US weighs plan to move Afghans from Qatar to third country
The Trump administration is weighing whether to move more than 1,000 Afghan allies who assisted America’s war effort, along with relatives of U.S. service members, from a U.S. base in Qatar to a third country, U.S. officials and advocates said. The discussions include Congo as an option, though the U.S. government has not confirmed which nations are being considered.
Advocates said U.S. officials told them that negotiations with Congo are being discussed to take Afghans who have been in limbo at the base in Doha for roughly the past year. “You cannot call a choice voluntary when the two options are Congo and the Taliban, civil war or an oppressor who wants to kill you,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, during a virtual press conference.
VanDiver said officials informed him and other groups that there were discussions between the United States and Congo about resettling the people held in Qatar at Camp As-Sayliyah. That camp includes 1,100 refugees, among them Afghans who served as interpreters and in Special Operations Forces roles, as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active duty U.S. military members.
The State Department said Wednesday that it is working to identify options to “voluntarily” resettle the refugees in a third country, but it did not confirm which nations were being discussed. VanDiver also said an alternative being offered to the refugees is to return to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal or even death at the hands of the Taliban for working alongside the U.S. during the two-decade war.
A person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said the State Department told them the United States was looking at sending the Afghans at the Qatar base to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and that Wednesday the refugees were told there was no final deal on where they would go. The discussions were reported earlier by The New York Times.
Jon Finer, who served as deputy national security adviser to then-President Joe Biden, said the base in Doha “was always intended as a transit platform. It was never designed to hold families for months or years, which is the situation that people are currently in,” adding that the intent was to honor a wartime commitment. Finer and other former U.S. officials and refugee advocates warned of the risks of sending Afghans to Congo, citing the country’s deep humanitarian crisis, according to U.N. officials described by AP.
Advocates also warned that Congo has been a target of resettlement deals tied to the Trump administration’s broader approach to migrants. AP reported that Congo is one of at least eight African nations that were paid millions in controversial deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own. AP also reported that Congo has been among the countries most affected by Trump-era aid and trade policies, and that aid workers say American aid cuts have led to avoidable deaths in the conflict-hit region.
Some advocates and former service members said they worry the refugees could face renewed danger if they are moved to Congo. Sean Jamshidi, an Afghan American who served in the U.S. military including a stint in Congo, said he was concerned about his brother possibly being sent from the Doha base. “I saw the security situation and what it looked like there. I saw the displacement camps. … I stood in places where the United Nations has counted the dead,” Jamshidi said.
Refugees said they have received limited information as they wait. Negina Khalili, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan who fled during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, told AP she has been waiting to hear about the resettlement status of her father, brother and stepmother since they arrived at the Doha base in January 2025, days before Trump suspended the refugee program after he returned to the White House. Khalili said she spoke to her family about reports that they could be sent to Congo and that U.S. officials at the camp have been suggesting refugees go back to Afghanistan and offering them money to do so.
AP reported that the discussions come more than a year after President Donald Trump paused his predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program through executive orders aimed at cracking down on immigration, leaving thousands of refugees stranded at locations worldwide, including the base in Qatar.