PARIS — Before the Taliban demolished the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, the figures were the world’s largest standing depictions of the deity. The destruction of the statues, which had stood for 1,500 years, remains one of the most tragic attacks on Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.

With the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, that heritage has become more out of reach. But a new show at the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts in Paris aims to bring attention to the endangered patrimony of Afghanistan by offering visitors a glimpse of some of its cultural riches. The exhibition marks a 100-year-old partnership with France to unearth and preserve Afghan treasures.

Much of what the rest of the world knows about Afghanistan’s cultural legacy was learned after the end of British influence in 1919. In 1922 a group, La Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (French Archaeological Delegation to Afghanistan), or DAFA, was founded after King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan invited a French delegation to explore, excavate and help preserve the country’s ancient sites.

Over the next hundred years — except during periods of invasion or war — DAFA worked to uncover artifacts that filled the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. With the consent of Afghan authorities, duplicates of some of those artifacts, as well as other finds, were donated to the Guimet, where Joseph Hackin, a DAFA director from 1925 until World War II, was its chief curator.

It was during this period that some of the most beautiful pieces were discovered, among them the so-called Bagram ivories, said Nicolas Engel, the museum’s current chief curator and the deputy director of DAFA from 2009 to 2013.

A selection of such finds, along with paintings and photographs of the country’s heritage sites, are the subject of “Afghanistan, Shadows and Legends,” which opens at the Guimet on Oct. 26 and runs through Feb. 6.

It is part of the “Season of Afghanistan,” which also includes “Within a Thread’s Breath: Textile Creations by Afghan Women,” examining the country’s contemporary textile tradition.

“This museum is intimately connected to the history of the discovery of civilizations of Afghanistan,” Sophie Makariou, president of Guimet, wrote in an email. “Two years ago, together with the National Museum of Afghanistan, we had planned to bring pieces from their collection to Paris. With the fall of Kabul last year, we had to rethink the exhibition.”

Mr. Engel said, “Originally we wanted to create a dialogue between the two collections and then show a smaller version of this exhibition in Kabul. But things changed.”

Mohammad Fahim Rahimi, the National Museum’s director in Kabul, did not respond to emails for comment.

Without the artifacts from Kabul’s museum, the exhibition in Paris will still present 375 objects, mostly from DAFA searches and the Guimet’s own collections, with some on loan from the British Museum, the Louvre and France’s National Library.

The show covers a period from the Bronze Age to the 15th century. Bronze Age ceramics, the oldest pieces in the show, are shown alongside miniature paintings, silver plates and a large variety of sculptures in stucco and schist rock.

“A bust from Hadda draped in a Greek-style garment is a good example of the ‘Greco-Buddhist’ style of sculpture found in Afghanistan,” Mr. Engel said. “Paintings from 1935 depicting the niches of the Bamiyan Buddhas reveal their once colorful, painted murals.”

The show also features the Bagram ivories, a rare collection of carved ivory plaques, owned by the Guimet, that were found in Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The ivories are estimated to date from the 1st or 2nd century.

They were found by DAFA in 1937 and 1939. Mr. Engel said that Mr. Hackin had been searching for a royal city in Bagram when his wife Marie, also known as Ria, stumbled upon two walled-off chambers.

“It is unknown whether the treasure was part of a royal stash or property of a merchant,” Mr. Engel said. “The ivories have Indian iconography; the bronzes and plasters are Roman style; the painted glass are similar to those found in Lebanon.”

The finding, Mr. Engel said, led them to conclude that Bagram had been at the crossroads of long-distance trade routes.

The ivories, as well as some belonging to the National Museum, were presented in a 2007 show at the Guimet titled “Recovered Treasures from Afghanistan” inaugurated by President Jacques Chirac of France and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

About 175 photographs in the upcoming show track a century of exploration in an unfamiliar and challenging land. Some, by the American photographer Steve McCurry, capture the vulnerability of Afghanistan’s heritage sites.

One image from 1992 shows Afghan youths playing at the foot of one of the Bamiyan Buddhas; another from 2003 shows children playing in an abandoned van next to the empty niche where a Buddha, by then destroyed, had stood.

A 1995 photograph shows armed soldiers sheltering inside the National Museum, shortly before the site was looted.

Until the 1950s, France was the only country allowed to excavate in Afghanistan. In 1950, the Afghan government allowed an American delegation to conduct archaeological activity, followed later by Italian, German and Japanese researchers.

Since 1925, the Guimet has regularly exhibited its collection of Afghan artifacts, which Mr. Engel described as some of the “most beautiful archaeological treasures outside of Afghanistan.” But, he added, the more exceptional pieces have remained inside the country, and preservation has been hindered by a lack of funds and international access, as well as poor conservation, as well as deficient conservation, particularly at the Minaret of Jam or the remains of the ancient Buddhist city of Mes Aynak.

“These are real and worrisome emergencies,” Ms. Makariou wrote in the catalog.

Still, Ms. Makariou wrote in an email, “Even if from a distance, we try to advance our understanding of the depths of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.

“We must keep the flame of research burning.”

WASHINGTON — For the past eight years, Ahmed Mohamed Aden has been trying to reunite with the sons he left behind when he fled Somalia.

He sought help from immigration advocates in Wisconsin, where he was legally resettled. He filed reams of paperwork with the United Nations refugee agency. He submitted DNA samples to prove he shares a genetic relationship with his children, which he hoped would speed up processing.

But earlier this month, he learned that their applications were still pending, stuck in a backlog of people fleeing violence and persecution who hope to find sanctuary in America.

“I did everything I can,” an emotional Mr. Aden said, holding his head in his hands as the social worker assigned to his case explained that his children would not be joining him in Milwaukee any time soon. “I tried.”

Mr. Aden’s sons are among thousands of people living in limbo as delays in the U.S. refugee system stretch to an average of five years or more, according to government estimates.

The average wait used to be roughly two years, before the Trump administration gutted the refugee program with the intention of sealing off the United States from refugees and other immigrants. And the coronavirus pandemic forced many U.S. embassies to close or curtail their operations, allowing cases to back up even more.

Many of the people who have been in the pipeline for years have grown increasingly frustrated, saying they are being pushed to the back of the line as the Biden administration prioritizes those fleeing crises in Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said she understands that the Biden administration is working with an overburdened system inherited from the Trump years.

But, she said, her patience is wearing thin.

“We’re at a point in the administration that while we recognize how the Trump administration decimated the infrastructure, it can’t be an excuse for too much longer,” Ms. Vignarajah said. “Because lives depend on the administration stepping up.”

President Biden, who has promised to rebuild the refugee program, issued an executive order last year that directed his administration to cut the processing times to six months.

But in a report submitted to Congress last month, the White House acknowledged that the effort to provide temporary protection to roughly 180,000 people escaping Ukraine and Afghanistan “required a significant reallocation of time and resources” and “hampered the program’s rebound.” Last week, the administration said it would offer a similar status for up to 24,000 Venezuelans looking to escape their broken country, even as many more who cross the border would be expelled under a pandemic-era rule put in place by Mr. Trump.

The shift means people in desperate conditions in countries like Somalia, Eritrea and Myanmar are facing the prospect of even longer waits. More than 76,000 prospective refugees were in the system’s pipeline waiting to be cleared for travel as of this summer, according to State Department data obtained by The New York Times.

Mulugeta Gebresilasie, a case manager at a resettlement agency in Columbus, Ohio, said that refugees already in the United States have felt penalized as their loved ones languish in camps for displaced people.

“Suddenly, the resettlement agencies were focusing on Afghan people,” Mr. Gebresilasie said. “The African refugees told me, ‘They forgot about us. We have been waiting so many years.’”

The U.S. refugee system was designed to provide a legal pathway for displaced people to find protection in the United States. Applicants must be recommended by the United Nations, a U.S. embassy or a nonprofit, undergo interviews with American consular officers overseas and gather documents that can be difficult or impossible to procure in failed states: birth certificates, marriage certificates, travel documents, school records. They also undergo extensive medical and security vetting.

Once they are resettled, the refugees can petition for their immediate relatives to join them in the United States by providing DNA or other evidence of their relationship. The relative would then be interviewed at an embassy by a U.S. official before being approved for travel.

But millions of people are being admitted into the United States outside the traditional refugee program, diverting resources from those who have been waiting for years.

Much attention has been paid to migrants crossing the border in record numbers, in part because of decisions by Republican-led states like Florida and Texas to send some of them to liberal bastions like Martha’s Vineyard as a way to provoke outrage.

Those migrants can secure asylum if they can prove they would be persecuted at home; otherwise they face deportation. More than a million have been turned away on the basis of a Trump-era public health measure called Title 42, which allows the United States to expel people who would have otherwise been admitted for an evaluation of their asylum claims or placed into deportation proceedings.

In special circumstances, the United States government can grant “parole” to people from other countries, a legal tool that allows them to enter the country but does not automatically confer a green card or citizenship. That is what Mr. Biden’s administration has done in the cases of many refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine and now Venezuela.

Over the past two years, the Biden administration has taken some steps to rebuild the overburdened refugee system, even as the president and his senior aides have debated how to unwind the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. Mr. Biden has expressed concern about Republican attacks over his immigration policies, particularly as apprehensions at the U.S. southern border have hit record levels.

The White House named Andrew Nacin, a former WordPress developer who worked on immigration issues for the Obama administration, to lead the effort. Mr. Nacin is streamlining the White House’s digital services and is trying to apply some lessons learned from the scramble to assist Afghans and Ukrainians.

His team plans to expand a program, currently used for Afghans and Ukrainians, that has allowed private citizens to sponsor refugees who seek to move to the United States.

Officials also are developing a more efficient application system, modeled after the emergency response to help Afghans, that would allow refugees to do their medical exams, interviews and security screening in tandem rather than waiting years between each step.

While the administration has a goal of hiring nearly 400 refugee officers, it currently has just 240, according to data provided by Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The president has said he is committed to fulfilling a campaign promise to reverse Mr. Trump’s limits on accepting refugees. The administration recently informed Congress that it would set the annual cap on the number of refugees at a maximum of 125,000 people, the same level as last year.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, set the limit at 15,000, the lowest it has been in the history of the refugee program.

The refugee numbers include only those who are legally resettled in the United States; asylum seekers who cross the border from Mexico, for example, do not count toward the limit. Nor do the Ukrainians, Afghans or Venezuelans who come in under humanitarian parole.

But the United States has not even come close to hitting the 125,000-person limit, in part because it simply has not had enough personnel to get through the backlog.

By the end of 2021, the United States had tallied just 11,411 refugees, the smallest number since the establishment of the refugee program. The Biden administration resettled about 25,400 refugees this past fiscal year, according to the State Department.

In interviews, senior administration officials said it was unlikely they would hit their target in the coming year.

For some applicants, time has run out.

Redi Rekab, an Eritrean widower, applied more than four years ago for his two teenage children stranded in Ethiopia to join him in Columbus, Ohio. He thought their reunion was imminent after the family submitted DNA.

Almost two years later, there had been no movement in their case. His son, Tiferi, grew impatient.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Rekab, a 54-year-old warehouse worker, said he was shocked to receive a call from his son, who said he had reached Libya and needed money to pay a smuggler for onward travel. Mr. Rekab said that he has been trying, in vain, to persuade his son to wait a little longer for approval to make a fresh start in the United States, rather than take the perilous — and often deadly — trip by sea for an uncertain future in Europe.

“The U.S. didn’t help me bring my children,” Mr. Rekab said. “But they approved people from Afghanistan and Ukraine in a very short time. It shows the U.S. doesn’t value us.”

Back in Milwaukee, Mr. Aden says his sons, who are now 21 and 22, represent a gaping hole in the life he has built in the United States. They were babies when he left Somalia and young teenagers when he started the process to bring them to the United States eight years ago. He missed their entire childhoods.

His 13-year-old daughter, Aisha, who was born in Uganda while Mr. Aden waited for approval to come to the United States, has yet to meet her siblings.

“I kind of lost hope,” she said. “And I feel like they’re not going to come.”

Feroza Binti Abdul Rashid, a 32-year-old Rohingya Muslim — a minority group that has faced a campaign of ethnic cleansing — arrived in Milwaukee in the summer of 2021, but her husband has not even been interviewed by American authorities yet.

Through an interpreter, Ms. Rashid said her 5-year-old daughter will often point at airplanes in the sky and ask if her father is finally coming. Last week, she called her father on WhatsApp and said she would send him $2 to help fly him over.

“She always says: ‘I only need my dad. I don’t need anything else,’” Ms. Rashid said.