Social Issues

Afghan siblings, wounded in Kabul airport bombing, seek new life in Northern Virginia

Mina, 8, and her brother Faisal, 13, navigated a tricky route to arrive in Alexandria. Now they must build a new life, while mourning the one they left behind.

By Antonio Olivo
December 17, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. EST

Mina Stanekzai, 8, strapped on a princess backpack, slipped on her pink shoes that light up when she walks, and — her leg still injured from a suicide bomb — bounced out of her aunt’s Northern Virginia apartment for her first day of school in America. ... “How are you?” she said with a heavy Dari accent, practicing some English that might impress her teachers while her aunt, Ferishta Stanekzai, drove to her new school. ... “I am fine,” Mina answered herself.

It was a simple American pleasantry for a girl whose life was anything but. Mina is one of the hundreds of Afghans who have settled into the Washington region as part of an airlift out of Afghanistan that launched the greatest influx of refugees the United States has seen since the end of the Vietnam War.

Almost all have been classified as “humanitarian parolees,” entitling them to some federal aid with no path for U.S. citizenship and no guarantee for long-term support in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

[Afghan refugees in D.C. area face their next hurdle: An affordable housing crunch]

And they carry tales of trauma that, refugee groups say, will take years to unravel: the chaotic scenes outside the Kabul airport where many were beaten by Taliban fighters while trying to get to a plane, the danger hounding family members still in Afghanistan, the uncertainty of what the future holds in a new country they may resent over how it left their own.

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By Antonio Olivo
Antonio Olivo covers government, politics and other issues in Northern Virginia. He has also reported from Afghanistan and Mexico after joining The Washington Post in 2013. Twitter https://twitter.com/aolivo