\n<\/p>\n
When she finds it hard to focus, Nilab jots down her worries on slips of paper and pins them to her wall, a strategy she picked up in a seminar on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.<\/p>\n
She makes a mental note to deal with the issues at a scheduled time and then gets back to studying. That kept her sane when the U.S.-backed Afghan government was overthrown in 2021<\/a>, when the Taliban made it illegal for women to receive an education and when she left in July 2023 to study at the university\u2019s campus-in-exile in Qatar.<\/p>\n Now, in Nilab\u2019s dorm room in Doha, the little notes are stacking up. The Trump administration\u2019s shutdown of foreign aid and refugee admissions has left her terrified that she will be forced to return to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n There, she would be alone and deprived of any rights as a woman. Her hard-earned American-style education would be all but worthless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She imagines the worst. \u201cHow can girls go back to Afghanistan?\u201d said Nilab, 30, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. \u201cWhat will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death.\u201d<\/p>\n On Jan. 20, just as Nilab was planning her final project for her cybersecurity degree, President Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee resettlement<\/a>. The U.S. government had promised refugee status for her and her classmates, but Nilab\u2019s hopes of rejoining her family, who received asylum in the United States after the Taliban took over, were shattered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A month later, her university lost most of its funding when Mr. Trump dismantled<\/a> American foreign aid programs, to reorient spending in line with the administration\u2019s foreign policy goals. Funding was partly restored on March 16, the university\u2019s administration said, but only enough to operate into June. If the university closes, students will lose their housing, cafeteria meal plans and Qatari student visas.<\/p>\n A third thunderbolt came on March 15, with word that Mr. Trump was considering putting Afghanistan on a list<\/a> of countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the United States. Nilab does not know when she will ever see her family again, much less resettle with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As she and other Afghan students find their lives thrown into chaos, they are caught between the infinite possibilities promised by a university education and a crushing sense that there are no doors left to open.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought this long journey was finished,\u201d she said. \u201cI was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n With midterms approaching, Nilab has little time for her concerns. She has a presentation on arrays and algorithms due soon.<\/p>\n So she writes down her fears and pins them to her bulletin board.<\/p>\n The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as a coed liberal arts college, with instruction in English. It was designed to educate the next generation of Afghan leaders and innovators, imbued with Western ideals of justice, freedom and democracy. Students called their campus \u201cLittle America.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. government has invested more than $100 million in the university, and until last month, funding from the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., covered more than half of its operating costs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n (The agency has also provided scholarships for more than 100 Afghan women \u2014 including Nilab\u2019s sister \u2014 to study at universities in Oman and Qatar, among them the American University, and those students face a similar budget freeze.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When the American military hastily withdrew from the country in August 2021 and the Taliban returned to power, the American University was an obvious target. Militants rampaged through its buildings, scrawling graffiti that derided students as \u201cU.S.-trained infidel spies\u201d and \u201cwolves in sheep\u2019s skin.\u201d<\/p>\n Administrators worked to get more than 1,000 students out of the country as quickly as possible. Nearly 700 were evacuated to sister universities in Iraq, Kazakhstan and the United States.<\/p>\n The government of Qatar agreed to host<\/a> a temporary campus-in-exile. One hundred students arrived for the term starting in August 2022, and another 100 \u2014 Nilab\u2019s group \u2014 landed a year later.<\/p>\n Most of the students eventually left for the United States on so-called Priority 1 visas. When Mr. Trump took office in January, the remaining 35 were waiting for their final interviews and pre-departure medical checkups. Some already had airplane tickets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They now wander the near-empty halls of their temporary campus in a stunned daze, not knowing what will happen next.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought all our traumas were finally coming to an end, so we could start to breathe again,\u201d said Waheeda Babakarkhail, 23, a programmer who dreams of working as a white hat hacker, testing computer programs for security flaws.<\/p>\n \u201cI had accepted that I couldn\u2019t stay in Afghanistan,\u201d she said, \u201cbut now even the future I thought I would have has been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Aspirations have been derailed across the campus. Abbas Ahmadzai, 24, a business major, had a job in event management lined up in New York. Faisel Popalzai, 23, was hoping to get a job at Microsoft. He developed an A.I.-assisted computer program that can identify potentially fraudulent financial transactions. The app, called Hawks.Ai, won the Microsoft Hackathon last year in Doha.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He said it made no sense for the United States to slam its doors shut.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump complains that the Americans left valuable military equipment behind when they left Afghanistan,\u201d Mr. Popalzai said. \u201cWell, he\u2019s about to leave another valuable investment behind: our minds, paid for by the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n If the university is forced to close in June, the students face an alarming prospect.<\/p>\n They will lose their student visas and their right to stay in Qatar within weeks. If they cannot find a Qatari employer to sponsor them, or obtain a job or scholarship offer in another country, they will have to return to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They are keenly aware that \u201cthe way we were educated is in contradiction to everything the Taliban represent,\u201d said Hashmatullah Rahimi, 24, a business major. \u201cWe were taught to speak freely, to be independent. Not a single person in the Taliban government wants that.\u201d<\/p>\n The university\u2019s administrators say there has been no documented persecution of its graduates since the Taliban takeover. But students fear they would be viewed as a threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf we go back,\u201d Mr. Popalzai said, \u201cthey will label us as spies, sent to infect Afghans against the Taliban with our American ideology.\u201d<\/p>\nPiece of America<\/h2>\n
Sense of Dread<\/h2>\n