'They will label us as spies': Afghan students abandoned by America

As Nilab and other Afghan students find their lives thrown into chaos, they are caught between the infinite possibilities promised by a university education and a crushing sense that there are no doors left to open.

Doha, Qatar: When she finds it hard to focus, Nilab jots down her worries on slips of paper and pins them to her wall, a strategy she picked up in a seminar on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.

She makes a mental note to deal with the issues at a scheduled time and then gets back to studying. That kept her sane when the US-backed Afghan government was overthrown in 2021, when the Taliban made it illegal for women to receive an education and when she left in July 2023 to study at the university's campus-in-exile in Qatar.

Now, in Nilab's dorm room in Doha, the little notes are stacking up. The Trump administration's shutdown of foreign aid and refugee admissions has left her terrified that she will be forced to return to Afghanistan.

There, she would be alone and deprived of any rights as a woman. Her hard-earned American-style education would be all but worthless.

She imagines the worst. "How can girls go back to Afghanistan?" said Nilab, 30, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. "What will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death."

On Jan. 20, just as Nilab was planning her final project for her cybersecurity degree, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee resettlement. The US government had promised refugee status for her and her classmates, but Nilab's hopes of rejoining her family, who received asylum in the United States after the Taliban took over, were shattered.

A month later, her university lost most of its funding when Trump dismantled US foreign aid programs to reorient spending in line with the administration's foreign policy goals. Funding was partly restored March 16, the university's leadership said, but only enough to operate into June. If the university closes, students will lose their housing, cafeteria meal plans and Qatari student visas.

A third thunderbolt came March 15, with word that Trump was considering putting Afghanistan on a list of countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the United States. Nilab does not know when she will ever see her family again, much less resettle with them.

As she and other Afghan students find their lives thrown into chaos, they are caught between the infinite possibilities promised by a university education and a crushing sense that there are no doors left to open.

"I thought this long journey was finished," she said. "I was wrong."

With midterms approaching, Nilab has little time for her concerns. She has a presentation on arrays and algorithms due soon.

So she writes down her fears and pins them to her bulletin board.

Piece of America

The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as a coed liberal arts college, with instruction in English. It was designed to educate the next generation of Afghan leaders and innovators, imbued with Western ideals of justice, freedom and democracy. Students called their campus "Little America."

The U.S. government has invested more than $100 million in the university, and until last month, funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development covered more than half of its operating costs.

(The agency has also provided scholarships for more than 100 Afghan women -- including Nilab's sister -- to study at universities in Oman and Qatar, among them the American University, and those students face a similar budget freeze.)

When the U.S. military hastily withdrew from the country in August 2021 and the Taliban returned to power, the American University was an obvious target. Militants rampaged through its buildings, scrawling graffiti that derided students as "U.S.-trained infidel spies" and "wolves in sheep's skin."

Administrators worked to get more than 1,000 students out of the country as quickly as possible. Nearly 700 were evacuated to sister universities in Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and the United States.

The government of Qatar agreed to host a temporary campus-in-exile. One hundred students arrived for the term starting in August 2022, and another 100 -- Nilab's group -- landed a year later.

Most of the students eventually left for the United States on so-called Priority 1 visas. When Trump took office in January, the remaining 35 were waiting for their final interviews and predeparture medical checkups. Some already had airplane tickets.

They now wander the near-empty halls of their temporary campus in a stunned daze, not knowing what will happen next.

"We thought all our traumas were finally coming to an end, so we could start to breathe again," said Waheeda Babakarkhail, 23, a programmer who dreams of working as a white hat hacker, testing computer programs for security flaws.

"I had accepted that I couldn't stay in Afghanistan," she said, "but now even the future I thought I would have has been lost."

Aspirations have been derailed across the campus. Abbas Ahmadzai, 24, a business major, had a job in event management lined up in New York. Faisel Popalzai, 23, was hoping to get a job at Microsoft. He developed an artificial intelligence-assisted computer program that can identify potentially fraudulent financial transactions. The app, called Hawks.Ai, won the Microsoft Hackathon last year in Doha.

If pathways to the United States are cut, Popalzai said, the country will lose a valuable investment: "our minds, paid for by the American people."

Sense of Dread

If the university is forced to close in June, the students face an alarming prospect.

They will lose their student visas and their right to stay in Qatar within weeks. If they cannot find a Qatari employer to sponsor them, or obtain a job or scholarship offer in another country, they will have to return to Afghanistan.

They are keenly aware that "the way we were educated is in contradiction to everything the Taliban represent," said Hashmatullah Rahimi, 24, a business major. "We were taught to speak freely, to be independent. Not a single person in the Taliban government wants that."

The university's administrators say there has been no documented persecution of its graduates since the Taliban takeover. But students fear they would be viewed as a threat.

"If we go back," Popalzai said, "they will label us as spies, sent to infect Afghans against the Taliban with our American ideology."

For female students, the risks are obvious. The Taliban have banned education for women and girls after sixth grade and barred women from most forms of employment. They cannot travel without a male relative; they are required to cover their faces outside the home; and their voices must not be heard in public.

"Maybe we won't be killed if we go back," said Rawina Amiri, 24, a business major who dreams of becoming a professional volleyball player.

"Does that mean we should accept having our rights violated?" she added. "We have the right to learn, to contribute, to work. Do people in the United States expect us to give up those rights because the Americans promised us a visa, then changed their mind?"

Nilab remains in limbo in the U.S. visa process. On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Trump administration must admit thousands of people granted refugee status before Jan. 20, which could include several of the university's students. But the ruling is preliminary and could be reversed.

What has really thrown Nilab for a loop is the potential for Afghans to be included in a travel ban.

She has not seen her parents and younger siblings since they moved to Northern Virginia. They were granted asylum because her parents had worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. But because she was an adult, she was not eligible to join them.

Nilab tries to hold on to hope, relying on the coping skills she picked up as a freshman four years ago. She is applying for scholarships in Europe even as she studies for her exams.

"The Quran says that when one door is shut, another opens," she said. "But if you don't knock, the doors won't open."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.