Ten weeks after escaping Kabul, a women's rights activist found herself in Texas without food, money and three of her kids
After the U.S. evacuated her from Kabul, a women's rights activist found herself in Texas minus food, money and three of her kids. How'd she slip through the cracks?
Roshan Mashal had been fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan for more than a decade when the Taliban took over in August. Their lives in peril, she and 18 other prominent activists targeted by the Taliban were given seats on a flight and airlifted with their families out of Kabul. Their evacuation was arranged with the aid of women’s rights organizations and the State Department.
Ten weeks after she escaped to safety in the U.S. as part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, Mashal found herself out of food and money in a Texas apartment, with no access to health care or transportation and separated from three of her children.
Mashal, her husband and her children were among the more than 76,000 evacuees who poured into the U.S. after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Her family’s bumpy first year in the U.S. highlights the cracks in the resettlement system that have left whole families stuck in hotel rooms for months, overwhelmed by the paperwork needed to start their lives in America.
“We are struggling with this complicated system,” Mashal said. “There is one caseworker with 60 clients.”
Women’s rights leader describes rocky arrival in the U.S. after fleeing AfghanistanJune 20, 202202:32The case worker at her local resettlement agency was swamped by Afghans needing assistance in the Dallas area. Most of the families had fled Afghanistan with only a single small bag, many not speaking English or knowing how to apply for Social Security or Medicaid or register their kids for school.
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