After suspending a U.S. resettlement program for Afghans who participated in the war effort
President Trump is considering sending up to 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a humanitarian worker familiar with the plan said Tuesday.
This group includes interpreters for the U.S. military, former members of the Afghan special forces, and families of these service members. More than 400 children are among them.
These Afghans have been living in precarious conditions in Qatar for over a year. They were transferred there after being evacuated by the United States for their own safety, due to their support for U.S. forces during the war against the Taliban, which began in 2001.
Shawn VanDiver, president of the NGO AfghanEvac, said he was briefed on the plan concerning the Congo by State Department officials. According to him, Afghans would have the choice between returning to live under the Taliban regime or being sent to the Congo, a country gripped by one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
More than 600,000 refugees, mostly from the Central African Republic and Rwanda, are currently in the Congo, according to the United Nations. Human rights advocates say the country is unable to accommodate more, especially given its ongoing conflict with neighboring Rwanda, which has led to even greater population displacement following attacks on refugee camps.
“We believe they simply want to send these people back to Afghanistan, where they know they will face certain death,” said Mr. VanDiver. “They know Afghans won’t accept the DRC. Why go from the world’s first refugee crisis to the second?” “These discussions highlight the ongoing tension between the United States’ obligation to Afghans, who face grave danger of reprisals for aiding American forces during the war, and the Trump administration’s commitment to limiting immigration.
Many points remain unclear regarding the plans being developed, including whether all Afghans will be sent to the Congo or if agreements are being finalized in other countries. Negotiations of this kind have stalled in the past.
A spokesperson for the Congolese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, accused the Biden administration of acting hastily in welcoming Afghan allies to the United States. He asserted that the Trump administration was working to find solutions for the remaining Afghans. “The American people have paid the price for the irresponsible way in which hundreds of millions of Afghans were welcomed to the United States,” he said. “Our priority now is to restore transparency and accountability by promoting responsible and voluntary resettlement solutions.”
For months, U.S. diplomats have been urging African countries to take in Afghans. But negotiations have failed in many countries, according to Mr. VanDiver and diplomats familiar with the discussions.
More than 190,000 Afghans who participated in the U.S. effort settled in the United States between August 2021 and mid-2025, after successfully passing background checks.
But a group of more than 1,100 Afghans is being housed at a former U.S. military base in Qatar, known as Camp As Sayliyah. The U.S. government brought them there in late 2024, promising them a pathway to resettlement in the United States if they passed further vetting.
Qatar was supposed to be a simple stopover, but many of these Afghans found themselves in a precarious situation after the Trump administration ended policies that would have allowed their resettlement in the United States.
“They expected to be resettled in the United States within weeks,” said Rina Amiri, a former senior diplomat specializing in human rights in Afghanistan. “Who is going to fight alongside the United States when it betrays those who supported us?”
The negotiations in Congo follow behind-the-scenes pressure from the Qatari government to find a new host country for the remaining Afghan refugees.
With The New York Times
