This paper examines the narratives and imaginaries of fear and loss that animate the public discourses of two partner NGOs that offer women in Afghanistan English language training workshops and scholarships to study at universities in the United States, in the hopes that they will be equipped with the language and professional skills to contribute to a rapidly expanding civil society in Afghanistan. My point of departure is that as students excel academically, achieve professional mobility, and gain public recognition by US media, state, and NGO institutions, organization staff members increasingly fear that participants will lose the benefits of their achievements upon returning to Afghanistan—a paradox I am framing through the concept of precarity. Based on four months of ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with these two organizations, this paper asks what it means for progress to be accompanied by fear in an Afghan women’s empowerment regime and more broadly, within contemporary empowerment enterprises that work with women in the Global South? I argue that while it is undeniable that significant professional and educational opportunities have become available to the participants of these programs, access to these very opportunities is contingent on the mobilization of the discursive category of “Afghan women,” which is marked by the risk and fear of loss, as well as a particular historiography of Afghanistan marked by waves of derailed progress. Thus, it is not only staff members who mobilize narratives of fear and loss that accompany participant “success stories” in fundraising contexts and media interviews, but also the participants themselves. Based on participant observation, interviews with organization staff members and participants, an examination of the promotional material of both organizations, and a discursive analysis of recent news articles on the topic, this paper analyzes how the category of “Afghan women” and a particular historiography of progress in Afghanistan intersect in the narratives of staff members and participants. It will demonstrate that narratives of precarity have become a key condition of possibility for young adult Afghan women participants of empowerment programs, to continue to get the benefits of both state-sponsored and private educational and professional resources.