ISLAMABAD (AP) — When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Shukria Sediqi knew her days in safety were numbered. As a journalist who advocated for women’s rights, she’d visited shelters and safe houses to talk to women who had fled abusive husbands. She went with them to court when they asked for a divorce.

According to the Taliban, who bar women from most public places, jobs and education, her work was immoral.

So when the Taliban swept into her hometown of Herat in western Afghanistan in August 2021 as the U.S. was pulling out of the country, she and her family fled.

First they tried to get on one of the last American flights out of Kabul. Then they tried to go to Tajikistan but had no visas. Finally in October 2021, after sleeping outside for two nights at the checkpoint into Pakistan among crowds of Afghans fleeing the Taliban, she and her family made it into the neighboring country.

The goal? Resettling in the U.S. via an American government program set up to help Afghans at risk under the Taliban because of their work with the U.S. government, media and aid agencies.

But two years after the U.S. left Afghanistan, Sediqi and tens of thousands of others are still waiting. While there has been some recent progress, processing U.S. visas for Afghans has moved painfully slowly. So far, only a small portion of Afghans have been resettled.

Many of the applicants who fled Afghanistan are running through savings, living in limbo in exile. They worry that the U.S., which had promised so much, has forgotten them.

“What happens to my children? What happens to me?” Sediqi asked. “Nobody knows.”