Media Release

Partnership with REACT DC brings therapy in Dari, Pashto, and English to one of the largest SIV communities in the United States. ARLINGTON, Va. – No One Left Behind provides funding for mental health services and treatment for a newly launched initiative with REACT DC for Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders in Northern Virginia. Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, and Prince William counties are home to one of the largest concentrations of Afghan wartime allies in the country.

Day and Night Have Traded Places Day 1,841 Eight days after Kabul fell, Roshan applied for his visa. It was August 23, 2021. The gunfire that had interrupted him dressing for work on the fifteenth had already signaled his old life was over, and the airport crowds had already turned him back. So he did the next right thing available to a methodical man. He filed for his Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), and he believed the wait would be short. From April 2019 until the fall, Rosha

A Partner for America Day 1,838 The war was five years old in 2006. Most of the allies in this series had not yet begun their service, and Rangin was already running a company alongside the Americans. He was not hired help. He founded an Afghan construction company and served as its president, and from 2006 to 2011 his firm carried out projects with the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan Province. His days started early, when he was supervising the sites, coordina

The Tankers were Burning Day 1,836 The tankers were already burning when Ehsan reached them. The convoy had been ambushed on a fuel run across the country, and the wrecks were blocking the road, so he drove past the fire without knowing whether another attack was coming. He named that as the day that frightened him most. For the day he was proud of, he gave a category instead of a date, which was every convoy that arrived with all of its trucks intact on roads that were under

The Man Who Kept the Warehouse Day 1,835 When Ismail applied for his visa, he thought it might take three or four months. His daughter was two years old then. She is seven now, and she has never been to school. Ismail did not carry a rifle or walk a patrol. From 2010 to 2011 he was a stock keeper in Mazar-i-Sharif, working under the U.S. contractor ANHAM. When the work crews came back from the corps headquarters and the district commands with lists of what they were missing.

The Photography They Found Day 1,833 Safi kept everything from his years of service. He has his employment records, identification documents, certificates, and the photographs with the people he worked beside. Other allies burned their papers to survive, but he carried his through everything. "They are the reminders of the people I worked with and the commitment I made during my service," he said. The work those records describe ran through the busiest American base in Afghan

Homework for America Day 1,832 Every day in Pakistan, Jalil does his homework for a country that has not yet let him in. He attends a language course, two hours with the travel there and back. When he is at home, he teaches his wife English for an hour because their newborn keeps her from attending a course herself. He takes his four-year-old for a walk, sometimes to the park near the house. He helps with the housework, studies his lessons in the evenings, and reads other boo

The Man Who Burned His Proof Day 1,830 Some allies carried their proof out of Afghanistan. Martin burned his. "For security reasons, I destroyed everything," he said. The papers, the ID, anything that tied him to the Americans. He owned no smartphone in those years, so there were never photos. A week after Kabul fell, he moved his family into hiding, and before that he made certain that no document in his possession could be used against him. Keeping proof and keeping alive h

She Was at Work Day 1,829 On the morning Kabul fell, Zahra was at work in a courthouse. While the government collapsed, she was at her desk in a Kabul primary court, doing the day's tasks of a person who believed the system she was building would outlast the war. The reports arrived, and the atmosphere turned within minutes, and everyone in the office understood all at once that the work itself had become the danger. She left immediately. The life on that desk did not resume.

The Photograph in the Trunk Day 1,828 In a trunk among his wife's things, Zalmay keeps a photograph of his American supervisor. He carried it out of his home district, through the years of moving, and across the border into Pakistan. Today, It is still with him. "To me he was a sign of trust and commitment," Zalmay said. From 2010 to 2012, Zalmay served as a guard with U.S. forces at an American base in eastern Afghanistan. He did the work in the belief that America would nev

Six years before Kabul Fell Day 1,827 Ray applied for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) in October 2015, six years before Kabul fell. He had earned it over three years as an interpreter for the U.S. Army, from September 2010 to September 2013, working across provinces in the south and the west. He interpreted during military operations and patrols, and in the daily back-and-forth between American units and the Afghans working with them. Before he was allowed to start, he sat th

Two Pieces of Paper Karim was on duty at the compound the day Kabul fell, and the next morning he went back. Nothing was missing from his file, and he had spent fifteen years making sure of it. He was the security guard at an American-funded organization there, and the organization did not close in August 2021. It stayed open. So he kept doing what he had been doing since July 18, 2010, controlling who came in and who went out, tracking the vehicles, screening the people wh

The Empty Passport On November 10, 2025, Nasir sat for his visa interview and left his family's passports at the embassy. He started with American companies in 2007 as a welder, and later he ran a warehouse. There were training stages and examinations to pass, and the work got more particular as the years went on. Among everything across those fourteen years, the job he names as his proudest was on the sleeping and comfort areas for U.S. troops, repairing and arranging them

The Two Calls Two phone calls tell Khan's story, and they came from opposite directions. The first reached him in Mazar-i-Sharif in the days after Kabul fell, when he dared to switch his phone back on. It was his American captain, the officer he had served beside in Kandahar, calling from the far side of the world with two questions: What's happening? Are you safe? Khan was, barely, and only because he kept moving. That captain has stayed in touch ever since, and has writte

Time is Gold Five times in every twenty-four hours, Rafi checks his visa case. The check takes a minute; the status has not moved. Some hours pass, and he checks again. Every day he also watches the news for any announcement that the United States has begun issuing Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) again. His whole life now fits inside the space between those two habits. It is a strange life for this particular man, because Rafi's defining trait was never patience. "Tim

The call reached Rashid at eleven at night, which in Afghanistan in 2007 meant someone had worked hard to place it. One of the company's flatbed trucks had broken down in Shah Joy district, on the Kabul to Kandahar highway. The military convoy escorting it had moved the container onto another truck and continued the mission. The driver was still out there. Rashid was the transport manager, and bringing that man back was his job. He told the deputy manager, put together a team

The School in the House Farida's Story Every morning in a small rented home in Pakistan, class begins. The teacher is Farida, and the students are her two sons. There is no school because the family cannot afford one, so she built one out of what she had, which is herself. "I am a wife, a mother, and a person who believes in education and hard work," she said. That belief has a long history for Farida. From September 2011 to May 2013, she worked as a finance assistant on U.S.

The Man at the Gate Abdul's Story There is no single dramatic day in Abdul's story, and that absence is the story. Other allies can point to a warning that stopped an attack or a mission that went wrong. Abdul's service did not work that way. From late 2010 to the end of 2012, he was an ASG guard at an American forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, employed through an Afghan security company contracted to the U.S. Army. The work was maintaining the perimeter, ensur

$100,000 initiative funds education and training for Afghan and Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa holders; applications open July 13 and close July 27. NEW YORK and ARLINGTON, Va., July 13, 2026 – No One Left Behind (NOLB) and The Afghan Future Fund (AFF) are now accepting applications for the second round of the America's Allies Scholarship Program (AASP), a $100,000 initiative funding education and training for Afghan and Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders living in the

My name is Karim. Years ago, I made a decision that seemed small at the time — I accepted a job as an interpreter with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. I was young. I didn’t realize that choice would follow me for the rest of my life. Working as an interpreter was nothing like people imagine. We weren’t sitting behind desks translating documents. We were out front — walking through villages, valleys, and mountain roads alongside U.S. troops. We were often the