On Aug. 24, President Joe Biden told world leaders at the G7 Summit that he will follow through with his plan to withdraw all American troops out of Afghanistan within one week. With the process of withdrawal in full motion, an explosion by ISIS-K occurred outside of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. This explosion on Aug. 26, was followed by a terrorist attack at the nearby Baron Hotel, commonly housing Afghans seeking entrance into the United Kingdom.The explosions killed 13 American soldiers along with dozens of innocent civilians.

Coming from Egyptian descent, Manda Khella (’24) looks at the military crisis as impacting the Middle East and Asia as a whole, not just Afghanistan.

“It affects me because not every country in the Middle East has the opportunity to get help from the Americans so it is a change for once, so they should stay longer because the more help the better. I have family members in Egypt that are affected by the situation because there are a lot of terrorist attacks at our churches. I’m Coptic Orthodox and the terrorists bomb many of our churches,” Khella said.

David Spicer (FAC) is currently enrolled in the military as a hospital administrator, leaving for aeromedical evacuations when deployed. Spicer was deployed in Afghanistan from May to October of 2002, taking trips back to the country several times in the following years.

“I have to keep my gut feeling to myself, because it is political and military all at the same time. I have been in that country and it’s a scary place. We’ve spent a lot of time in that region and some people feel that we’ve spent all this money, time, and blood of our sons and daughters, and now we’re back to where we were. Others are saying it doesn’t matter, get our people home. Therefore, I’m kind of on the fence with that,” Spicer said.

Calling Afghanistan her Motherland, Nasrin Rahmni’s (‘22) family were born and raised in the now crisis stricken country.

“Even today I still have family in Kabul struggling, waiting outside in the heat for days just to get on those planes, and they are all desperate. I’m very grateful, because most of my family members left way before the Taliban struck, or else they would’ve been stuck. I have mixed feelings about what Joe Biden is planning. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan two weeks before the U.S. was set to complete its troop withdrawal after a two decade war,” Rahmni said.

Pressure from the democratic and republican party to extend the date for American troop withdrawal has not stopped the United States along with other countries from evacuating more than 105,000 Afghans out of the country since Aug. 14.