Thank you, Damon, Ambassador Crocker, NED colleagues, and to the remarkable Afghan human rights champions and women leaders with us today and in our online audience. As-salaam alaikum, and I am honored and humbled to be here in your presence.
I’d like to think that we are here today not only to mourn what was lost, but to recognize what has endured, where promises were kept or broken, and most importantly, rally together for what must be rebuilt and reimagined.
Five years ago, I was a Washington-based senior State Department official, supporting the desperate efforts to make good on long-unkept promises to thousands of our allies to see them safely out of harm. Those heartbreaking days following the Taliban takeover marked a whole of government mobilization unlike any I had seen in three decades in public service – thousands of soldiers, diplomats, development and health professionals and others working non-stop to bring endangered Afghans to safety and build pipelines to protection where none had existed prior. In particular, I want to remember the more than 170 Afghans and 13 American service members killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, for which the somber, five-year anniversary is tomorrow and whose deaths and sacrifice cannot be forgotten.
In the end, Operation Allies Refuge evacuated over 120,000 Afghans, Americans, and others over 17 harrowing days in August, the largest civilian airlift in U.S. history. Alongside and propelling it, a remarkable mobilization of American civil society coalesced, bridging lines of party, faith, region, and background. Veterans joined Afghan-Americans, former refugees, human rights and humanitarian organizations, unions, philanthropy, mosques, churches, temples, and media outlets in filling gaps where U.S. government efforts fell short and holding the administration’s feet to the fire to do more, especially with hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies left behind after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal. In my prior role in government, I took many calls from Damon on the relocation and resettlement of Afghan NED partners, advocacy that helped over 1,000 people secure protection beyond Taliban reach after August 2021.
Earlier that year, when the Biden Administration announced its timetable for full military withdrawal, the organization I now lead, Human Rights First, undertook an urgent, cross-sector effort to galvanize legal assistance, shape policy responses, and move the political culture to welcome Afghans. We led the formation of a robust and diverse coalition, Evacuate our Allies (or EOA), to champion the accelerated resettlement of at-risk Afghans—from interpreters to women judges, journalists, and human rights advocates—efforts that went into maximum overdrive in August 2021. That same month Human Rights First also launched Project Afghan Legal Assistance (PALA) to rally U.S. legal organizations, law firms, resettlement agencies, and others to support legal representation for Afghans arriving in the U.S. – engaging over 1,300 pro bono lawyers and supporting over 2,700 clients since 2021.
With veterans and Afghan-American organizations at the forefront, and individual volunteers powering efforts in all fifty states, coalitions like EOA, AfghanEvac, and others successfully shaped policy reforms that not only enabled the relocation and resettlement of over 180,000 Afghans to the United States but revolutionized U.S. refugee resettlement as we know it. The outpouring of everyday Americans eager to help Afghan evacuees departing U.S. bases opened the door to community sponsorship for refugees writ large, for which more than 125,000 Americans volunteered. The resounding demand from EOA and other Afghan and American civil society leaders that the United States not leave allies behind propelled formation and funding of the State Department Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, or CARE, which integrated U.S. veterans on staff and brought more than 100,000 Afghan allies to our shores from fall 2021 to its unjust termination in summer 2025.
So, when I think about what has endured since 2021, I know that out of chaos came compassion and care that know no boundaries of nationality or faith, and that are carried forward by civil society where governments and politicians have faltered. Across the country, even though right now refugee resettlement is limited to a privileged, White few, American volunteers are showing up for their Afghan neighbors, helping them advance professionally and educationally and standing up alongside them when they unjustly face targeting under new harsh anti-immigrant policies.
But even more so, I think about the enduring courage of Afghan journalists, women politicians, judges and human rights defenders who braved death threats to carry forward their work before the Taliban regained power and would not remain silent after the worst happened. I think about the Afghan women who dared to defy Taliban violence and abuse to protest publicly their erasure from society, education, the workforce, and public life. I think about the thousands of Afghans who endured violence, threats, family separation, and trauma seeking protection for themselves and their families, only to face uncertain fates and the threat of detention and refoulement on foreign shores.
I also think of the thousands of exiled Afghans who immediately set about helping others even as their own futures and that of their families remained in limbo: a young woman I met who had kept American diplomats safe as a security investigator at U.S. Embassy Kabul helping newly arrived refugees resettle and secure housing in Maryland. A young Afghan development professional who joined Human Rights First’s PALA team while still housed at a U.S. base and just weeks after a perilous escape from Kabul with his wife and newborn child… A college undergrad evacuated in 2021 who founded a community initiative to help more recently arrived Afghan students acclimate and support online education for her compatriots denied post-primary study under Taliban rule…
The enduring courage and determination of Afghans—in country, forcibly displaced, and here on our shores—should propel all of us to recover and revive the care and compassion that galvanized so many Americans in 2021 towards helping Afghans keep their democratic dream alive. This is a path to be led and charted by Afghans, but we as Americans, regardless of our backgrounds or politics, have a critical supporting role to play and urgent demands to make of our government and policymakers. Today’s gathering is a critical opportunity to listen to and heed Afghan voices, first and foremost, but allow me to briefly underscore three overarching concerns in closing.
Number one, the United States must honor its commitments to Afghan allies and partners. We must reverse draconian U.S. policies that have shut down resettlement of Afghan refugees and SIV issuance, stranded over 1,000 Afghans we relocated to Qatar, and terminated protection for Afghan Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries. Human Rights First and allies filed suit to protect the rights of Afghans and others brought to the United States via categorical parole programs including Operation Allies Welcome, while others’ litigation has overturned the administration’s 75-nation visa ban that targeted Afghans as well.
But litigation can only go so far. Congress has a vital role to play in restoration of TPS for Afghans by legislation and demanding prioritization of Afghan resettlement as part of annual executive branch refugee consultations with Congress mandated by law. All this occurs against a backdrop in which the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and bipartisan Congressional leaders have assessed Afghanistan to be one of the world’s most severe human rights situations. Indeed, even last year’s State Department human rights report on Afghanistan—despite its many shortcomings—acknowledged the horrible human rights conditions there, including credible reports of extensive extrajudicial killings, torture, unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers, institutionalized discrimination against women, and their effective removal from public life. This utterly contradicts the farcical DHS claim of improved conditions on the ground used to justify termination of TPS status for Afghanistan.
Number two, the United States must reverse its cruel zeroing out of Afghanistan-related humanitarian and development assistance that cost untold lives and further devastated Afghan women’s welfare, as detailed in recent policy analyses by Rina Amiri of the Alliance for Justice and Diplomacy and Hardin Lang of Refugees International. Recovery of American humanitarian diplomacy also requires U.S. diplomatic engagement with Pakistan to halt refoulement of Afghans, recognizing that most forcibly displaced Afghans are in bordering nations and reliant on UNHCR support, whose funding has been decimated by U.S. and other donor cuts. Restoration of U.S. democracy support to Afghan civil society in exile or under Taliban siege is also imperative and a low-cost investment with long-term peace and security dividends.
And number three, and finally, the United States must fully integrate Afghan women in its still amorphous Afghanistan policy, which went unmentioned as a country in the 2025 National Security Strategy, despite decades of bipartisan convergence. The failed Doha Agreement is a textbook example of what happens when women are excluded from peace negotiations, as research has found that peace agreements are 35% more likely to last 15 years or more when women are involved. The U.S. administration’s campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court “brick by brick” further sets back Afghan women, as the court represents the only recourse for accountability for Taliban leadership and recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.
These recommended U-turns in U.S. policy are non-partisan, pragmatic, and, in my view, no-brainers for U.S. national security. They will enable Americans to help brave Afghans keep a flame for democracy alive for a nation where over 800,000 American service members served and over 2,400 were killed in action. As an old Pashto proverb says, “There is a road to the top of even the highest mountain,” and it is past time for us as Americans to recommit to walking that path in solidarity with our Afghan friends as they face these darkest of times.
Thank you.
