An advocacy group has reported that many Afghan refugees, who helped the United States fight the Taliban and were promised new lives in the country, might be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Trump administration suspended their U.S resettlement.
The statement came from Shawn VanDiver, president of San Diego-based advocacy group AfghanEvac, who said he was briefed on the plan by officials who work at or is in close contact with the State Department. The New York Times was the first to report on the plan.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is currently experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 600,000 refugees displaced after decades of armed conflict.
“There’s no jobs. They’re in the middle of a civil war. It’s not a place for Afghans,” VanDiver told NBC News.
VanDiver alleged Trump was intentionally offering the Afghan refugees an option worse than returning to Afghanistan.
“This is insane,” he said “you do not solve the world’s number one refugee crisis by dumping it into the world’s number two.”
Returning to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan could put the refugees at risk of persecution, imprisonment, or death under the Islamic fundamentalist regime.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and its US embassy is yet to comment on the issue. The State Department declined to respond to a comment on Tuesday.
A spokesperson of the Trump administration previously denied any plans to force refugees back to Afghanistan and insisted that moving them from Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar to third world countries was ‘a positive resolution’. The spokesperson also said the refugees were not properly vetted under the Biden administration, a statement refuted by AfghanEvac and other advocacy groups. Most of the people at the camp had been approved for US settlement after extensive security screening, more than 400 of them being children.
Van Diver spoke of the severe toll on the mental health of refugees due to the ongoing uncertainty of the situation.
“They’re reaching their breaking point.”
