In brief
As aid and refugee resettlement pause, Afghan students in Qatar express deepening fears about their future, believing they risk danger if forced to return home.
---When she faces distractions, Nilab channels her anxious thoughts onto slips of paper, pinning them to the wall of her dorm room. This method, learned during a mental health seminar at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, has become her way of coping as she studies in Qatar. The upheaval began with the fall of the U.S.-backed Afghan government in 2021 when the Taliban outlawed education for women, ultimately prompting her departure to Qatar in July 2023.Now, with the Trump administration's suspension of foreign aid and refugee admissions, Nilab is engulfed in fear of being sent back to Afghanistan, where her rights as a woman would be stripped away. “How can girls go back to Afghanistan?” she asks. The specter of forced marriages, violence, and death looms over her thoughts. Nilab, 30, who requested to use only her first name for safety, had been pursuing a degree in cybersecurity when an executive order postponed her hopes for refugee resettlement. When President Trump signed this order on January 20, the prospect of reuniting with her family in the U.S. completely vanished. With her education in jeopardy, the reality facing Nilab and her classmates is increasingly bleak as they navigate their lives in a foreign land, haunted by the possibility of returning to a hostile environment.
