American soldiers fought the Taliban in Afghanistan for 20 years. Hundreds of thousands of locals risked their lives to help the American war effort.

Many of those people evacuated to the U.S. for their own safety once the Americans left in 2021. But the U.S. government sent a group of 1,100 to a military base in Qatar, promising them a path to U.S. settlement if they passed further checks.

That’s not what happened. The U.S. is working on a plan that would force Afghans to choose between returning to their country under Taliban rule and being sent to Congo, an African nation suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. “Now we are stuck between bad and worse options,” one of the refugees told The Times.

U.S. lawmakers in both parties are unhappy with the plan. “We made promises to those fighting by our side to bring them to the U.S.,” Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, said. “We should keep our promises.” —NYT