11/4/2016 Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the Most Afghan Migrants - The New York Times

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ASIA PACIFIC

Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the

Most Afghan Migrants
By ROD NORDLAND NOV. 4, 2016

SAMARKHEL, Afghanistan There is one country in the world that is now taking in
more Afghan migrants than all the countries in Europe and South Asia put together
this year.

That would be Afghanistan itself.

By the end of the year, aid officials here expect some 1.5 million migrants to
return to Afghanistan many of them forcibly, and including some officially
registered as refugees.

Some will come from Europe, which has recently signed a deal with Afghanistan
to return tens of thousands of migrants who were not granted asylum. A far larger
amount are being forced back by Iran and, particularly, Pakistan, where the United
Nations says there are 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees and an additional
700,000 undocumented Afghans.

Many Afghans report that concerted harassment and discrimination by the

Pakistani authorities have become too much to bear. And Pakistan has flatly given
undocumented Afghans a Nov. 15 deadline to obtain legal documents like passports
and visas a near impossibility for most or face arrest and deportation, which
could lead to even greater numbers leaving Pakistan in the coming weeks.

The last straw for Ghulamullah, a father of 10 who had sons in Pakistani schools and
one married to a Pakistani woman, was when a soldier entered his house with a dog.

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11/4/2016 Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the Most Afghan Migrants - The New York Times

I came to Pakistan to save my honor and my religion, he said, but I see there is no
more honor in Pakistan. The Pakistani Army gave me 15 days to leave. He has now
settled in a camp near Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan.

Official or unofficial, many of the Afghans have lived abroad for decades, and
they are now returning to a country where the war is at its most traumatic since
2001. And as they come back, they are redrawing the demographic map of a region
that has long been defined by its displaced population and where cities are already
straining to deal with rapidly expanding tent camps and shanty towns.

With all these returns from Pakistan and Iran as well, and looming returns
from Europe, its a perfect recipe for a perfect storm because that puts a strain on the
capacity of the government to respond, said Laurence Hart, head of the
International Organization for Migration office in Kabul.

Aid groups do not have budgets to care for many of the new arrivals, who are
expected in many cases to end up swelling the ranks of the internally displaced
people who have lived often for years in squalid conditions in camps around cities.
Its a poverty competition here now, Mr. Hart said. Existing I.D.P.s are
increasingly vulnerable because of new arrivals. I.D.P. stands for internally
displaced people.

Within Afghanistan, the worsening war with the Taliban has sent record
numbers of people fleeing their homes in conflict areas. Just in the past two months,
according to Afghanistans Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, 600,000 people
have been displaced from their homes by conflict, swelling the ranks of the 1.2
million internal refugees or displaced people in Afghanistan from previous years to
as much as 1.8 million.

That could mean more than three million internal or returning refugees inside
the country, more than Afghanistan has ever before experienced. Many of them will
have nowhere to go, pitching up at existing camps, making new settlements, and
crowding into already overcrowded villages since few of the returnees can go back
to their original homes, often in war-torn areas that they left decades ago.

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11/4/2016 Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the Most Afghan Migrants - The New York Times

Add to that mix, programs have quietly ramped up in recent months to return
Afghans from Europe who are judged ineligible for asylum there.

Norway this year has sent back 442 Afghans, more than half of them forcibly,
while Germany has returned 2,900 Afghans, nearly all voluntarily. Early in October,
the European Union signed an agreement with Afghanistan to return Afghans whose
asylum appeals are rejected most likely resulting in tens of thousands of
repatriations. Known as the Joint Way Forward declaration, which critics say
Europe made a condition of continued development assistance to Afghanistan, it
even provides for building a dedicated airport terminal in Kabul to handle the
expected repatriations.

Many of those returning are people who have spent many years and even
decades in their host countries, including many cases of people born there who are
now adults with children of their own.

I dont remember a time this difficult, said Maya Ameratunga, the Afghanistan
director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. She
had previously worked in Pakistan. Now were dealing with the population who left
Afghanistan in the 1980s and dont know this country.

Every morning now a parade of trucks loaded 15 feet high with household
possessions, firewood and small children and even sometimes a cow or two
pulls up at the Samarkhel Encashment Center outside Jalalabad. The center is run
by the UNHCR, and catches the traffic coming from the main border crossing with
Pakistan, at Torkham.

At present, each day some 400 refugee families come through the encashment
center, which as its name suggests is the place where registered refugees get cash
from the UNHCR to start new lives about $400 per family member, expected to
last them six months.

In 2014, by contrast, only 467 families came through Samarkhel in the entire
year a busy days worth now. After relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan
soured last June, anti-refugee campaigns by the Pakistani authorities began driving
many people to leave.

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We believe if it continues at the same rate no more Afghans will be left in

Pakistan by next July or August, said Ahmed Wali, who manages the center for the
refugee agency.

Refugees say they have faced a campaign of police and official harassment in
Pakistan ever since relations between the two countries hit a new low last summer.
Among the Afghans who have been suddenly rounded up on various legal charges,
often after decades of residence, was Sharbat Gula, who became internationally
famous as the Afghan girl who appeared on a cover of National Geographic
magazine in 1985.

Almost none of the Afghans leaving Pakistan right now are returning out of any
belief that Afghanistan is now safer to live in. Official pressure and discrimination
are the most common reasons given.

Under international law, Pakistan is obliged to allow registered refugees to stay,

and most of those who leave are doing so voluntarily in theory. I personally dont
see this as a voluntary repatriation, said Mohammad Ismail, head of the UNHCR
office in Jalalabad. When you are harassed, intimidated, rounded up by police,
taken to court, forced to pay bribes, you are being forced to leave.

Shaqiullah, 46, fled the Soviet invasion 29 years ago to Pakistan, at age 17. Last
month, he returned with his two wives and their 20 children, ranging in age from 6

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11/4/2016 Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the Most Afghan Migrants - The New York Times

months to 28 years, all born in Pakistan. He stopped in Samarkhel to collect his

reintegration payment before heading on to Jalalabad.

They are all sad and unhappy in their new home, he said. They had friends
there, schools there, everything there, they didnt know anything else. Shaqiullah is
luckier than most, however, since he is a mullah and has already found a job as
the mullah for a refugee camp in Afghanistan for newly homeless Afghans.

Undocumented returning refugees, who never succeeded in being registered as

refugees but have often spent years abroad, are even worse off. Since they are not
entitled to UNHCR cash reintegration payments, the International Organization for
Migration screens those who come back and singles out the 40 percent who are most
vulnerable a sort of triage brought by funding shortfalls.

Typically, the vulnerable returnees receive $500 a family, and other emergency
services, from I.O.M., which has begun an emergency appeal to be able to fund even
that level of service. UNHCR also says it is greatly underfunded to help the
returnees.

Other than the cash payments, when available, most of the refugees have little
to come home to in Afghanistan. While the Afghan government has promised them
plots of land, that is unlikely to come about any time soon; internally displaced
refugees already have been waiting for years for such promised land grants to
materialize.

There are more than a million people on the move, Ms. Ameratunga said.
And this is happening at a time when winter can be a life-or-death challenge, and
when donor fatigue is stretched with all the disasters happening all over the world.

Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter @rodnordland.

Fahim Abed, Zahra Nader and Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Kabul,
Afghanistan.

2016 The New York Times Company

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