Finally, visas in hand, Afghan girls depart for the U.S. and a global robotics competition

By Sultan Faizy, Shashank Bengali

July 14, 2017 8 AM PT

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — When Afghan 10th-grader Fatemeh Qaderian learned that her girls’ robotics team had been denied visas to attend an international competition in Washington — despite applying twice — the 14-year-old said she “lost hope.”

“We worked hard and spent a lot of time,” said Qaderian, who flew back and forth with her teammates from their hometown in western Afghanistan to apply at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. “I called my parents and told them what happened, and they were upset, too.”

Those emotions morphed into elation as Qaderian and her teammates boarded a plane at Kabul International Airport on Friday morning en route to next week’s competition, having been granted visas thanks to last-minute intervention by the Trump administration.

“It’s impossible to express how excited I am,” Qaderian said. “It’s my first trip overseas.”

The girls from Herat, Afghanistan, ages 14 to 16, became a cause celebre this week when news spread that their visa applications, first submitted in May, had been rejected.

State Department officials do not comment on individual visa cases, but experts speculated that consular officers could have denied the visas out of concern that the girls could attempt to remain in the United States.

Joe Sestak, the former Pennsylvania congressman who heads First Global, the nonprofit organization hosting the competition involving youth teams from 157 countries, had said earlier that the visa applications were not influenced by “prejudice or politics.”

Sestak noted that teams from Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Syria — all Muslim-majority countries affected by President Trump’s executive order restricting entry to the United States — were granted visas for the competition.

On Thursday, Sestak said that the Afghan girls and a team from the West African nation of Gambia — which had also been rejected at first — had their visas approved.

“I am most grateful to the U.S. government and its State Department for ensuring Afghanistan, as well as Gambia, would be able to join us for this international competition this year,” Sestak said in a statement.

State Department officials said that the Afghan girls’ visas were granted through “parole,” a process designed for applicants whose entry to the U.S. is based on humanitarian or “public benefit” grounds.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, tweeted: “I look forward to welcoming this brilliant team of Afghan girls, and their competitors, to Washington, D.C., next week!”

The girls said they had worked for several months to design robots, including a cube-shaped robot that can move, collect multicolored balls and recognize them by color.

The team manager, Alireza Mehraban, said the girls did not stop working on their entries after the visa denials, hoping they would be allowed to travel eventually – or ship the robots to the U.S. for the competition.

“We continued working on our robots to show that Afghan girls are capable of doing big things,” Mehraban said. “Despite all the deprivations we have, we can prove that we have something to do and raise our voice in the world.”

The team went so far as to obtain customs clearance certificates for the robots and showed video of their work to U.S. consular officials. Embassy staff complimented them, Mehraban said, but told them they had run out of the visas.

Mehraban said the girls were selected from among 150 aspiring engineers in Herat, a sprawling province that borders Iran and has been among the more stable parts of Afghanistan in the 16 years since the U.S.-led military invasion.

Qaderian said Afghanistan lacked schools and facilities to adequately train engineers and that she hoped she could one day study overseas.

“We have many plans for our future,” she said.

“I will do whatever I can for my country. I really appreciate and thank those who supported us for our education and providing us with visas. The American people have given us lovely messages of support.”

Special correspondent Faizy reported from Kabul and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

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