Sixth Year, Entry Three - Zahra's Story

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.

From January 2021, Zahra was an advisor on a U.S.-funded program strengthening Afghanistan's justice system. She worked with prosecutors, judges, corrections personnel, and intelligence officials in and around Kabul, implementing a case management system inside Afghan courts. A file entering a court would be tracked and assigned, then answered, rather than lost.

"I believe that women, children, and every citizen deserve justice, dignity, and equal protection under the law," Zahra said.

Her American supervisor stressed a standard of professionalism and accuracy in unsafe conditions, and his letter of recommendation later described her service as faithful and valuable to the U.S. government. She has carried her contract and her ID card across every border since.

For days after the fall of Kabul, she tried to leave through the airport. The twenty-minute trip took five hours through the crowds, and she made it daily. On August 26, 2021, the tragic bombing at Abbey Gate killed 13 Americans and approximately 170 Afghans close to where she stood. She feared she would not survive it. She went home, and stayed home, and began doing everything she could to gain her Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

She applied for an SIV in March 2022. Chief of Mission approval came in June 2024. In July 2025, as the threats against her family grew, she crossed into Pakistan with her husband and their small son, and her case was transferred to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad within the month. Her file is not missing anything.

So the woman who spent her career making sure cases moved is inside one that does not. 

She and her husband wake in a country where immigrants struggle to find legal work, necessitating funds for rent, food, medicine, and sustenance for a household with a three-year-old. Emergency assistance from No One Left Behind has reached them three times, covering rent and food at the hardest moments.

"It reminded us that we had not been forgotten," Zahra said.

Her ambition points to completing the process, working again, supporting her family through her own effort, and giving back to the community that receives them.

"Many people believe that once an Afghan ally escapes Afghanistan, the danger is over," Zahra said.

She once made sure that no file entering an Afghan courthouse would sit unanswered. Hers has been answered by silence since June of 2024. She is asking only for the process to be applied fairly to the people waiting.

"For my family, a timely interview is the path to safety, stability, and the chance to rebuild our lives with dignity,” Zahra said.

“Leaving Afghanistan did not end my family's suffering. It only changed the location of our struggle."

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