Remembering Afghan Refugees
M. Ashraf Haidari
September 11, 2008
As Americans reflect on the tragic events of seven years ago, they should
also recall that the September 11 terrorist attacks caused the international
spotlight to refocus on Afghanistan. The US-led invasion in late 2001 succeeded
in driving the Taliban from power, and paved the way for a humanitarian success
story. Of late, however, the international commitment to Afghanistan seems to
have lost traction. One way that Americans can honor the September 11 victims is
by keeping Afghan reconstruction efforts on course, and doing their part to
ensure that millions of Afghan refugees feel secure enough to return home.
Over the course of the past three decades, Afghan refugees have never
hesitated to return home as soon as promising conditions have given them hope
for restoration of peace and justice in their homeland. In 1992 and 1993, for
example, following the fall of the Afghan communist regime, more than 2 million
Afghan refugees voluntarily repatriated from Pakistan and Iran. But their return
ground to a halt, shortly after the breakout of the civil war that plunged
Afghanistan into anarchy and chaos.
Buoyed by international re-engagement in Afghanistan after the fall of the
Taliban in late 2001, more than 5 million Afghan refugees returned home from
Pakistan and Iran during the early 2000s, making the largest voluntary
repatriation in the history of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR).
But there still are over 3 million Afghan in Pakistan, and over 1 million in
Iran, and these remaining refugees are now reluctant to return home.
Deteriorating security, widespread poverty and unemployment, and a severe lack
of social facilities such as access to education and healthcare constitute major
obstacles to voluntary repatriation of most Afghan refugees. In many areas,
especially in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban has once again emerged as a
force to be reckoned with.
When a UN reporter in June asked one Afghan refugee, Hazrat Shah, if he
planned to repatriate, the carpet weaver now living in Pakistan replied; "There
is no place in the world like home. But where would you go if your house were
ablaze?" He added gloomily, "Today two new graves have been dug for two brothers
who were killed in a landmine explosion in Afghanistan." The two youngsters--not
related to Hazrat Shah--had returned home to Gereshk in Helmand province the
week before to find jobs and gradually to pave the way for the repatriation of
their entire family from Pakistan.
The government and people of Afghanistan appreciate the humanitarian
assistance Pakistan and Iran have provided to Afghan refugees over the past
three decades. But pull factors such as improved security, enhanced protection
and reintegration assistance, and increased employment opportunities in
Afghanistan should determine push factors in host states.
Pakistan and Iran must honor the principle of non-refoulement, rooted both in
international and Islamic law, to refrain from forcible deportation of Afghan
refugees. The Afghan government maintains separate trilateral agreements with
Pakistan, Iran, and UNHCR--a key provision of which is to facilitate voluntary
repatriation of Afghan refugees from the two countries only if the conditions
inside Afghanistan allow. Although host states have an interest in encouraging
refugees to go back home, UNHCR is mandated to prevent and protect refugees from
repatriating prematurely if the prevailing conditions at home are not ready for
their return. Except for spontaneous returns during 2002-2003, Afghan refugees
must have been warned about increasing instability and a severe lack of
reintegration assistance in Afghanistan in the following years.
Contrarily, however, Afghan refugees have been encouraged to return home, as
repatriation--voluntary or otherwise--has been viewed as a positive sign of
stabilization and reconstruction progress in Afghanistan. Consequently, the fact
that most returnees have ended up becoming internally displaced due to conflicts
and an expanding drought should be cause for serious concern to UNHCR and the
international community. It should also be a signal to halt further premature
repatriation of Afghan refugees until the conditions in Afghanistan have
improved enough for their safe return home.
At the same time, the international community must honor the principle of
burden sharing and provide relief assistance to states hosting large numbers of
refugees. Assistance to Pakistan and Iran should aim at empowering Afghan
refugees so that they will gain skills necessary both to contribute to their
host societies and later to use those skills to earn an income upon return home.
Additionally, developed countries must expand their resettlement programs,
taking in more Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan on an annual basis.
Resettlement of Afghan refugees in the developed countries will go a long way in
helping rebuild and develop Afghanistan. Resilience and high achievement
motivation that characterize most refugees will quickly enable resettled Afghan
families to adapt into their new societies, taking advantage of social and
economic opportunities there to establish themselves and to continue supporting
their relatives at home, as well as in Pakistan and Iran.
In the long run, most resettled Afghans will have gained wealth and higher
education which they would certainly use to invest in Afghanistan, as we know
from the return of many wealthy Afghans and technocrats who have made
significant contributions to Afghanistan’s reconstruction since 2002.
In pondering resettlement programs, one myth must be confronted head-on:
Contrary to frequent allegations that Afghan refugees are a burden on their host
countries’ economies, the opposite is most often true. The millions of refugees
in Pakistan and Iran are assets to those countries’ economies. Many Afghans in
both states fill a glaring need in the labor sector, working casual jobs at
wages much lower than that paid to locals who may not even be willing to accept
such jobs because of social taboos associated with casual labor. Other Afghan
refugees use their special skills--such as carpet weaving--to produce quality
Afghan rugs, which local firms purchase below market price, brand them made in
the host country, and then sell them in developed countries with manifold
profit. Most importantly, a significant number of Afghan refugees have found
success as entrepreneurs and have risen to operate midsize and even
corporate-level businesses in Pakistan, Iran, and the Gulf states, making
notable contributions to those countries’ economic growth.
Other allegations that terrorists recruit from Afghan refugee camps are
utterly baseless and a political excuse on Pakistan’s part not to cooperate
sincerely in the war against terrorism. Afghan refugees are actually victims of
violence and terrorism, but abusing their status as a scapegoat is clearly a
violation of their rights under the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the
Status of Refugees. Countries that are party to the Geneva Convention and other
international human rights regimes are obligated to respect refugee rights as
human rights and safeguard them by providing refugees with protection from
violence, persecution, and human insecurity that collectively make it impossible
for most refugees to return home voluntarily.
Almost 2,500 years ago, Euripides wrote that "there is no greater sorrow on
earth than the loss of one’s native land." Indeed, for most Afghan refugees,
like Hazrat Shah, no foreign land can ever replace their homeland where they
will return as soon as they feel secure to do so. It is obvious that the real
durable solution to the Afghan refugees’ problem is voluntary repatriation,
which can only be guaranteed by security in Afghanistan. Hence, Pakistan, Iran,
and Afghanistan’s other neighbors can and must cooperate with the international
community to stabilize Afghanistan first.
Durable stability and prosperity in the country would automatically attract
Afghan refugees to voluntarily return home. At the same time, the international
community must honor the commitments they recently made at the Paris Support
Conference to provide the Afghan government with long-term resources to
implement the objectives of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy--a key
priority of which is to help reintegrate returning refugees and internally
displaced persons into their communities.
M. Ashraf Haidari is political counselor of the Embassy of Afghanistan in
Washington, DC. His e-mail is
haidari@embassyofafghanistan.org
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