BURLINGTON— At 17, he was on the front lines in Afghanistan, shoulder to shoulder with foreign soldiers, fighting America’s longest war.

Now he is a case worker at the Vermont Afghan Alliance teaching new refugees how to drive and helping with translation and interpretation.

Originally from Herat in Afghanistan, Hamed Noorzai didn’t know how to drive when he arrived in the United States in October 2023. But when he saw a driving instructor job advertised by the alliance, he applied. Then he hopped into the Toyota Corolla the alliance uses for training, learned the ropes and got his license. 

Since then he has helped roughly 40 people secure their driver licenses in Vermont.

That driving program stalled last month in the aftermath of a Jan. 21 White House memo freezing federal funding for refugee support.

“Since then, we’ve faced a rollercoaster of uncertainty,” said Molly Gray, executive director of the Afghan Alliance, a small Burlington-based nonprofit. “We’ve had to prepare for a future where we go without federal funding. We’ve had to revise our budget for 2025, let a staff member go, and urgently seek new sources of funding.”

The organization, which started in 2022 as a scrappy volunteer-led effort with locally raised dollars, was one of 15 nationwide to win a three-year $256,000 Ethnic Community Self Help grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2023. That money helped open an office, hire Afghan program officers and provide direct services to the Afghan community statewide, Gray said. The alliance now has seven paid staff offering services ranging from English and driving lessons to training on legal rights and citizenship. And, Gray estimated, it has helped more than 200 of the estimated 600 Afghans relocated in Vermont.

The Trump administration’s recent halt on refugee arrivals from Afghanistan and Pakistan and the funding freeze represent “a shameful, systematic abandonment of those who risked their lives in support of U.S. military and diplomatic missions,” Gray said in an email today.

She learned of the funding freeze when she tried to log into the federal payment management system on Jan. 28. 

They weren’t able to access the system for three weeks, she said Thursday. Access has since resumed thanks to a temporary restraining order put in place by a federal court judge in Rhode Island. A hearing on the case — in which Vermont is a plaintiff along with more than 20 other states — took place Friday, though the judge’s order is not expected immediately.

Meanwhile, the future is uncertain for initiatives such as the driving program, which helped 35 Afghans get their licenses last year, 10 of whom were women.

On the front lines

For Noorzai, the Trump administration’s actions are a slap in the face. But he chose his words carefully during an interview this week. He talked about honor. And he talked about betrayal.

“I was a good fighter. I was translating Taliban passwords in radio chats,” he said. His work on the frontlines in Kandahar helped save dozens of American lives, he estimated. 

Afghans like himself supported America for two decades so helping the Afghans who have made huge sacrifices and are here now would be the honorable thing for America to do, he said.

Noorzai, 32, didn’t finish school and his family didn’t know he had joined the military. And it was his American brothers in the military who helped him escape after the country was overtaken by the Taliban, he said.

He said he loves his American friends. That feeling doesn’t extend to the current federal government. 

He once dreamed of being a doctor. Someday he hopes he can follow that dream. For now, Noorzai said he is happy he is helping other Afghans improve their lives and take a step towards independence by learning how to drive in Vermont.

His colleague at the Afghan Alliance, Drukhshan Farhad, also takes deep pride in the work she does to help fellow Afghans. Again, it is not without some conflict.

“There are days when I think, is my work really helping people or am I making them co-dependent,” said the 27-year-old program officer.

“Then there are days where I’m like, oh my goodness if I got hit by a truck today, how many people will lose their minds tomorrow? Because their livelihood depends on me. Basically, I am their eyes and ears, sometimes in the most important ways,” she said.

This includes something as mundane as sorting through their mail to weed out important notices from junk mail, she said.

Originally from a small village in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, Farhad came from a progressive family, didn’t cover her head, went to study alone in Kabul at 17, and attended the American University there which involved going through multiple checkposts daily during the war. There was an outer wall riddled with bullet holes, she recalled, and sometimes they had to pause lessons because of the gunfire raging outside.

A brilliant student, Farhad recounted the many hurdles she overcame to come to the United States on a full scholarship at Norwich University in August 2017. She was the first and only female student from Afghanistan there, she said. 

Far away from home and family, the news of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 “felt unreal,” she said, as her family moved to Pakistan to escape the Taliban.

In 2022, she helped the university organize an international event on campus to celebrate Nowroz, the Afghan New Year, as vice president of intercultural student organization on campus. It involved kite flying, henna, Afghan food and music. That’s where she met Gray, Vermont’s former lieutenant general, who would later hire her to work at the alliance

When Gray received news of the federal grant in September 2023, she called Farhad because she knew she would need someone with strong language and translation skills.

Fluent in English, Dari and Pashto, Farhad now helps with interpretation, translation, case management and leads the alliance’s legal rights training and community engagement programs.

Now Farhad’s work is potentially at risk. 

“So we now have to move forward without those funds, or at least presume that we will not have consistent access to them,” Gray said.

‘An incredible ambassador’

Sayed Yassin Hashimi, a case worker at the alliance, said it’s always a good feeling to help people, especially, his own. 

Last year he closed 92 cases which included helping to connect new Afghan refugees to jobs, English lessons, driving classes. He also helped create a free tax filing clinic and a program through which the alliance can serve as an intermediary between an employer and a new Afghan employee if a problem arises.

Hashimi, 29, was one of many U.S. allies in Afghanistan when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. “That was like the darkest night in my life,” he recalled.

With an undergraduate degree in political science, journalism and English literature from an Indian university, Hashimi said he dreamed of being an ambassador to help bring peace and democracy to the world. Originally from Bamyan in central Afghanistan, he helped the U.S. embassy as an interpreter during the war. But that night changed everything.

After months of terror — including the Taliban showing up at his house in Kabul in an effort to track down those who had been helping the U.S. government and being separated from his large family — Hashimi escaped to Washington D.C. in June 2023. 

Three months later he moved to Georgia, Vermont for a job at Perrigo, a manufacturer of infant formula. While a far cry from his dreams, Hashimi said he was glad to take it to support his family, who, by then, had fled to Pakistan. “I did not have any other choice,” he said.

Months later he spotted a case worker job at the alliance, applied and joined the organization in January 2023.

“Yassin is an incredible ambassador for the organization and he is also extremely entrepreneurial. When he sees a need in the community, he finds a way to create a program to address the need,” said Gray.

Hashimi said he doesn’t know what to think about the federal freeze and the recent attacks on the country’s most vulnerable under the new Trump administration.

“I think the existence of this organization is a must for this community, and that’s why we are trying our best to keep running and to maintain our existence here in Vermont,” he said.

Noorzai recalls how hard it was for him to navigate a new country and culture, especially with limited language skills. The new Afghan refugees will be lost without help, he said.

“If there is no resettlement agency, they will face lots of problems, especially those Afghans that cannot speak English. It will be like leaving them in the middle of a jungle with nothing,” he said.

Farhad doesn’t know what the future holds for her but she does know that she likes what she is doing. She knows people depend on her and because of that she said she cannot give up. 

“I would fight till my last breath to keep things going — like this program,” she said.