Inside a Wisconsin Army Base Where Nearly 13,000 Afghans Await an Uncertain Future
Afghan refugee girls watch a soccer match near where they are staying in the Village at the Ft. McCoy U.S. Army base on September 30, 2021 in Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin. There are approximately 12,600 Afghan refugees at the base under Operation Allies Welcome. Afghan refugee girls watch a soccer match near where they are staying in the Village at the Ft. McCoy U.S. Army base on September 30, 2021 in Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin. There are approximately 12,600 Afghan refugees at the base under Operation Allies Welcome.
By Vera Bergengruen/Fort McCoy, Wis.
October 4, 2021 2:21 PM EDT
On the last morning of September, dozens of Afghan children cheered on their older brothers as they played a lively game of soccer with U.S. Army soldiers on a military base in rural Wisconsin. As the kids ran up and down the pitch, their traditional long pants and tunics mixed with flashy, donated jackets and sneakers stamped with American logos. Across the field, some of their mothers watched and waved as they hung laundry out to dry.
Fort McCoy, a sprawling Army base surrounded by miles of cornfields and Christmas tree farms, is hosting the largest population of new Afghan evacuees in the U.S. Since the first families arrived in late August, it has grown into a small city of more than 12,600 refugees, almost half of them children, along with thousands more military and support staff. For the Afghans, it has been a blur of government interviews, paperwork, vaccinations, and talking to family left behind when they fled Kabul amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal.
https://time.com/6103628/afghan-refugee-resettlement-fort-mccoy/
