Day 1,825 - Karim's Story

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 who arrived at the entrance. He did that job for almost four more years under the new government, until the ruling group shut the organization down on May 31, 2025.

Asked when he understood his old life was over, Karim did not name a day in 2021. He named the day they closed the organization.

Fifteen years earned him a certificate of appreciation, which he still has, and he said he was proud of it. It also earned him the memory of an American who came through the compound and would say the same thing to Karim and to the gardener every time he passed them, which was that water is the savior of life and should not be wasted. That American said something else Karim has kept as well. Those who work honestly with us earn their place.

He applied for a Special Immigrant Visa in April 2022. No U.S. embassy operates in Afghanistan, so the case had to be transferred to Pakistan, and the family had to follow it. Getting them there cost more than ten thousand dollars. He auctioned his land and the contents of the house for very little and borrowed the rest from friends and relatives.

Four years after his SIV application in April 2022, Karim finished his interview. Then, only weeks after that step was complete, he received a letter stating that he could not enter the United States due to a presidential proclamation that paused SIV issuance. Nothing was flagged as wrong on his file.

The family is in Pakistan now, where he is permitted to go to the market for basic necessities and not much else, and where the women in the family are permitted none of it. His children are at home with no school to attend. Traveling to collect documents, Karim was detained and questioned by police in Islamabad, and because his Pakistani visa had expired he was made to pay them a large sum. 

In Afghanistan, the family paid rent by working, he said. Here they live by borrowing.

"Some Americans think of us as a security threat," Karim said, "while we risked our lives carrying out U.S. missions and served honestly, shoulder to shoulder."

His children ask him one question, and he said it is the one he cannot answer.

When will this waiting end?

Fifteen years of honest work earned him a certificate. It has not yet provided him the fulfillment of the promise.

Support allies like Karim as they wait for the promise to be fulfilled: https://give.nooneleft.org/campaign/831559/donate