Nearly four years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, America’s Afghan allies remain in limbo due to a combination of bureaucratic dawdling under the Biden administration and rapid-fire changes in policy under President Donald Trump.

Among the thousands of Afghans feeling the effects of changes stateside are those who entered the country via the CBP One App, Afghans who once relied on Temporary Protected Status for safety, and many of our closest allies, members of the Zero Units, Afghan special forces vetted and trained in counterterrorism operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Tens of thousands remain in Afghanistan and third countries, where they face difficulties while waiting on processing for dwindling quantities of Special Immigrant Visas or for the still-suspended U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

As the Taliban took over Kabul and toppled the former Afghan government on Aug. 15, 2021, the U.S. government moved roughly 9,000 members of the Zero Units from their bases throughout Afghanistan and brought them to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The Zero Units’ initial task was to clear the sprawling airport facilities before U.S. forces occupied the airfield. Once the airfield was clear, the Zero Units secured much of the airport’s perimeter. For two weeks, they helped American citizens, diplomats, and their own countrymen escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan before being ushered onto planes alongside U.S. forces and exfiltrated from Afghanistan on Aug. 30.

Geeta Bakshi, a 14-year veteran of the CIA, gathered with former CIA officers to visit U.S. bases where around 80,000 Afghans who arrived during Operation Allies Refuge were being processed.

“These guys needed our shoulder,” Bakshi said. “They were in shock after a disastrous withdrawal, losing their homeland to the same enemy they fought for two decades and not knowing what their futures would hold. These were our best warfighters. They served the U.S. in uniform, but did not get a hero’s welcome.”

After witnessing the struggles that the Afghan warriors were facing, Bakshi and team started a nonprofit they named FAMIL, which means “family” in Afghanistan.

For former CIA officers like Bakshi, supporting the Zero Units is a moral obligation. “These are the guys that kept Americans like me alive. They’re part of the reason there aren’t more stars [representing fallen officers] from the war on the CIA memorial wall.”

FAMIL Board of Advisors member and former CIA officer Andrew Hartsog was part of Team Alpha, which deployed on the ground in Afghanistan in October 2001. Through multiple subsequent Afghanistan deployments, Hartsog said he “worked closely with our Afghan partners,” witnessing “the grave risks they undertook to support U.S. national security.”  

Hartsog emphasized that the sacrifice of his Afghan partners “deserves and demands our respect and support.”

Helping the Zero Units has been complex. Thousands of warfighters were exfiltrated from Afghanistan without their wives and children and still await reunification. Some members of the group have combat-related injuries that require expensive medical prosthetics. Most importantly, only about half of the Zero Units brought into the U.S. have completed SIV processing, despite the U.S. government’s timeline stating that SIVs must be processed within nine months.

Based on the extensive vetting the Zero Units had already undergone, Bakshi says FAMIL advocated for their prioritized SIV processing with federal stakeholders in the Biden administration, but was told “that the priority was to get more Afghans out of Afghanistan.”

Members of the Zero Units were initially brought into the country on two years of humanitarian parole, already renewed once in August 2023. When their parole expires next month, so will the work permits for about 4,500 members of the Zero Units.

Around 50 members of the elite units are women, according to a source familiar with the Zero Units. For them, securing legal status in the U.S. means they will not be forced to return to the Taliban’s Afghanistan, where they would be stripped of most of their rights and subject to reprisal.

Allies overseas also face dire consequences. Those who were waiting on our processing pipelines in Pakistan are now being deported to their homeland. U.S. allies and former Afghan government personnel inside Afghanistan remain at risk of reprisal killings or other punishment.

A relatively small group of about 1,500 allies are in Camp As Sayliyah, a base in Doha, Qatar, where they were being processed and often awaited travel for SIV and USRAP. Their futures are uncertain as the Trump administration sunsets Enduring Welcome and the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, which oversaw refugees’ travel and resettlement.

Around 1,200 residents are in the USRAP program, which was suspended by executive order on Jan. 20. The International Refugee Assistance Project has fought the suspension in court through Pacito v. Trump, but the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it intends to include refugees in its travel ban has effectively ended the hopes of resettlement for Afghan USRAP applicants.

One CAS resident, a USRAP applicant, said that base inhabitants are being informed that the contract for the camp expires on September 28. The resident also reported being told by staff that “if we are told to stop extending [residents’ visas], it means you will definitely be returned to Afghanistan.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for confirmation about the allegations.

AMERICA HAS BETRAYED AFGHAN ALLIES WHO FOUGHT BESIDE ME

For those who supported us, returning to the Taliban’s Afghanistan could be a death sentence.

If we fail as a nation to protect our allies today, we will find ourselves without friends in conflicts to come. Worse still, we will eliminate the single aspect of our 20-year battle for Afghans’ freedom that has yet to go up in flames: our promise, upheld by veterans, volunteers, and activists, to protect those who worked by our side.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.