2021 to 2025 AfghanEvac Impact Report

This report documents what is possible when veterans, advocates, public servants, and everyday Americans choose action over paralysis. Since August 2021, AfghanEvac has helped drive the relocation of more than 195,000 Afghan allies and family members, cutting through broken systems, misinformation, and political inertia to keep faith with those who stood with the United States. The work is unfinished, the stakes remain high, and the responsibility is shared. What follows is a clear-eyed account of progress, challenges, and the people at the center of this effort.

Letter from AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver

This report is our attempt to capture AfghanEvac’s impact, both as an organization in its own right, and as the convener of a coalition and movement that made this work possible.

When I look back on these past four years, I return to a realization I first had in September 2021. In those earliest weeks, I saw something extraordinary: volunteers, NGO staff, congressional caseworkers, and government employees, people from completely different walks of life, suddenly bound together by a shared experience. Each of us worked frantically, often without sleep, because lives depended on it. That unity, born out of crisis, has endured. I see it every day.

AfghanEvac began with a phone call. One of my Afghan friends, Lucky, was trapped on a mountain eight hours outside of Kabul, desperate to get his family to safety. I was one of thousands of veterans and frontline civilians who answered calls like that in those days. I understood the value of bringing people together and that became AfghanEvac’s purpose.

Across the country, veterans, advocates, and friends were creating new organizations in response to the crisis. Each was doing vital work, but too often we were working from different information and with different approaches. AfghanEvac set out to bring those efforts into alignment: to get everyone rowing in the same direction, to empower organizations to accomplish their missions, and to ensure we were all working from the same shared reality. AfghanEvac pulled together disparate efforts under one umbrella, uniquely positioned to engage the U.S. government. That access allowed us to deliver clear, life-preserving information to Afghans who were scattered across the globe, frightened, and hard to reach.

It wasn’t always easy, but it was always worth it. We learned quickly that if we wanted to go fast, we could go alone; if we wanted to go far, we had to go together. That spirit of collaboration gave rise to Enduring Welcome and has sustained the effort ever since.

From the beginning, we worked to bring all the disparate parts of this mission together: civil society and government, veterans and civilians, Democrats and Republicans. In many ways, we succeeded. AfghanEvac helped inform the government’s response, contributing to the coordination model that shaped what became CARE, the Office for the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts. CARE, in turn, anchored America’s official effort to keep its promises to Afghan allies.

What has made AfghanEvac powerful is not any single organization, but the fact that so many parts of America came together: Veterans in Texas, nonprofits in California, congressional offices in New England, and community leaders in the South. People from every corner of this country stood up to help. AfghanEvac is a reflection of the country itself: citizens insisting that our government keep its promises to those who stood with us. That diversity of geography, experience, and perspective gave AfghanEvac its strength and made it possible to achieve what many thought impossible. AfghanEvac works because we bring the voices of entry- and mid-level public servants, and the experiences of Afghans affected by policy, directly to the highest levels of government in near real time. It was with those voices and experiences, along with the lessons-learned from the myriad things that went wrong during the withdrawal, that AfghanEvac was able to work with the U.S. government to develop Enduring Welcome. With these improvements in place, Enduring Welcome operates with rigorous, multi-layered security vetting and is widely recognized by career officials as one of the safest, most secure legal immigration pathways ever administered by the United States.

We are far from finished. The story of AfghanEvac is one of unity and persistence. It is proof that when Americans put aside differences and choose compassion, we can honor our promises, strengthen our nation, and give our allies the chance to thrive.

In solidarity,
Shawn VanDiver

President, AfghanEvac