'Betrayal': US to close Qatar camp housing Afghans awaiting US resettlement Submitted by Yasmine El-Sabawi on Thu, 01/15/2026 - 17:38 The move is seen as a disowning of allies who 'laid their lives on the line' for the US and Nato mission in Afghanistan Former US President George W Bush addresses US military personnel at Camp As-Sayliyah in Qatar, which served as the base for his 'Coalition of the Willing' to invade Iraq, on 5 June 2003 (Luke Frazza/AFP) Off Lawmakers and advocacy groups said they have received word from the US State Department that it will be closing a military base-turned-transit camp in the Qatari desert where it is currently housing at least 1,000 Afghans awaiting paperwork and transfers to move to the US. The State Department has not made any public announcements on the decision, but a State Department spokesperson confirmed in a written statement to Middle East Eye that the US will “move ahead with relocating all Afghans off the platform by March 31 and fully demobilize CAS by the end of this fiscal year”, using an acronym to refer to Camp As-Sayliyah. CAS was where most Afghans were evacuated in 2021, after the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and two decades of war, as well as a swift Taliban takeover. Some were evacuated to the camp as recently as January 2025, just days before US President Donald Trump took office. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Services Commitee, Gregory Meeks, said in a statement late on Wednesday, that closing CAS is "the latest reckless step by the Trump administration to dismantle every remaining pathway for these allies to safely relocate in the United States. It is a profound betrayal of those who stood with us in Afghanistan, and of America's word". He urged the White House to "ensure that no Afghan at CAS is involuntarily sent to Afghanistan or another third country... [because] the world is watching". The State Department told MEE that CAS was “a legacy of the Biden Administration’s attempt to move as many Afghans to America as possible - in many cases, without proper vetting”. "It is not appropriate or humane to keep this group of individuals on the platform indefinitely. Moving the CAS population to a third country is a positive resolution that provides safety." 'Complete madness' The camp is what's referred to as a "lily-pad", meaning the US government has already put everyone who is housed there through at least two levels of screening, with the full intention of resettling them in the US under various visas. "Roughly 800 of them are in the refugee pathway and already have approved pathways to the United States. More than half of those 800 individuals are women. More than 150 are immediate family members of US military servicemembers," Shawn VanDiver of the advocacy coalition #AfghanEvac said in a press release. "This is not a handoff. It is a retreat from obligation. The United States has a legal, moral, and strategic responsibility to complete the process it began," he added. 'This is not a handoff. It is a retreat from obligation. The United States has a legal, moral, and strategic responsibility' - Shawn VanDiver, #AfghanEvac The State Department has not yet identified the third countries it could send these Afghan nationals to, and no country is known to have made any such agreement with the US. "They did not migrate on their own, nor did they choose their current location. They were relocated by the US government as part of an official evacuation and protection effort," VanDiver said. Haris Tarin, the former chief of staff of Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), which was the name of the US evacuation mission in August 2021, described the situation to MEE as "complete madness" on Thursday. "The majority of individuals [at CAS] believed in the US mission in Afghanistan. They actually helped implement them, the US mission and the Nato mission. These were people who bought into what America was trying to achieve in Afghanistan. They laid their lives on the line," he said. "And what does that say to any other country that we need support from in the future, when we say, 'We'll come, we'll use and abuse you, and then you can risk your life by joining us, but we will not actually in any way, support you after we leave'." Politicisation The announcement about closing CAS came on the same day the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled, "Biden’s Afghan Parolee Program - A Trojan Horse with Flawed Vetting and Deadly Consequences". Some 70,000 Afghans have come to the US since 2021, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Another 180,000 people are waiting to come to the US under a special immigrant visa (SIV), and there are estimated to be another 65,000 refugees and 15,000 Afghans just waiting on family reunification, according to #AfghanEvac. Republicans argued on Wednesday that Afghans with criminal records and terrorist sympathies had made it into the US because of rushed and uncoordinated procedures under the previous administration. 'Scapegoating': Thousands of Afghans thrust into uncertainty after DC shooting Read More » "The airlift from Afghanistan was the largest in US history," Texas Senator John Cornyn said. The OAW programme, he insisted, "was created as an end run around Congress, and the Biden administration, in the process, let in tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans into the country. These individuals had no honourable military service or sacrifice that warranted special treatment. In fact, most of them had no immigration status at all, which is why they were admitted under this authority known as parole." US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) defines "parole" as a discretionary decision when people may otherwise be inadmissible until normal stipulations. Craig Adelman, the deputy inspector general for audits at DHS, who testified in front of the committee, said the department "did not have a formal screening and vetting process in place" when the OAW programme began. Until December 2021, there were no in-person interviews conducted, he explained - just the screening of biographical information submitted by each individual. "There was missing information from the OAW population, including first, last names and date of birth. There was about 11 to 12,000 that did not know their date of birth," Adelman said. "The department requested identification, but not all Afghans had formal identification, such as a passport. We found over 30,000 that did not have formal identification." Tarin acknowledged that the OAW programme could have been improved, but told MEE that the process was like "building the plane as you're flying it", and compared the events to the infamous evacuation from Saigon. "We were dealing with a crisis," he said. "Anyone who says that our vetting process was not robust is politicising the issue." "Of the thousands of Afghans that came into this country... there were only six arrested for any type of criminal activity. That is statistically insignificant as it pertains to other communities," Tarin told MEE. Several immigrant advocacy groups submitted statements into the hearing record supporting continued Afghan admission into the US. Refugees International called the Trump administration's suspension of visas for Afghans this month - and the risk they may end up back in Afghanistan - "unconscionable". "These actions do not make our country safer. They are tearing families apart" Immigration crackdown Just minutes after Trump was inaugurated on 20 January last year, hundreds of Afghan refugees set for resettlement in the US had their hopes crushed after they received notice that their flights were being suspended. MEE  was able to confirm at the time through its sources that Afghan refugees reported receiving notices of a pause in the evacuation process. Among the slew of executive orders signed by Trump, on the very day he took office, was a blanket suspension of all refugee admissions. Some Afghans told to attend government check-ins on Christmas, New Year's Day Read More » The move left thousands of Afghans already displaced in third countries with little to no recourse, given that going back home is not an option for many of them. In May, the Trump administration eliminated the Operation Enduring Welcome programme - an interagency pipeline built to continue relocating vetted Afghan wartime allies after the initial evacuation - as well as the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, which supported SIV for Afghans. In late November, after an Afghan national and former CIA asset shot two members of the National Guard in Washington, DC, the Trump administration said it would reinterview the refugees admitted to the US under the presidency of Joe Biden - potentially up to 80,000 Afghans. While the Trump administration has not officially ended SIV processing, the moves have drastically slowed processing for tens of thousands of applicants. The administration also stripped Afghans of so-called temporary protected status earlier this summer, leaving more than 11,000 Afghans who are in the US stuck in legal limbo. Those who have overstayed visas or were unable to successfully file for an adjustment of status in the US are subject to forcible removal by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Such encounters and arrests have many times proven violent around the country. Chaotic withdrawal The first Trump administration campaigned on a pledge to finish "endless wars" and brokered a deal with the Taliban known as the Doha agreement in 2020. Following 17 years of bloody war and various failed attempts at diplomacy, the deal was signed early that year by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, with former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo serving as a witness. The Taliban agreed that Afghanistan would not be used by groups like al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Khorasan (Isis-K), or other militant groups to conduct attacks that "threaten the security of the United States". In return, the US pledged to reduce its number of troops in Afghanistan, followed by a full Nato withdrawal. In April 2021, Biden announced that he would follow through on the agreement of his predecessor and that the United States would withdraw from Afghanistan. In August, the US fully withdrew in a weeks-long evacuation that is largely remembered for stunning scenes from Kabul airport, where tens of thousands of Afghans desperately tried to secure passage out of the country alongside American forces. In the process, Isis-K carried out a suicide bombing at the airport that killed hundreds of Afghans awaiting evacuation, as well as 13 US soldiers. The Afghanistan withdrawal was roundly condemned by serving foreign service officers , Democrats, and Republicans as chaotic and disastrous. Arash Azizzada, co-founder of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, told MEE that it is Washington's responsibility to “continue to repair the harm”. “Money or spending was never really a concern when the United States was fighting war for 20 years - a war that brought the Taliban back to power, that set endemic corruption, that killed scores, tens of thousands of civilians,” he said. “So I'm really not persuaded by any of [their] arguments. The US went to war. It must now continue to repair the harm, regardless of [the] administration, because the harm that was done was also done by both Republicans and Democrats.” Afghanistan Washington News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0