Hasina Nasimi* had been counting down to 27 January 2025, the day she was booked on a flight with her husband and four children, to Denver, Colorado. Her brother, four sisters and mother were already there, rebuilding their lives after fleeing Afghanistan.

Nasimi’s father and brother were killed by the Taliban; her brother shot in 2018 because the family’s eldest son Mohammad had worked as a translator for American forces during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, the family had received threats and lived cautiously. When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, they knew they had to leave.

On 20 January 2025, a week before Nasimi’s planned departure from Qatar – where she and her family had been evacuated to by the US – President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee processing. Even though the family had been vetted and cleared for travel, the trip was cancelled overnight.

Now the family are among 1,100 Afghans, at least 700 of them women and children, who were evacuated by the US for resettlement. Stranded in Qatar, they now face the prospect of being sent to another war-torn nation: the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last month it was confirmed that the Trump administration was in talks to send the Afghans who had assisted US forces to the DRC, instead of the US resettlement they had been promised.

Nasimi’s family say they will not go to the DRC, a country they know nothing about, far from their family in Colorado, without an Afghan community, and where they do not speak the language. While returning home would put the family in grave danger, they say it is “better to die in Afghanistan than to go there”.

Like many others, Nasimi arrived in Qatar with her family in December 2024, shortly after giving birth to her fourth child. What they were told would be a brief stopover at As-Sayliyah camp has stretched into almost a year-and-a-half in limbo.

“People are going crazy here,” Nasimi says of the conditions in Qatar. “There is constant fear. Women have had premature births because of the trauma and uncertainty, and there have even been suicide attempts.”

Conditions in the camp have further deteriorated since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran. “We heard missiles overhead, and fragments from intercepted ones hitting our roof,” Nasimi says. People were terrified that being in a US facility could make them a potential Iranian target.

The As-Sayliyah camp had been used as a transit facility to process and clear families before resettlement, and was not designed to house them for months on end. Families live in containers inside a hangar, sharing toilet and kitchen facilities, with no proper schooling for children and no permission to leave.

Zahra Muhib arrived in Qatar as a 13-year-old, days before Trump took office. Her family meant to stay for a couple of days. Now 15, Zahra has already celebrated a second birthday in the camp, a place she describes as “hell”, and “a prison”.

Her parents served as officers in the Afghan armed forces while the US was in the country. But when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, several of their former colleagues were detained and never heard from again. The family relocated, but continued to receive threats. Finally, they were offered resettlement in the US under the P1 visa scheme.

Zahra had begun to hope and dream again, she says: of school, even university, and of a life she would be creating herself.

She now lives in a small container with her parents and 11-year-old brother. “I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety here, and I’m taking medication now. I barely sleep at night, and have developed a skin rash I can’t get rid of,” she says. “When I was finally allowed to go to the hospital with my dad, they put GPS trackers on us to ensure we wouldn’t escape.”

Zahra says she would go to the DRC if forced. “Going home is not an option because it’s not safe, so I’d go anywhere,” she says, adding that she is “tired of the uncertainty”.

While some informal classes had taken place in the camp, there was no structured education, Zahra says, and she spends most of her time alone, withdrawn. “I’ve been out of education for four years because of the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education,” she says. “Four years filled with sadness. I love all countries, but there’s no good education in the DRC, no good healthcare. My life has been on hold since the Taliban came and I don’t think I can start dreaming big in the DRC.”

Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of AfghanEvac, an NGO supporting Afghans who worked with American forces and helping them get to the US, says the government is failing to uphold its commitments to those who stood by it for two decades. “The only right solution is to bring them to America,” he says.

Sending families – and children such as Zahra – to the DRC raises serious concerns, he says.

“The DRC is in active conflict, and is already hosting over 600,000 refugees. It lacks the infrastructure, legal protections, or community support necessary for resettlement.”

The state department is also offering residents at As-Sayliyah financial incentives to return to Afghanistan and forfeit their chance to come to the US: $4,500 for the main applicant and $1,200 for each family member, VanDiver says.

But Zahra’s mother, Samargul, 34, says that going back to Afghanistan isn’t an option. The family also cannot seek refuge elsewhere: “Because we have an open immigration case with the US, no other country would even consider accepting us,” Zahra says.

“These families have risked their lives for the US. Sending them to the DRC is a huge injustice and not a fair, viable option,” a source familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous, says. “The state department under the Trump administration is desperate to get rid of this issue. Another 150,000 Afghans with links to the US are still stuck in Afghanistan and Pakistan and await processing,” the source adds.

Speaking by phone from Colorado, Nasimi’s brother Mohammad, 37, who arrived in the US in 2013, later served in the US army with deployments to the Middle East and is now a police officer, says he had started working for the US in Afghanistan to financially support his family. Since his brother’s killing in 2018 and continued Taliban threats, he had tried everything to bring them to safety.

In 2024, he finally managed to get his four sisters and mother to the US, but Nasimi, her husband and four children remained stranded abroad.

“I want Americans to know that their government has broken its promise,” he says.

For Zahra, the feeling is an all-consuming sadness. “I’m stuck here. My dreams are shattered. I don’t dare to dream again.”

*Name has been changed