Trump Admin Tries to ‘Bribe’ Afghan Allies to ‘Accept Death’ in Afghanistan
US officials are paying Afghan allies in Qatar to return to Afghanistan, where they face brutal retribution from the Taliban, an Afghan asylum seeker tells Zeteo.
Afghans stuck at a former US military base in Qatar call on the Trump administration to process their asylum applications in late Nov. 2025. Video courtesy of AfghanEvac.
The State Department is paying Afghan allies seeking US refuge thousands of dollars to return to Afghanistan, where they face death, prison, or torture, documents show.
Afghans who assisted US troops, along with their families, have been living in limbo for months on a former US military base in Qatar. Camp As Sayliyah, or CAS, was intended as a temporary housing and screening point for evacuated Afghan allies before they were allowed entry to the US, but under Donald Trump, their stay has turned indefinite.
“It’s a jail,” one man in CAS tells Zeteo, saying people are not allowed to leave. Everyone is fed and clothed, he says, “but we don’t have peace.”
About 800 Afghans are at CAS, according to AfghanEvac, a nonprofit that helped resettle people after the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. Trump’s spate of anti-immigrant policies, including his suspension of refugee resettlement on his first day in office, has blocked hundreds of people in CAS from coming to the US, according to the organization.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for his safety, tells Zeteo that the US started offering the camp’s residents about $4,500 per principal applicant to return to Afghanistan, and $1,200 for additional people.
But the man, who says his relative served alongside the US military for a decade, explains he does not want to go back to Afghanistan out of fear for his life. The relative who helped the US went into hiding, and the Taliban has harassed his family for his location, the man says. Several family members fled out of fear of retribution, and the man says some made it to the US. But he and other relatives have been stuck in CAS for months with no safe way out.
The man says that US officials offered the $4,500 deal starting on Nov. 27, 2025, just as the Trump administration announced an indefinite stop on processing immigration requests from Afghan applicants, weaponizing the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, where the suspect was an Afghan man. The move was the latest in its crackdown on Afghan refugees since taking office.
A State Department official confirmed to Zeteo that a stipend has been offered “to those who want to voluntarily return to Afghanistan,” and everyone at CAS is aware of the monetary offer.
“Voluntary repatriation has always been an option for Afghans at CAS,” the official added.
Tensions over the suspended resettlement programs reached a boiling point in late November when protests erupted in the camp, the man says. He tells Zeteo that officers attacked the residents, and one person went to the hospital. He added that officers took people’s blankets and other items, calling them the property of the US.
Soon after the protests started, US officials began offering the stipend to Afghan evacuees in the Qatar camp, AfghanEvac president Shawn VanDiver says. Many Afghans have been stuck in CAS for a year or more, he adds.
“The United States government is not trying to help them,” VanDiver tells Zeteo. “They’re trying to just make the problem go away.”
VanDiver says the State Department’s monetary offer is “coercive.”
“This is not a humanitarian option,” he says. “It is a bribe to accept death.”
Afghans stuck at a former US military base in Qatar call on the Trump administration to process their asylum applications in late Nov. 2025. Video courtesy of AfghanEvac.
Official documents shared with Zeteo by AfghanEvac show that the US knows the fate it is sealing for Afghans who accept their offer. One document has a place for applicants who are “wishing to repatriate to Afghanistan” to sign alongside a list of statements.
One of them reads: “I understand that the US government cannot provide guarantees regarding the security situation in Afghanistan.”
Another line reads: “I also affirm that US officials have informed me that conditions in Afghanistan have changed since the Taliban takeover and that there may be a potential risk to returning to Afghanistan, which the U.S. government is not able to predict.”
The document adds, “I make this request willingly and without any form of pressure or coercion from the US government (including from US officials in Qatar) or the government of Qatar.”
The man who spoke to Zeteo estimates over two dozen families have applied for the stipend to return home, and some have already flown back to Afghanistan.
VanDiver is calling for transparency from the Trump administration and congressional oversight.
“The American people deserve to know who authorized this, under what legal authority, and why the United States is walking away at the final mile,” he says.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from the State Department.
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Just add this to the list of Trump human rights atrocities they're committing around the world. Trump is cutting the budget in small portions in order to pay for his pet projects, like the 1.5 trillion Pentagon budget he wants next year. None of which is any good for anyone around the world.
So bribing is truly all that trump and his cronies know.