US considers relocating Afghan evacuees from Qatar to DR Congo

Plan affects 1,100 Afghans housed at former US base since 2021 withdrawal, including interpreters and former commandos.

The United States government is in discussions to relocate approximately 1,100 Afghan evacuees currently residing at a former US military base in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to AfghanEvac, an advocacy group assisting former US allies.¹²

The Afghans, who include interpreters who worked for the US military, Afghan military commandos, and family members of US soldiers, were evacuated to the As Sayliyah camp in Qatar following the withdrawal of US-led international forces from Afghanistan in 2021.¹² Around 400 of those at the camp are children.¹²

Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, said his organization suspects Washington intends to use the Congo proposal as a means to ultimately return the evacuees to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.¹ The group characterised the plan as an attempt to "manufacture a refusal" by offering relocation to what it termed "an active war zone," anticipating that the Afghans would decline and thereby provide justification for their return to Afghanistan.¹²

"You do not relocate vetted wartime allies, more than 400 of them children, from American custody into a country in the middle of its own collapse," AfghanEvac stated.¹

The Democratic Republic of Congo has 6.9 million internally displaced people, according to UN figures, with particularly intense fighting between the army and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in the eastern part of the country.²

The US State Department declined to confirm that Congo was under consideration as a destination but stated that the United States was examining options for "voluntary resettlement" from the As Sayliyah camp in Qatar.²