Originally Published: 15 NOV 21 13:56 ET

By EMILY HAMER

FORT MCCOY, Wisconsin (madison.com/Wisconsin State Journal) -- Frough Tahiry, 23, hid in dark places along the streets of Kabul in the middle of the night Aug. 27 as her country fell to the Taliban. She was alone — something she said could get her killed if the Taliban found her.

After a brief call with her parents, she stood quietly on a corner with no street lights until they came to walk her home. She said her parents “were scared to death” that something would happen to her.

The next morning, Tahiry would leave her family to try for a third time to escape out of the Kabul airport with a group of 147 other students from the Asian University for Women. The young women could not bring their families.

“I have lost my everything in Afghanistan. I left my home, my family, my everything. I’m thinking of starting a new life here,” Tahiry said. “I’m hoping I can find everything here again.”

Tahiry is one of more than 11,000 Afghans at Fort McCoy military base in Wisconsin still waiting to be resettled into permanent homes across the U.S.

As of Nov. 8, “a couple thousand” Afghans had left Fort McCoy and more are departing each day, said Holly Kirking Loomis, a staffer with the U.S. Department of State who is leading the resettlement efforts there. Additional Afghans from abroad are not currently expected to arrive at Fort McCoy because other bases have more capacity.

“Right now we are focused on resettling the people who are already here,” Kirking Loomis said.

Across the country, roughly 14,000 evacuees have gone through the resettlement process so far after temporary stays at eight military bases, including Fort McCoy, Kirking Loomis said. Tens of thousands are still waiting.

The Department of State is planning for 399 of the Afghan evacuees to end up in Wisconsin, although that number is expected to increase, maybe as high as 850, said Dawn Berney, executive director of the resettlement agency Jewish Social Services of Madison. Since August, 32 Afghans have been settled in Madison.

Though the resettlement process is picking up, the overall timeline is still unclear, a point of frustration for some Afghans who said they have been given conflicting information — or no information at all — about when they’ll get to leave. Kirking Loomis said Fort McCoy expects to have evacuees on base into 2022, but would not specify a timeline beyond that.

After escaping turmoil, the Afghans say they are ready to start their new lives. Among them are interpreters, athletes, women’s rights activists, former government workers, teachers, journalists, soldiers, children, mothers and fathers. They have hopes, dreams.