After months on military bases, families airlifted from Afghanistan are finally being settled into new homes across the country. One such family in Hayward tells their story.

It’s well known that Northern California has a disproportionately large Afghan population, with the East Bay a preferred destination for many families and refugees that had to leave that nation. The U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan, and subsequent takeover by the Taliban, sent droves more such families into existing Afghan enclaves here in America. One of these is in Hayward, where KTVU spoke to a resettled Afghan family about what they went through, and the new life they’re beginning.

These aren’t families in the nuclear family sense, they’re more collections of ‘whoever could make the flights.’ As such, these families are now same-house combinations of cousins, uncles, nieces and nephews, many still possessing only what they could drag out of Afghanistan in their two hands.

"We have only these clothes," refugee Sarah Fazili told KTVU.

Fazili and her group of relatives bailed from their home under Taliban gunfire, leaving behind a wealth of possessions, and their lives. They were, however, fortunate enough to make a flight.

But their encounter entailed, as KTVU puts it, “sleeping on the road at the Kabul airport for three days until a plane could airlift them out; and spending nearly two months at the Fort Bliss, Texas, military base where they said scorpions crawled on them as they tried to sleep uncomfortably on cots.”

They weren’t just crawled upon by scorpions, they apparently also ate the exact same meal of some meatball dish with soggy bread for 40 days in a row. The refugees did at least have volleyball courts for recreation, and most importantly, wi-fi access and smartphone chargers to communicate with loved ones and the outside world.

The family is now in a free one-month house rental provided by Airbnb in Hayward. They and a few dozen other families are getting help from the Afghan Coalition in Fremont, which helps with green cards, finding work, and acquiring U.S. citizenship. None of these are easy to get, but the refugees live with less general anxiety because, as another Afghan woman tells KTVU, they’re not "constantly hearing bombs and shooting.”

Related: Bay Area Afghan Community Devastated By Taliban Takeover [SFist]

Image: Getty Images

Nearly half of Afghan refugees end up in northern California, and here in the Bay Area, Fremont Unified is preparing for what could be thousands of new refugee students.

The nation seems to have moved on from the evacuation of Afghanistan, now that the Haitian refugee situation and the Gabby Petito obsession have buried that story from the headlines. But there’s still the very real situation of housing and situating these estimated 37,000 Afghan refugees, and California will take more than any other state.

And here’s a surprise fact — “Over 40% of the nation’s Afghan refugees have resettled in the Sacramento region in recent years,” according to an Edsource report that was picked up by KQED. The Bay Area is carrying its share too, as Fremont also has one the state’s largest Afgan populations. And in all likelihood, Fremont will take a disproportionate percentage of these refugee families, as will their school system.

“We will welcome them with open arms,” Fremont Unified School District director of federal and state programs Christie Rocha told Edsource. “If they have any social-emotional, housing or basic necessity needs, we will connect them to the right resources.”

That district is not sure how many refugees will choose the Fremont community, but it figures to be substantial, as refugees tend to move to where they already have family and friends. Because of this, the district is adding additional language classes, translators, and social workers with specialties in helping refugee families adjust to new communities.

As of now, more than 5,000 refugees have been approved to move to California (Texas is second, at 4,500, and ten other states will take more than 1,000). If current patterns hold up, Sacramento, Fremont, and Los Angeles will take in most of these families. But when the resettlement dust settles, the Bay Area will more than do its part to welcome Afghan refugees, particularly the city of Fremont.

Related: Marin-Based Founder of Agriculture Nonprofit Says the Lives of Her 360 Afghan Employees Are at Risk [SFist]

Image: San Juan Unified School District

Heidi Kuhn, the co-founder of the Bay Area-founded, international nonprofit Roots of Peace, is pleading with President Biden and speaking out to the media in the hopes of evacuating 360 Afghan employees whose lives she believes are at risk.

The Taliban's siege of Afghanistan in recent weeks has been swift, and details of potential brutality and civilian casualties that have occurred remain few. For the many thousands of Afghans who aided U.S. forces and/or took part in fighting against the Taliban, the fear of reprisal killings is high — and many of these people were among the throngs creating chaos on Sunday and Monday at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

There is also significant uncertainty for every Afghan who has led a secular life, taken part in new new aspects of the country's economy while U.S. forces maintained control, and for the many women who have taken jobs and assumed leadership roles in government. The first ever female mayor of an Afghan city, 27-year-old Zarifa Ghafari, who was appointed mayor of Maidan Shahr, the capital city of Wardak province, in 2018, said Sunday that she was just sitting with her family waiting for Taliban soldiers to come kill her.

Now ABC 7 reports that Kuhn and her organization Roots of Peace have 360 employees they are trying to get out of the country safely. "Their lives are at risk," Kuhn said on Sunday. She said she had fielded hundreds of emails from them, and she felt they were at "double risk" because they both worked for an American nonprofit, and because it was run by a women.

Roots of Peace, founded in 1997, has for two decades worked to remove landmines and transform lands in the country for agricultural use. On the organization's website, it says it has helped export $350 million in fruits, nuts, and spices for sale in international markets, helping support over one million farmers across seven countries, including Afghanistan.

Kuhn has written a plea directly to President Joe Biden, which she shared with ABC 7.

"I am writing with the greatest sense of urgency to implore you to act decisively and not abandon my 360 Afghan employees, who for the past 20 years have faithfully implemented our U.S. based nonprofit development programs in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan, at great personal risk," she writes. "This letter is most critical in saving the lives of my loyal Afghan staff."

She says that staff members have said they fear beheadings, and she says she has received reports of women being raped by Taliban soldiers across the Afghan countryside. Kuhn said that a female doctor in Kabul gave her an unconfirmed report that teenage girls were being assaulted and branded in provinces around the country. "These are young girls — 14, 15, 16 — branded," she said.

The workers employed by Roots of Peace are just 360 out of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans now fearing for their lives and futures under possible Sharia law.

"As a mother and grandmother, I will do everything I can to protect my Afghan family," Kuhn tells ABC 7.

Kuhn says that her organization will continue to work on the ground in Kabul to distribute tents, blankets, rice, and other food. If you want to donate, you can do so here.

Photo courtesy of Roots of Peace

Starting tomorrow, Berkeley Rep is presenting the ambitious, unprecedented collective work called The Great Game: Afghanistan. Originally premiered in London, the cycle is presented in three parts, comprising a total of 12 short plays, and covering the period of Afghanistan's history from 1842, during the first Anglo-Afghan war, and coming up to the present day. The entire cast is British, and the plays were written by some of the country's top playwrights including Richard Bean, David Edgar, Amit Gupta, and Joy Wilkinson.

On Saturdays and Sundays starting this weekend, all three parts will be presented consecutively, for a full day marathon of EXTREME theater. But you don't have to see all three parts in order for each to make sense. Individual parts can be seen on weeknights through November 7. See the full schedule here.

Part 1 is called "Invasions & Independence (1842-1929)"; Part 2: "Communism, the Mujahideen and the Taliban (1980-1996)"; Part 3: "Enduring Freedom (1996-2009)".