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.
“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.
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.
Nasria said that, even though she showed her American passport to Taliban members controlling access to Kabul airport, she was repeatedly denied entry.
“I had a gun pointed to my head,” she said. “Our troops were literally at the gate, just waiting for us to continue walking, and [the Taliban] had blocked us,” she said, adding that she tried to walk past them but they fired warning shots at the ground beside her and ordered her to stop.
“I’ve never in my life ... ever experienced anything like this,” she continued. “It was like a movie scene.”
Even though the State Department has told her to shelter in place while they work to find a way to get her out, she said she’s losing hope.
“As I said, we are working on trying to get that—supporting those partners on the ground who are trying to get that airport open. And we are also looking at land routes. I think on land routes, I don’t want to be any more specific because, as you know, it is a long journey with lots of dangers and we don’t want to further endanger folks who might be involved in that,” Nuland said.
Republicans have been urging the Biden administration to continue rescue efforts in Afghanistan as their offices receive calls from those still stranded in Afghanistan.
Nasria’s case has drawn the attention of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who on Wednesday said his office was helping get people out of Afghanistan.
