Letters from AWA:
The story behind the work.
For years, much of AWA's work has happened quietly, behind the scenes and alongside the Afghan allies we serve. As we approach five years since the fall of Kabul, we are sharing some of that story in a series of personal letters: how this work began, what we've learned, what happened when Afghanistan fell, and why our commitment continues today.
LETTER ONE:
Before there was AWA
For many people, AWA's story begins with the fall of Kabul in August 2021. Mine begins years earlier, when I started answering questions from Afghan SIV applicants and quickly learned how difficult it was to find reliable information about an extraordinarily complicated process.
I wasn't trying to build an organization. I was simply trying to help. Eventually, the need became bigger than one person, and in 2019, the Association of Wartime Allies was born.
LETTER TWO:
The AWA Model
What does "technical support" actually mean when the question being asked could affect a family's future?
AWA built a model around listening directly to Afghan SIV applicants, combining their real-world experiences with deep subject-matter expertise. That connection allows us to answer individual questions, recognize larger patterns, challenge misinformation, and sometimes identify problems affecting far more than the person who first asked for help.
LETTER THREE
The Afghan Digest
The Afghan Digest has evolved from a daily security report into a publication read globally by Afghans, advocates, journalists, policymakers, and government and security professionals.
In this Letter from AWA, The TAD Team shares how they verify and analyze what is happening inside Afghanistan, why context matters, and why preserving a public record of life under Taliban rule remains an important part of their work.
The headlines moved on. The consequences did not.
LETTER FOUR
The Record of Those Left Behind
AWA's first report following the August 2021 evacuation found that more than 96% of SIV applicants were not evacuated.
In this Letter from AWA, we look at the small team behind that first analysis, what happened when the State Department challenged our findings, and why documenting the experiences of those left behind became an important part of AWA's work.
The numbers represented people. The record matters.
LETTER FIVE
Before Kabul Fell
Months before Kabul fell, AWA was already watching the warning signs and fearing what they could mean for America's Afghan wartime allies.
It began with a phone call in October 2020. That call would lead to a white paper calling for immediate evacuation, months of public warnings, and eventually a countdown of the planes and days remaining before the U.S. withdrawal.
Before Kabul Fell is the story of those ten months as AWA lived them.
It is deeply personal. It is sometimes painful. And five years later, we believe it is important to put this history on the record, including what was known, what was feared, and what people tried to do before August 15, 2021.
LETTER SIX
“That’s It. We’re Done.”-Abbey Gate
Five years after the Abbey Gate bombing, the public remembrance often begins with thirteen names, as it should. But the approximately 170 Afghans killed that day are too often reduced to a number.
In this personal reflection, Kim Staffieri remembers the Afghan lives lost, the American service members who were there trying to help them, and her own experience of the warnings, the blast, and the final days of the evacuation.
Remembering the Afghan dead does not diminish the thirteen Americans. It completes the story of Abbey Gate.
