Betraying the Betrayed: The Plight of Afghans after TPS Suspension
A group of Afghan women wait for humanitarian aid, as most of the country depends on aid after the nearly five decades of war and destability in the country. Photo courtesy of Unsplash’s Wanman Uthmaniyyah.
In an article from March 1988, The Washington Post writes, “Interviews with relief officials from government and private relief agencies… suggest that a daunting array of problems involving food, transport, housing, and water will make the mass exodus [of Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan] an exceedingly complex operation.”
Despite being written over 37 years ago, the article’s context parallels the Afghan refugee crisis of today. Dozens of countries that had previously housed Afghan refugees, especially those from the most recent Taliban takeover of the country, have mass-deported these refugees back to Afghanistan in the past few months. The deporting countries include Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, among other Middle Eastern nations. More relevant to the West, it includes the United States, which has long played a direct role in Afghanistan despite its geographical distance. Despite the decades-long involvement in the country, the U.S.’s recent suspension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans is an echo of a past in which Afghan people have been betrayed.
In May of 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would be suspending the TPS Program for Afghans, among other groups. TPS is an immigration program that allows Afghan nationals to live and work for a limited time in the U.S. due to the life-threatening conditions in Afghanistan. TPS for Afghans was enacted by the Biden administration after the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban and the subsequent military withdrawal of the U.S. from the country in May 2022. Though the country is still listed in the highest-level travel advisory, ‘Do Not Travel,’ by the State Department, the Trump administration, on the alleged grounds of improved conditions such as “an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy,” suspended the program.
Until its suspension, the program had helped 11,700 Afghans receive TPS in the three years it was in operation. TPS for Afghans especially aided families and individuals who were gaining refuge in the United States from the Taliban regime, which has notoriously violated human rights, such as bodily rights, educational rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press. The Taliban have especially targeted the human rights of women, Hazaras, an ethnic group of Afghanistan, and Shi’i Afghans, a religious minority group in the country.
The Trump administration’s suspension of TPS for Afghans came almost five months after Donald Trump indefinitely suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Applying to all refugees broadly, USRAP was a governmental program, and its dismantling indicated the targeting of migrant communities by the Trump administration. The USRAP suspension came on the second day Trump took office during his second term. In June of 2025, the administration expanded restrictions, implementing a travel ban against multiple countries, including Afghanistan. Since the ban has been placed, only Afghan green card holders, those with dual citizenship, and Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs)–special visas given to those involved in the U.S. government–have entry into the country.
The Trump administration’s actions against Afghans should not be considered in a vacuum, however. As the Washington Post article from 1988 reveals, Afghans have long been facing issues with migration, and for almost as long, the U.S. has played a role.
The U.S. presence in Afghanistan since 2001 is well-known, especially since the onset of the Global War on Terror, a U.S.-led military campaign after 9/11. However, the intervention in Afghanistan has been a reality for almost half a century, specifically since the Soviet-Afghan War that started in 1979. A proxy war of the Cold War Era, the Soviet-Afghan War has been one of brutal violence, estimated to have taken the lives of around 6.5-11.5 percent of Afghanistan’s population at the time.
In an attempt to thwart the dissemination of Soviet power, the U.S. became involved in Afghanistan during the War in many ways, perpetuating conditions that led to the creation of the Taliban. For instance, with a $50 million grant from USAID, the University of Nebraska at Omaha established the Education Program for Afghanistan, which ultimately funded Afghanistan’s national Education Center, which distributed indoctrination textbooks. These textbooks, printed in the U.S., were riddled with extremist ideology that perpetuated violence against the Soviets, the enemy of the U.S. during the Cold War. These textbooks worked to propagandize many young children of the time, who would eventually become radicalized, joining groups such as the Taliban. For example, teaching the alphabet through these textbooks would lead children to associate the letter “ti” with tufang (rifle), while in math textbooks, math was taught through examples of how many bullets, swords, and weapons a child could count. This little-known, yet significant piece of American involvement in the country and its interwoven connection with the Taliban organization, proves that the U.S. has indeed been a part of the country’s politics and developmental trajectory to its current reality, going back for decades.
The letter ‘sheen’ as in ‘shaheed’ or ‘martyr.’ Photo courtesy of Taylor and Francis Online.
After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan grew exponentially. The “Costs of War Project” at Brown University estimates that of the $8 trillion the U.S. government spent throughout the War on Terror, $2 trillion was spent on the U.S. interest in the country. In the aftermath of the fall of Afghanistan back to the Taliban in August of 2021, President Biden stated that an estimated $300 million a day was spent during the twenty-year war in Afghanistan during the larger War on Terror.
Monetary cost aside, the human cost of the war in Afghanistan was tremendous. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that 2 million women had become widows, and 1.5 million Afghans lived with disabilities as a grave consequence of the war, making it one of the world’s leading countries in the amount of disabilities caused by war. A Human Rights Watch study from the early 2000s reported “roughly one-in-five Afghan households (about 1.2 million) included a family member with a severe disability, while two-in-five households had some form of disability.” In the same report, Costs of War also indicates that the percentage of Afghans facing food insecurity increased from 62 percent to 92 percent, the rate of children under five who experienced acute malnutrition increased from 9 percent to 50 percent, and the number of Afghans living in poverty also increased from 80 percent to 97 percent from pre-2001 to after the war (2022).
Through both the monetary and humanitarian costs of this U.S.-backed war on the people of Afghanistan, it is clear that the current TPS suspension would make no sense given the plight of the Afghan people that continues as a direct result of American involvement.
Under the second Trump administration, Afghans who have suffered years of war, especially due to foreign intervention, are facing renewed challenges because of the TPS policy change. Just recently, USAID energy-dense biscuits that were intended for those facing malnutrition, including people in Afghanistan, were incinerated by the Trump administration. These incinerated biscuits indicate the waste of resources, food, and taxpayer money by the administration. But, more importantly, they indicate the inhumanity towards starving people, especially those of Afghanistan, who are in a worse position today due to the Afghanistan War, which further proves that the country is not safe for people to return to, given the devastating conditions.
Since the 1980s, Afghans have been suffering the consequences of foreign-backed wars, and instead of getting support, they are dealt a harder reality of hate, violence, and inhumanity. It is time that the repeated cycle of migration and sorrow stops for the Afghan people, and the U.S. government supports Afghans who have since migrated due to the wars, violence, and economic downturn in Afghanistan. Given the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education and widespread human rights violations, by no means does Secretary Noem’s determination that the country no longer meets the requirements for TPS based on ‘improved’ security and financial stability make any sense. The administration should reconsider this decision and instead provide the Afghan people who have already been betrayed with the due diligence they deserve.
Elaheh Khazi (CC ‘27) is studying history and Middle Eastern studies. She hopes to pursue a career in academia and law, focused on Afghanistan and the Middle East. This article stems from her research project about Afghanistan.