President Donald Trump is in talks to send to the Congo as many as 1,100 exiled Afghans who helped the Americans in the war against the Taliban, the New York Times reported this week.
The group includes interpreters for the U.S. military, former members of the Afghan Special Operations forces and family members of American service members. More than 400 children are among them.
The Afghans have been living in limbo in Qatar for over a year. They were taken there after being evacuated for their own safety because they supported American forces during the war against the Taliban that began in 2001.
Shawn VanDiver, the president of the aid group AfghanEvac, told the paper he had been briefed on the Congo plan by State Department officials. He said that the Afghans would be given a choice between returning to live under the Taliban or being sent to Congo, which is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
More than 600,000 refugees, mostly from the Central African Republic and Rwanda, are currently in Congo, according to the United Nations. Human rights activists say that the country is not equipped to take in more in the midst of fighting with neighbouring Rwanda, that has displaced even more people because of attacks on refugee camps.
“We think this is just them wanting to send these people back to Afghanistan, where they know they will face certain death,” said Mr. VanDiver.
“They know that Afghans are not going to accept the D.R.C. Why would you go from the world’s No. 1 refugee crisis to the world’s No. 2 refugee crisis?”, he told the paper.
The discussions highlight the longstanding tension between America’s obligation to Afghans who face retaliation for helping US forces during the war, and the Trump administration’s pledge to curtail immigration.