Contractors used by US companies in Afghanistan stuck in Dubai

Foreign workers trying to get back to home countries are stuck in limbo at hotels across Dubai due to the pandemic.

Some of the foreign contractors who powered the logistics of the United States’s long war in Afghanistan have found themselves stranded on an unending layover in Dubai without a way to get home. After nearly two decades, the rapid US withdrawal from Afghanistan has upended the lives of thousands of private security contractors from some of the world’s poorest countries – not the hired guns but the hired hands who serviced the American war effort. For years, they toiled in the shadows as cleaners, cooks, construction workers, servers and technicians on sprawling US bases. In the rushed evacuation, many of these foreign workers have become stuck in limbo at hotels across Dubai while trying to get home to the Philippines and other countries that restricted international travel because of the pandemic.