Afghan refugees

Afghan refugees (known as Muhajir Afghans in South Asia) are people who fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and during the civil war that followed. Since the early 1980s, approximately 3 million Afghan refugees were settled in Pakistan and about two million in Iran. Some also made their way into the European Union, North America, Australia, and other parts of the world.

After September 11, 2001, when the United States Military and NATO forces were preparing for war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, a further million or so Afghans fled their country to evade possible US-NATO bombardment. By the end of 2001, there were approximately 5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, which included the numbers that were born inside that country during the past 20 years. At the same time there were about 2.4 million Afghans staying or living in Iran, which totaled to approximately 7.5 million in both countries.

Newly arriving refugees from Pakistan in 2004.

Since early 2002, more than 5 million Afghan refugees have been repatriated through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from both Pakistan and Iran back to their native country, Afghanistan.

From 2005 to late 2006, the Government of Pakistan began and completed a registration process of all Afghans living in their country. The total number of registered Afghans were reported at 2.15 million in February 2007. In or about the same time, 920,000 were remaining in Iran. In October 2007, Afghanistan's parliament, "in an open letter", urged the government of Iran to halt deportation of Afghan refugees until the winter ends.

More than 350,000 refugees were repatriated from Pakistan in 2007, which left the remaining ones in that country at about 2 million at that time. The repatriation process took place between March and October of that year, with each person receiving a travel package of about 100 US dollars. Approximately 80% of the refugees were those living in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), 13% were from Balochistan, 3% from Sindh, and the remaining 4% from Punjab and Pakistan's capital city, Islamabad. The main provinces to where they returned in Afghanistan were Nangarhar (57% returnees), Laghman (6.5%), Kabul (6%), Kandahar (4.4%), Kunduz and Ghazni (3.7% each). In 2006, Kabul was the top province for returnees, followed by Nangarhar, Kunduz, Logar and Paktia.

In January 2008, Iran's government passed a tougher law on Afghan refugees living in their country in which the unregistered Afghans could face arrest and detention for up to five years. An official at Iran's Interior Ministry said Iranian officials now have legal authority to begin moving unregistered refugees into detention camps with prison-like conditions. In August 2008, U.N. officials said that Pakistan has agreed to extend a 2009 deadline for the repatriation of the country's 1.8 million registered Afghans. The refugees are allowed to voluntarily go to Afghanistan but those who wish not to do so are allowed to remain in Pakistan indefinitely.

Because Afghanistan is not ready to accept so many returnees at this point, the UNHCR is shifting some Afghan refugees abroad, mostly to Canada, Australia, Germany and other countries. Each family that returns to Afghanistan, on production of repatriation documents issued by the UNHCR, is provided free plot of land by the Government of Afghanistan to build a new home. However the practical implementation of this has been problematic thus far.

See also

• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
• Muhajir
• Demography of Pakistan
• Demography of Iran

External links

• UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency (Afghanistan)
• In pictures: Reluctant return
• A Future for Afghan Refugees (Hope-AFAR)