The US government has been reported to be considering moving Afghans now staying at a former US base in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to AfghanEvac, an advocacy group that helps former US allies.
About 1,100 Afghans — roughly 400 of them children — remain at the As Sayliyah camp in Qatar. They were transferred there after the withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan in 2021. The population includes interpreters who assisted the US military, Afghan military commandos and family members of US service members, The New York Times first reported.
Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, said his organization believes the Congo proposal could be intended to create a pretext for returning people to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. AfghanEvac described the plan as an effort to ‘manufacture a refusal’ — offering relocation to an active war zone with the expectation that families would decline, then using that refusal to justify sending them back to Afghanistan.
The group urged that vetted wartime allies, including more than 400 children, should not be relocated from American custody into a country facing its own severe instability.
The DRC is coping with a major humanitarian emergency. UN figures show about 6.9 million internally displaced people, concentrated in the east where fighting between the national army and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels has been intense. The country also hosts more than 517,000 refugees from neighboring states, primarily the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan.
The State Department would not confirm the DRC as the chosen destination but said the United States is exploring ‘voluntary resettlement’ from As Sayliyah. A department spokesperson said moving people to a third country could provide safety for those remaining and allow them to begin new lives outside Afghanistan while protecting the safety and security of the American people.
Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, more than 190,000 Afghans have been resettled in the United States. President Donald Trump, who took office in January 2025, has pledged to limit migration and ordered a halt to refugee processing for people from Afghanistan after an Afghan man shot two National Guard troops near the White House in November, killing one; the shooter had worked with US intelligence and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Trump set a March 31 deadline to close the As Sayliyah camp.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse