A pregnant 25-year-old California woman who remains trapped in Afghanistan described her ordeal in an interview with VOA, in which she wondered whether she would ever make it back home and that she fears for her life.
Nasria, who spoke to VOA on condition that only her first name be used out of concerns for her safety, told the outlet she traveled to Afghanistan in June to marry her longtime boyfriend, an Afghan national. Following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country, the newlyweds tried to evacuate but were unsuccessful.
“There’s been days where, you know, I think to myself … am I going to make it home? Am I going to end up living here? Am I going to end up dying here?” she told VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb.
In the desperate evacuation effort that followed the Taliban takeover, over 124,000 civilians managed to leave the country, including some 6,000 American citizens. The Biden administration estimates between 100 and 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan.
“Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave. Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan,” President Joe Biden said in an address Tuesday. “The bottom line: [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.”
Private groups and former military personnel, who have stepped up to raise funds and get citizens and allies out, estimate that the number of U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan is in the thousands, not hundreds.
Nasria described the chaotic evacuation effort, telling VOA that, “it was so hard to just get on a flight. There was a couple of days where we had to sleep on streets.”
She said her flight was canceled when evacuations were thrown into chaos by a deadly suicide bombing on Aug. 26, which claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members, 3 Britons, and around 170 Afghans. Nasria said she coordinated with U.S. State Department officials on alternate evacuation arrangements, but these fell through in the final dramatic days of the airlift.
By Tom Ozimek
