From Kabul to New Jersey and beyond: A new life in the U.S. after the fall of Afghanistan

When Hili Chakhansuri arrived on a military base in South Jersey, having survived a dangerous, chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, she looked at the white tents and rolling woodlands and wondered what would happen to her.

Two years later she has some of the answers: Hard things. Good things. The unexpected.

She now has a husband. And a son, eight months old. She and her family live in Los Angeles, a place she hopes will be, at least for now, the end stop of a resettlement that bumped her from New Jersey to Oklahoma to Washington, D.C.

She started a foundation that’s providing online English classes to about 1,600 girls in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban has erased 20 years of progress on women’s rights. Those classes have expanded to include workshops on business, computers, and embroidery — the latter a useful craft, so young women can create something they can sell.

“I will never forget who I am, where I came from, how I came,” Chakhansuri, 33, said in an interview. “The goal is not to just make money and just enjoy life. The first goal is to try to help my people.”

Chakhansuri, a chief of staff in the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was among the 76,000 war allies brought to the United States when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Their work with the U.S military put their lives in danger.

The Philadelphia region took a leading role in what became the largest evacuation since the Vietnam War.

The airport served as the nation’s main arrival point for evacuees, welcoming more than 30,000 Afghans. About 11,000 newcomers lived temporarily on the grounds of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst before being resettled in cities around the country.

The size of the local Afghan community doubled to about 1,500 people, many of whom live near family or friends in Northeast Philadelphia.

In Afghanistan, the last two years have been severe, with women and girls excluded from public life and the country stalked by starvation.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme said last month that it had been forced to drop two million people from assistance there because of a massive funding shortfall, bringing to 10 million the number of those cut from support this year. About three million now receive emergency food help.

“We are obliged to choose between the hungry and the starving,” Hsiao-Wei Lee, WFP’s country director and representative in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

In this country, said Mustafa Babak, executive director of the Afghan-American Foundation, a national advocacy-and-research organization, the good news is the vast majority of evacuated Afghans are in long-term housing. Most children are in schools. Many evacuees have found jobs that match their skills.

Yet challenges abound around employment, isolation, and family separation, he said. Some people have struggled to find steady, reliable work, taking jobs behind the wheel at Uber or DoorDash to get fast money.

Many suffer from trauma and mental-health issues, having lost family, friends, jobs and homes in their flight from danger.

The biggest difficulty for many, Babak said, is their immigration status remains in limbo. In June the Biden administration extended the right of evacuees to stay in the U.S. for another two years, but Congress’ failure to pass the bipartisan Afghan Adjustment Act has left relocated American allies without a means to stay permanently in the United States.

“How can we make long-term investments in a home, for our children, for ourselves, if we don’t know if in two years we’ll be kicked out?” Babak said.

The lack of answer to that question frustrates veterans groups, humanitarian workers, and many elected officials who say the nation’s war allies need and deserve durable, final legal status.

Chakhansuri is among those who have secured permanent-resident status — and who worry for those in Afghanistan, a country of 40 million that’s slightly smaller than Texas.

She arrived at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on Aug. 26, 2021, having never heard the words New Jersey. And she came alone, lacking what in humanitarian circles is called an “American tie,” that is, a close contact in the United States who could assist in her resettlement.

» READ MORE: ‘I hope to see the stars soon’: A day in the life of an Afghan woman who fled to America | Opinion

On the base, she assigned herself a big task, as a means to both keep busy and be useful. She helped U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffers with translations, and handled interpretation during town-hall-style meetings, aided by her ability to speak six languages: Pashto, Dari, Baluchi, Urdu, Farsi, and English.

Helping others, she said at the time, brought her a sense of peace. And it fulfilled an important tenet of her Islamic faith — to provide aid to those in need.

From South Jersey, the government resettlement process delivered her to Oklahoma, which she soon realized was not for her. She found little Afghan community, and even less opportunity for a multilingual former government official. She moved to the Washington, D.C., area, getting work as an Afghan-support specialist with the city of Alexandria.

She faced challenges there, too. She needed an immigration attorney. A friend put her in touch with a California lawyer, Hari Heerekar, who, driven by faith and humanitarian impulses, was working to help Afghans. She got in touch after hearing that he was offering free consultations and low fees to evacuees.

“I was looking for an attorney. He was looking for a wife,” Chakhansuri laughed.

Today she and her husband are parents to a son, Muhammad Chakhansuri Heerekar.

Her husband’s income enables them to help girls and women in Afghanistan, a project she recently formalized into the Helay Chakhansuri Family Foundation. So far she’s hired 30 teachers to lead online English classes aimed at improving lives, educations, and incomes.

That’s the start, she said, not the end.

“We believe Afghan women are strong, and they can do more,” she said. “I’m sure more will come because my plan is bigger than this.”