to continue to do this at the pace that we're doing it or faster,” he said.
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.
Doha is also the only third country location where Afghans are processed once they fly from Kabul on a U.S.-organized flight. VanDiver said he and other advocates would like to see additional so-called “lilypad” locations opened up for SIV processing.
“Regular relocations are happening,” he said. “We wish that there were more and faster, but we know that the process is working.”
Ried of the NSC said the administration was “looking to see” if additional sites would benefit SIV processing, but he emphasized the effort to evacuate allies would need to be sustainable for “years to come.”
“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.
Zahir received his COM approval in May, according to documents reviewed by Spectrum News, and he’s waiting on conditional approval of his visa, which would put him closer to a flight out of the country.
But he’s worried his exit from Afghanistan is still a long way off. He’s known interpreters who have waited at least six to eight months for a flight, even with approval.
“The Taliban are still seeking me,” he said, noting they had all of his personal information after they raided his office last year.
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Staffieri of the Association of Wartime Allies accused the Biden administration’s public efforts to ramp up processing of being “smoke and mirrors.”
“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.
Advocates have also pointed to Uniting for Ukraine, the temporary program that quickly ramped up this spring to help resettle a third of the 100,000 Ukrainians admitted to the U.S. in a matter of months. Key differences are the fact that most were already outside Ukraine when approved, and they won't get permanent residency.
But veterans and other supporters of Afghan allies said it was an example of the administration’s ability to streamline admissions and eliminate red tape.
Ried told Spectrum News that Afghan allies are getting similar attention.
“I honestly think we are making quite a push,” he said. “We have condensed both SIV processing and refugee processing down to kind of record speed.”
VanDiver said the administration and advocates have to be “realistic” about what’s possible under Taliban rule and when it comes to long-term resettlement of Afghans.
“There's only so many flights in Kabul and … if we overdo it, then the Taliban can shut it down,” he said.
Plus, U.S. resettlement agencies are still working to aid the approximate 76,000 Afghans evacuated last August, with limited affordable housing capacity and still no guaranteed route to residency.
A group of bipartisan lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would create such a pathway for Afghan evacuees, many of whom would be left in limbo when their parole expires in a year.
Meanwhile, interpreters who risked their lives to serve the U.S. say they wait afraid and hungry in Afghanistan.
Zahir told Spectrum News he would leave and take his family to safety tomorrow if his case were approved.
“If [the Taliban] come one day and find me and kill me, then maybe they [will] start taking action about taking me out of this country,” he said.
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