Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 21, No. 1 ß The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press.

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doi:10.1093/jrs/fem048

Afghan Refugees in Pakistan: Not All

Refugees, Not Always in Pakistan,
Not Necessarily Afghan?

DANIEL A. KRONENFELD
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, US Department of State,
2401 E Street NW, Washington DC 20522, USA1
dagk@fulbrightweb.org

In 2001, there were estimated to be two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

In the past six years, however, over 3.5 million refugees have returned, and

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recent census data show that nearly 2.5 million still remain in Pakistan. Three
straightforward explanations for this monumental discrepancy have been
posited: Afghans’ high birthrates, their history of cross-border migration, and
increasing levels of urbanization in Pakistan. Yet the fact that none of these
processes comes as a surprise to researchers familiar with the history of Afghan
refugees begs a still deeper question: how and why were these processes so
utterly overlooked in 2001? The answer, it is argued, is a fundamental confusion
not only in how we count refugees but in how we conceptualize them. The
dichotomous distinction between refugees and non-refugees, while possessing
a certain legal clarity, does a poor job of describing the reality of individuals
whose movements are influenced by numerous social, political, and economic
factors.

Keywords: Afghanistan, Pakistan, repatriation, UNHCR

Introduction: A Tale of Two Numbers

In the first week of March, 2005, the four millionth Afghan refugee returned
home. By most measures some sort of celebration was justified. Over three
million of these refugees had repatriated with the help of the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making it far and away
the largest such return in UNHCR’s history. This achievement is all the more
remarkable for having occurred in Afghanistan, where conditions have not
always been conducive to the success of large-scale humanitarian operations.
Afghanistan remains one of the world’s poorest countries, its development,
health, and socio-economic indicators lying near the bottom of most rankings.
Its infrastructure—scant to begin with—has been battered by almost three
decades of near-ceaseless warfare and depredation. Returning Afghans still
contend with crumbling roads, dilapidated schools, and collapsed homes.
44 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
Nor has the fighting yet ended: the United States and its NATO allies maintain a
large military presence in Afghanistan and continue to battle an insurgency
waged by remnants of the Taliban regime. Add to this the difficult to verify but
oft-stated presumption that Osama bin Laden himself is hiding in the remote
frontier regions of Pakistan where many Afghan refugees remain, and it is a
wonder that UNHCR and its partners have helped four thousand, let alone four
million, refugees return to Afghanistan.
In the context of these real achievements, however, a curious anomaly has
emerged: 500,000 more refugees returned to Afghanistan in the first four
years of repatriation than were thought to exist in the first place. The situa-
tion is even more puzzling when we consider recent assessments, including
a census of Afghans in Pakistan completed the same month the four millionth
refugee returned home, showing that some 3.5 million Afghans still remain
abroad. In short, there now appear to have been nearly 8 million Afghan
refugees where it was thought just a few years ago there were only 3.5 million.2
In the face of this vast disparity, both the government of Pakistan and
UNHCR, who collaborated on the census, have taken pains to state that the

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high numbers are in fact not unexpected. They offer three basic explanations
for the discrepancy: the high birthrate among Afghans, increasing and
uncharted urbanization allowing many refugees to ‘disappear into the
woodwork’, and an overcount of returns due to some refugees making
repeated border crossings. These explanations—the first two in particular—
are in fact quite reasonable, and will be considered in turn below. (As we
shall see, the third is less persuasive, but points to a more compelling
explanatory factor: a history of uncharted migration into and out of
Afghanistan.) The very ‘reasonableness’ of these explanations, however,
begs a deeper question: how and why were these basic processes, stated so
matter-of-factly in 2005, so utterly overlooked in 2001?
The answer is not that UNHCR, or anyone else, simply made an
arithmetical error. Nor can the disparity be explained away as a cynical effort
to manipulate the data in order to achieve a particular political end. To be
sure, as will appear, different actors have arrived at differing estimates that
coincided with their varying political objectives. But even if the extreme
proposition were accepted that UNHCR sought to deliberately fudge its
numbers in either 2001 or 2005, the crucial question, again, is what kind of
cognitive dissonance allows such widely divergent numbers to become so
readily accepted by so many? Or, put another way, how is the conceptual
terrain so fluid that it produces such a wide range of ‘reasonable’ numbers?
At issue, I argue, is a fundamental confusion not just over how refugees
are counted, but over how they are conceptualized as well. At least part of
the confusion is inherent in the international legal conception of refugees
as victims of conflict who cross an international border at most twice: once to
flee and once more, if they are lucky, to return. This perspective establishes
clear legal distinctions between (political) refugees and (economic or other)
migrants. The major practical task, according to this worldview, is making
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 45
the binary determination about who belongs within the ‘refugee’ category and
who does not.
An examination of Afghanistan’s protracted human displacement shows,
however, the inherent difficulties in relying upon a system that accepts only
two a priori legal categories. It is a banality to observe that a binary classi-
ficatory system will poorly reflect most aspects of human social life, but
this may be especially relevant in humanitarian crises (Zetter 1991: 40).
Complex humanitarian disasters are by definition caused by multiple factors,
and researchers have documented how protracted crises and other major
changes may throw up new groupings and identity categories as populations
intermix, new livelihoods emerge, and ties to original homelands change
(for Afghanistan see UNHCR 2004; for broader theoretical discussions of
identity salience and change, see Haslam 2001; Tajfel 1978; Kronenfeld 2005).
People display a remarkable degree of resourcefulness in the face of crisis and
conflict, including a canny ability to blur their own identities and statuses
where it is useful to them. The opportunities available to refugees become
all the more varied within urban environments where they intermingle with

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other populations and take part in more complex and wide-ranging social
and economic structures (Landau 2006; Cohen 1974; Barnes 1969).
While the violence of the Soviet invasion and occupation forcibly separated
many Afghans from their birthplace, it may also have made Afghanistan and
its neighbours more interconnected. This is because the extensive migration,
displacement, and urbanization of the last three decades have fundamentally
altered both the social fabric and livelihoods not only of Afghan refugees,
but of their host and origin communities as well. Afghanistan as a country
is increasingly reliant upon remittances from abroad. At the same time,
segments of Pakistan’s economy have become reliant upon Afghan labour
(see Collective for Social Science Research 2005; Stigter and Monsutti 2005;
Koehler 2005). These recent changes have made it still more difficult to
determine who is a refugee and who is not, because they have resulted in
increased cross-border ties. Put simply, the Afghan who fled across the
border after the Soviet invasion may now have a job and a wife in Peshawar
in addition to his family back home.
The body of this article provides some background for each of the three
posited explanations for the vast underestimation of Afghan refugee numbers:
high population growth rates, unseen migration, and increasing urbanization.
It then examines how each of these factors may have influenced perceptions
of recent cross-border movement. Using both demographic data and inter-
views I conducted with Afghans in Pakistan I show that many, if not most,
Afghans in Pakistan are in some measure both refugees and economic
migrants: they may face political threats in Afghanistan but also be working
to support relatives there. Indeed the very term ‘Afghan’ may be questioned
in this context, since over half the Afghans currently residing in Pakistan,
according to the census, were born outside their putative homeland. Most
importantly, their decision to stay or return—and even their sense of whether
46 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
it is safe to stay or return—will depend upon more than a simple calculation
of the political threat they may face in Afghanistan. It will depend upon their
economic goals and responsibilities, their kin ties and social networks, and
their identity and self-conception.
The difficulty in characterizing Afghan migrants is by no means new.
Highland Afghans have, for example, made seasonal forays into the lowlands
of what is now Pakistan for centuries in order to supplement their agricul-
tural income with piecework. How does one characterize the Afghan who
crosses the Pakistani border after the Soviet invasion, having done precisely
the same thing the year before? How does one characterize him if he is taken
in by a relative in urban Peshawar rather than taking his chances in a refugee
camp?
It is this fluidity or multiplicity of purpose and identity that has to a great
extent been responsible for the divergent estimates of refugee numbers. At
various points, researchers, humanitarian agencies, and government officials
have called upon different notions of what a refugee should be or look like in
order to count them. In 2001, the prevailing definition may have focused on

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the number of Afghans in organized camps. In 2005, it included those who
availed themselves of repatriation opportunities or held up their hands to
be counted in the census in the hope of gaining temporary resident status.
As will be seen below, the very reasons for enumerating refugees in the first
place have varied with different political and humanitarian objectives at
different periods of the crisis.
One response to the conceptual confusion would be to tune the definition
of ‘refugee’ more finely, to ensure that governments, humanitarian organiza-
tions, and migrants themselves are all referring to the same concept when
they speak. Reducing the ambiguity surrounding who is a refugee and who is
not might make us more sensitive to overt attempts at political manipulation
and help ensure that the distribution of humanitarian aid is more objective
and fair. This effort has in fact been a major goal of international humani-
tarian law over the past fifty years. At some point, however, this approach
may be counter-productive. The ambiguity surrounding migration reflects the
fundamental multiplicity of factors that cause people to move. While accept-
ing some of this blurriness may provide some legal cover for the powerful to
abuse the weak, if larger humanitarian concerns are not ignored its greater
effect will be to allow the weak more space in which to adapt and ultimately
to thrive.
Returning to Afghanistan, instead of asking who is a refugee and who is
not, a better question might be: what is best for Afghans and their neigh-
bours? I take this up in the conclusion, arguing that a return to the status
quo ante may be neither possible nor desirable. While the option of assisted
voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan should remain open, it is unrealistic,
considering the extent of economic interdependence, to expect that every last
Afghan will permanently return. One may appreciate why law favours few
and precise categories. In the end, however, not only the Afghans themselves
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 47
but their neighbours as well might be better served if humanitarian practice
and international legal norms move beyond the dichotomous distinction
between refugees and other migrants.

An Overview of Afghan Population Movement, 1979–2001

Afghanistan is perhaps most often seen in the international imagination
as the site of some of the most monumental humanitarian crises of the last
half-century. While accurate statistics are difficult to come by in any war-torn
country, let alone one as undeveloped and historically difficult to access as
Afghanistan, it is likely that well over one-third of all Afghans have been
displaced from their homes at one time or another during their lives.3
Although some have credited Afghans’ survival under such conditions to a
particular, almost genetic, resilience, it is clear that nurture plays at least
as great a role as nature.
In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, forcing some

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3.8 million people to flee the country; 2.3 million of them sought refuge in
Pakistan, and 1.5 million in Iran (Turton and Marsden 2002: 11). However,
the Soviets were never able to consolidate their control over the country, and
for ten years they fought an insurgency—a loosely organized alliance of
mujahideen, or holy warriors, who were supplied with arms and cash by the
West. Over the course of this bloody decade, additional hundreds of thou-
sands fled Afghanistan.
An end to Afghanistan’s troubles appeared in sight in 1988 when Mikhail
Gorbachev agreed to withdraw Soviet forces. The last Soviet soldier left in
February, 1989. Refugee returns remained minimal, however, as the Soviet-
backed leader Najibullah remained ensconced in Kabul for a further three
years. With his overthrow in 1992, Afghanistan finally saw the first large-
scale return of refugees since the Soviet invasion. No sooner had they
returned, however, than the country—and Kabul in particular—was plunged
into war between its erstwhile mujahideen liberators. For many Afghans, this
period is remembered as even bloodier than the Soviet war, and it launched a
new exodus of refugees and, especially, internally displaced people (IDPs).
After several years, salvation once again appeared in sight with the
emergence of a force of religious students (taliban) who, while they had a
particularly dour view of Islamic propriety, were initially popular for their
success in ending the conflict among rival mujahideen—now generally referred
to in the West as warlords. Refugee returns, which had been faltering since
the bumper year of 1992, looked as if they might once again pick up
momentum. By 1996, however, when the Taliban took control of Kabul after
a year-long siege, it was clear to many Afghans that the war was far from
over. Once again, the mujahideen formed a loose alliance, this time around
the military leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, to fight what was usually a rear-
guard action against the Taliban.
48 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
Table 1

Estimated Refugee Returns, 2001–2005

Year Pakistan Iran Other Total

assisted spontaneous assisted spontaneous

2001 0 ? 0 ? ? 300,000
2002 1,532,664 194,127 259,662 155,248 9,679 2,153,382
2003 341,018 45,125 131,751 119,604 1,099 640,600
2004 383,030 41,103 375,682 76,231 401 878,451
2005 401,791 10,675 63,063 187,996 1,050 666,580
Total 2,658,503 291,030 830,158 539,079 12,229 4,639,013

Sources: Most data are from UNHCR Weekly Statistics Reports. Figures from 2001 are rough
estimates in Turton and Marsden (2002: 20), and actually cover the period October 2001 to
March 2002, when UNHCR began assisted repatriations.

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Beginning almost immediately after the American-led invasion of October
2001, thousands of Afghans per day began streaming back into the country.
Although the pace slowed after 2002, the annual flow of returnees to
Afghanistan remained higher than any other refugee repatriation in the
world. According to UNHCR’s data, over four million Afghans returned
between 2002 and 2005, the majority of them from Pakistan (see Table 1).
Ascertaining the precise number of returns is difficult; numbers were
probably inflated because some refugees ‘recycled’—i.e., went through the
assisted repatriation programme more than once in order to take repeated
advantage of the cash grant (see Turton and Marsden 2002: 21). Beginning in
late 2002, however, UNHCR instituted an iris-recognition programme that
has essentially eliminated recycling. At the same time, it seems probable that
the number of spontaneous returns—those unassisted by UNHCR—was
undercounted, due in part to the inability of border monitors to continuously
staff their posts during episodes of insecurity or military activity. Given these
factors the return numbers must be taken as estimates. Still, the fact that the
two major possible sources of inaccuracy pull in opposite directions suggests
no reason to assume a serious systematic miscount of the overall number
of returns.
Despite some uncertainty about the precise number of returning Afghans,
almost everyone concerned with the repatriation effort of the early 2000s was
astonished by the high numbers of returnees. This astonishment was ampli-
fied by the fact that refugee settlements in Pakistan hardly lost a soul as
millions of Afghans returned, indicating that the population of Afghans in
Pakistan was higher than anyone had supposed. With time, observers attri-
buted the steep increase in this population to the three factors noted above:
reproduction, migration, and urbanization. But this is only part of the story,
because these processes were not always apparent to observers before the
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 49
record repatriation. The pages that follow seek not only to shed some light
on these processes, but also to show how the difficulty in discerning them
at the time was due in large part to shifting conceptions of what it means
to be a refugee.

Reproduction: High But Not Unexpected

According to an extrapolation of data gathered in the 2005 census, the
annual growth rate among Afghans in Pakistan is approximately 3 per cent.4
The authors of the census speculate further that there was a spike in the birth
rate following the initial refugee arrivals of the early 1980s, ‘a common
phenomenon following times of duress’ (Government of Pakistan 2005: 5).
Even making the simplistic assumption, however, that the rate has remained
relatively stable over the years, the data indicate that the population of
Afghans in Pakistan has more than doubled since 1979 due to natural
increase alone.
This high rate is borne out by the age profile of the population, 19.4 per

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cent of which is under the age of five. (Developing countries generally have
an under-five population between 15 per cent and 20 per cent.) Extrapolation
of the under-five statistic indicates that over 55 per cent of the Afghan
population in Pakistan is under the age of 18 (Government of Pakistan
2005: 18). More importantly for the political future of the region, however,
these figures indicate that the majority of Afghans currently residing in
Pakistan were actually born there, and may have little or no familiarity with
Afghanistan. Yet these children of refugees are considered refugees them-
selves and do not have Pakistani citizenship. Future repatriation efforts will
face a particular challenge in coping with this population.
Of the three factors cited to explain the large number of Afghans in
Pakistan, the high rate of population increase is the most straightforward.
While a 3 per cent rate of natural increase is indeed high—placing the
Afghans in Pakistan among the top dozen or so countries in the world—it is
nevertheless not unduly surprising for an undeveloped area. The average rate
of natural increase for the whole of Pakistan was 2.3 per cent over the five
years from 2001 to 2005, while in Afghanistan it was 2.6 per cent. Factoring
in immigration, the population growth rates were 2.0 per cent and 5.1 per
cent, respectively (data compiled by author from US Census Bureau 2006).
From this perspective, the only thing peculiar about the growth rate of
Afghans in Pakistan is that it appears to have been entirely overlooked in
computing refugee numbers before the recent repatriation. As will appear,
however, other less straightforward processes were at work as well.

Migration: A Long History of Population Movement

UNHCR estimated in the middle of 2001 that there were two million
Afghans living in Pakistan (and one million in Iran).5 But three years later,
50 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
after the return of nearly three million Afghans, the census shows that over
three million still remained in Pakistan—well over the initial 2001 estimate.6
The contradiction suggests the need to look at migration patterns well before
the 1979 Soviet invasion. These show that 1979 represents less of a historical
disjuncture than is commonly thought. While the factors compelling Afghans
to leave their homes in 1979 and 1980 were both quantitatively and qualita-
tively different from anything that had occurred before, they were by no
means entirely novel. Agricultural and economic instability have long been
features of life in the highlands of Afghanistan, and for centuries Afghans
have migrated in response to crop failures, drought, violence, and other
problems, often across international borders, to look for temporary work.
This prior experience helped shape Afghans’ response to the Soviet invasion:
many of the millions of Afghans who fled to Pakistan had either lived there
previously or had family who had lived there, and they were thus able to
draw upon pre-existing experience, social networks, kinship ties, and eco-
nomic activities. This background helped ensure that, as difficult as the events
of 1979 and 1980 were for many Afghans, they were still less calamitous than

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they could have been.
Afghans have historically followed several different migratory patterns.
Inhabitants of eastern Afghanistan have long travelled, usually seasonally,
to seek work in the lowlands of what is now Pakistan. Many of these were
nomadic groups who moved their flocks east to lower elevations during the
winter. These included the powindas, now generally referred to as kuchis, most
of them Pashtuns of the Ghilzai tribe. Evidence of their wide-ranging migra-
tion is the fact that many of them were fluent in Persian and Urdu, and even
Bengali, Burmese, and other more distant languages (Collective for Social
Science Research 2005: 8; Kakar 1979: 122–126; Smith et al. 1969: 65, 311).
Other migrants were more sedentary agriculturalists who sought to supple-
ment their incomes, especially during periods of drought or poor harvests.
Kakar (1979: 122–123) speaks of gharibkari, poor seasonal labourers who
migrate from rural to urban areas in search of unskilled work. He notes that
authors have written about this practice as long ago as the early nineteenth
century (see Elphinstone 1972 [1815]). Finally, Afghan merchants had long
taken advantage of Afghanistan’s location between the Middle East and the
Indian subcontinent to engage in extensive trade (Smith et al. 1969).
As in many other cases, it was only the establishment of an international
border—in this case the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from British
India in 1893—that instantaneously turned ‘regional’ into ‘international’
migration. Despite this, the British continued to allow most Afghan migrants
and traders unfettered access through the northern marches of India (includ-
ing present-day Pakistan). This ended in 1947, when newly independent
Pakistan began to levy a tariff at the border. For the next several decades, the
government of Pakistan periodically closed its border to certain commodities
(such as gasoline) or to all traffic and trade. This was largely a response to
the ‘Pashtunistan’ dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Durand
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 51
Line ran neatly through the middle of the area inhabited by the Pashtun
ethnic group, and Kabul repeatedly aggravated Islamabad during the 1950s,
60s, and 70s by calling for an independent Pashtunistan to be carved out
of Pakistan’s western flank (Haqqani 2005: 161–176; Smith et al. 1969:
328–331).
Two additional factors motivating cross-border migration emerged in the
1970s: a particularly severe drought and the oil boom. The first forced
a sizable number of rural Afghans to seek livelihoods not only in urban
Afghanistan but also abroad (World Bank 2005a: 1). This helped fuel the
growth in Pakistan of katchi abadis, irregular settlements located on illegally
occupied state land, usually on the margins of cities. The existence of katchi
abadis made it easier for Afghans subsequently fleeing the Soviet invasion to
settle in Pakistan, since there was already an established Afghan presence
there (Collective for Social Science Research 2005: 7–19). The second major
change was the oil boom of 1973. The resulting demand for labour provided
an opportunity for many Afghans to earn more money by working abroad,
especially in Iran; to learn a skill; and to send a significant portion of their

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earnings back home to Afghanistan (Stigter and Monsutti 2005: 3).
Thus the 1979 crisis occurred within the context of a history of cross-
border migration, and the human displacement of the early 1980s was not
an entirely new phenomenon (see Kakar 1995 for a detailed study of this
period). It was, however, more cataclysmic for most Afghans than anything
that had occurred before, in terms of both its overall ferocity and the number
of people affected. Kakar (1995: Chapter 13) describes the brutality of
the Soviet policy of ‘total war’, including mass killing designed to subdue
non-combatants as well as fighters.

Urbanization: Uncharted Numbers, Unintended Consequences

Until very recently the vast majority of repatriating Afghans have come not
from camps but from urban areas in Pakistan, where they had lived inter-
mixed with the Pakistani population. Indeed, there has been relatively little
decrease in the population of (largely rural) camp-based refugees—i.e., those
that UNHCR and the Pakistani authorities have watched most closely. And
the diminution that has occurred has come about largely as a result of camp
consolidations and closures instituted by either the government or UNHCR.7
Where did this wellspring of urban dwellers come from? Many had likely
started off in camps after fleeing during the Soviet invasion, while others
were more recent arrivals in Pakistan, having come during the later waves
of migration in the nineties. These later refugees found it easier to return to
Afghanistan both because their ties to their home communities remained
stronger than those of earlier displacees, and because they had less to give up
in terms of employment or household effects than those who had arrived
earlier. (According to the recent census, the majority of the Afghans remain-
ing in Pakistan in early 2005 were long-stayers: fully 51 per cent of them,
52 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
in fact, arrived in Pakistan before 1981 (Government of Pakistan 2005: 19).)
Although it has long been known that as a result of both deliberate policies
and unintended consequences camp-based refugees often sought work in the
cities, few observers appear to have appreciated the scope and permanence of
this movement. What is important for the present discussion is that the
spread of Afghans into new (and renewed) social and economic niches further
blurred the borders between refugees and non-refugees, making enumeration
not only more difficult but a more questionable enterprise altogether.
As with previous population flows out of Afghanistan, the vast majority of
the refugees who left for Pakistan during the 1980s were Pashtuns from rural
areas, particularly Afghanistan’s southern and eastern provinces (Govern-
ment of Pakistan 2005: 20, 41–43; Kakar 1995: ch. 13, note 12). In order to
respond to the exodus, UNHCR and the government of Pakistan created a
series of refugee camps along the Afghan border, the majority of them in
rural and semi-rural areas in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP),
where refugees were provided with tents and other basic non-food items,
as well as food rations, principally in the form of wheat (Turton and

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Marsden 2002: 11). For the most part, additional waves of displacement were
accommodated within the existing camp structure.8 (New camps were added
only in 2001 to accommodate the roughly 200,000 Afghans who fled in the
wake of the US-led attack on the Taliban.)
By the time of the refugee outflows of the mid-1990s, the character of the
refugee camps had changed. They had grown to resemble ‘refugee villages’
more than camps, as their inhabitants replaced their tents with more perma-
nent mud houses. The refugees themselves began to change, too: as their stay
in Pakistan dragged on, many of them adopted new—or in fact old—survival
strategies by seeking wage-labour in the cities. But where many Afghans
had once migrated seasonally, because of the continuing uncertainty in
Afghanistan they were now encamped year-round in Pakistan. This occurred
even with Afghans who did not have formal refugee status. The Collective for
Social Science Research (2005: 8) reports, for example, that the large katchi
abadi on the outskirts of Karachi now had a permanent Afghan presence. But
the changes in refugees’ lives and livelihoods were also a result of deliberate
policy choices. First, the government of Pakistan did not allow Afghans to
cultivate their own land, but permitted them to migrate freely within Pakistan
in search of work (Turton and Marsden 2002: 11). As noted above, a segment
of the Afghan population had historically sought unskilled work in Pakistan
during the winter months. After 1979, however, this segment expanded in
numbers, social make-up, and year-round presence.
The second major policy decision that led to increasing urbanization was
the cessation of food aid to Afghan refugees in October 1995, driving many
refugees into the cities to look for work. UNHCR and the World Food
Programme (WFP), after a series of assessments, had determined that the
majority of Afghans in Pakistan would able to survive on their own without
food assistance. The change in policy, while supported by the assessments,
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 53
appeared also to stem from donors’ increasing desire to scale down assistance
in what had become a protracted refugee crisis. In addition to losing food
aid, refugees were also required to contribute for the first time toward
their own education, health, and water supply services (Turton and Marsden
2002: 13–14).
Whatever its causes, the end of food aid further urbanized the Afghan
population in Pakistan, and, ultimately, had a profound effect on not only
their livelihood patterns but their fundamental self-conception. Since they
began arriving in large numbers in 1979, refugees had been issued passbooks
by UNHCR, which entitled them to basic services, especially food. Later,
when assisted repatriation began after the Soviet withdrawal, these passbooks
could be ‘encashed’: exchanged for a cash grant of as much as $100 per
family to facilitate returnees’ transportation back to their home provinces
in Afghanistan. Even before food aid ended, a number of refugees were
encashing their passbooks without repatriating, and thus deregistering from
the refugee rolls and contributing to urbanization (UNHCR 1994). With the
cessation of food aid, however, this process rapidly expanded.9 Many of

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those seeking work in the cities were male heads of households, who left their
wives and children behind in the camps where they still had access to basic
health and education, even if for a fee. This, combined with the high birth
rate, may have contributed to the apparent stability of camp numbers when
in fact many men were already working outside the camps.
After October 1995, the encashment programme was opened to all Afghans,
regardless of whether or not they had a passbook. As the passbooks became
irrelevant a distinction that had long separated the Afghans (mostly Pashtuns)
from their Pakistani (also mostly Pashtun) hosts began to erode. This identity
change may be particularly significant among the large population of Afghans,
technically still refugees, who were actually born in Pakistan and have had
relatively little contact with their homeland.
Ironically, as the humanitarian world began disengaging from the Afghan
refugees, they began to loom ever larger in Islamabad. Although it has never
signed the 1951 Refugee convention or the 1967 Protocol, Pakistan has been
given credit for exercising a great deal of patience in hosting millions of Afghans
over the course of several decades. With the end of food aid, however,
Islamabad became concerned that Afghans, rather than bringing international
resources into the country—or at least being economically neutral—would
became a net drain on the Pakistani economy and a destabilizing political force.
The Pashtunistan issue had not been forgotten, and some were concerned about
Afghans’ high birth rates and increasing distribution across the country. As we
shall see below, there is reason to believe that Afghan labour migration benefits
both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the return of all Afghans to
Afghanistan became a principal goal on Islamabad’s agenda, even as this goal
has become more and more difficult to achieve.
Life in the cities not only changed Afghans’ livelihood patterns and
self-conception, but it also made it much more difficult for UNHCR and
54 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
Islamabad to keep track of refugees, as they became more dispersed among
and economically interdependent with host populations (UNHCR 2004: 8–9).
But the difficulties in tracking refugees were conceptual as well. Whereas in
the 1990s an Afghan refugee may have meant more than anything else a
holder of a refugee passbook who was entitled to humanitarian assistance, by
the 2000s the term appeared to have broadened to include almost any Afghan
in Pakistan. The two conceptions are not unrelated to policy imperatives that
changed over time: in the early period a desire to limit humanitarian expen-
ditures and play down perceived disturbance of host populations, and in later
years a desire to demonstrate humanitarian success and resolve perceived
domestic political problems. Regardless of their causes, it is clear that these
shifting conceptual categories acted upon the ever more complex social and
economic ties brought about by urbanization to further blur the distinction
between refugees and non-refugees.

Afghan Population Movement Today

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The UNHCR-assisted repatriation programme for Afghanistan, as elsewhere,
is predicated on the assumption that refugees cross a border only twice: once
to escape a country and once—if they are lucky—to return. As noted above,
the first challenge to this assumption emerged when UNHCR realized that
a sizable (but unquantifiable) number of Afghans were ‘recycling’ across the
border in order to receive multiple cash grants. With the institution of
biometrics UNHCR effectively put a stop to this particular form of cross-
border traffic. But the fact remains that a great many Afghans in Pakistan
live a fairly short distance from their home provinces in Afghanistan, making
travel between the two locations relatively easy. Considering this and the
porousness of the border—neither Pakistani nor Afghan officials are able
to effectively control cross-border traffic—it is not surprising that many
Afghans have travelled back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan for
social or economic reasons.
What few realized, however, was the volume of this traffic. A recent
(unpublished) IOM study revealed that 390,000 Afghans passed through a
single border crossing (in both directions) during one two-week period in
January (for an overview see Koehler 2005). Several elements of this state-
ment bear elaboration. First, the study was only conducted at Torkham,
which is a major but by no means the only border crossing between Pakistan
and Afghanistan. Second, the traffic occurred in both directions; about as
many people were crossing into Afghanistan as were setting out for Pakistan.
Third, the study occurred in the dead of winter, when border traffic is
typically at its lowest and UNHCR’s assisted repatriation programme shuts
down. Added to this, respondents indicated that they had crossed into
Pakistan an average of 20 times each. In light of these factors the number of
border crossings at Torkham is truly staggering.
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 55
These findings provide a plausible explanation for some of the difference
in the projected number of refugees in Pakistan between 2001 and 2005: it is
likely that many Afghans showed up in both sets of numbers, in the census as
residents of Pakistan and in UNHCR’s statistics as returnees to Afghanistan.
For if an Afghan was going to cross over into Afghanistan, even for some
short-term purpose, it would make sense for him (or her) to take advantage
of the repatriation package in his first crossing, even if he could not do so in
subsequent journeys.
Many of these repeat crossers—perhaps a majority of them—are traders or
people with family or businesses on both sides of a border that runs through
a fairly populated and close-knit area. But for others the decision to cross the
border clearly has greater import. Among these were several Afghans I spoke
to in two group interviews in February 2005, about half of whom acknowl-
edged having been back to Afghanistan on at least one occasion since
first arriving in Pakistan as refugees.10 Most of these said they had gone to
Afghanistan to attempt to resettle, but were unable to make ends meet.
Some had been back for just a few days; others had been in Afghanistan for

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over a year. The most frequent reason they cited for remaining in Pakistan
was a lack of shelter and/or land in Afghanistan. Indeed, according to the
census, over 57 per cent of Afghans in Pakistan cite lack of shelter as the
primary reason they do not intend to return to Afghanistan the next year, by
far outdistancing other factors, including lack of security, personal enmities,
and worries about livelihoods (see Figure 1).

Figure 1
Refugees’ Primary Reason for Not Returning to Afghanistan

Personal enmity Other

3% 4%

Security
18%

Shelter
57%

Livelihood
18%

Source: Data from Government of Pakistan (2005: 59). Total number of 2,517,558 does not
include the 531,710 respondents who said they intended to repatriate by the end of 2005.
56 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
The Afghans I spoke with evinced the concerns of many who were among
the first wave of refugees to arrive in Pakistan: their ties to Afghanistan,
including their claims to land and shelter, had eroded during their two-decade
absence.11 A few respondents who still had land had lost their houses in
the fighting, and were unable to rebuild. Many of the houses that were not
destroyed were occupied in their owners’ absence. In a country where land
title is a complicated affair, it has been difficult to reclaim property. Inter-
estingly, while time away lessened some ties, it did little to weaken others.
Several of the respondents cited personal enmities, or blood feuds, as their
primary reason for not returning to Afghanistan. According to traditional
Pashtun law, enmities may be inherited across generations, and several
refugees feared that their lives would be in danger should they return.
Other reasons for not returning were more prosaic but just as serious:
a lack of available livelihoods in Afghanistan, and of adequate schools
and health care. One respondent said he had moved his entire family back to
Afghanistan but, after two months, he could no longer stand the complaining
of his children, who missed their friends and schools back in Pakistan: ‘They

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kept saying, ‘‘When are we going to return to Pakistan? We want to return to
Pakistan.’’ Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and we came back.’ Another
respondent put it succinctly: ‘We would like to return to Afghanistan, but
conditions are miserable there.’ Regardless of their reasons for not returning,
the IOM study and my interviews demonstrate that when many Afghans
speak of conditions in Afghanistan, they are speaking from personal experi-
ence: they have crossed over and taken a look.
Do such experiences indicate that UNHCR’s repatriation programme has
not been a success? Some will certainly read the reverse flow into Pakistan of
hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of whom had earlier availed them-
selves of UNHCR’s assistance package, as a sign that the Afghan government
and the international aid community have failed to anchor returnees in
Afghanistan. There is indeed some evidence that sustaining so many returns
in a country with so little functioning social or economic infrastructure
has been a challenge. In addition to Afghanistan’s low health, education, and
economic indicators, efforts to rebuild have been hampered by insecurity and
poor planning (see, e.g., Stephens and Ottaway 2005). Turton and Marsden,
writing at the end of 2002, compared the progress in rebuilding Afghanistan
with the astronomical repatriation figures of the previous year and concluded
that the international donor community and UNHCR had acted too quickly
to encourage refugees to return to Afghanistan, before the country was ready
to accommodate them (2002: 2–4, 55–57). The world should have waited,
they argued, at least a year before sending the signal to Afghans that they
should return.
From another perspective, however, the heavy cross-border traffic
between Afghanistan and Pakistan is merely an indication that Afghans
are continuing to do what they have always done: moving between the
highlands and the lowlands in response to economic and social insecurities
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 57
and opportunities. The recent (and in some areas of Afghanistan still
ongoing) drought of the early 2000s provided yet another motivation for
Afghans to pursue the traditional coping mechanism of migration. Indeed for
many Afghans, especially the nomadic Kuchis who have largely lost their
flocks during the years of infighting, migrating in search of manual labour is
the only available strategy for making a living.
While drawing upon earlier patterns, it is nevertheless evident that the
extent of Afghan migration has increased dramatically in the last 25 years.
Although many of the largely rural Afghans who fled in 1979 were familiar
with Pakistan and may have migrated seasonally in earlier years, few prob-
ably guessed how long they would remain outside Afghanistan this time.
As assistance decreased they became drawn more heavily into local economic
systems centered in Pakistan’s urban areas (UNHCR 2004: 8–9). While their
increasingly long absence made it difficult to preserve their property in
Afghanistan, many nevertheless maintained their ties there, sending money
home to sustain family members. As conditions changed, quite a number in
fact returned to Afghanistan to attempt to resume their lives there. Some

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stayed; some did not. Of those who did not, many were unable, many
unwilling, and most probably some combination of the two.
Throughout, what has been most clear is that the fundamental identity
of many of the Afghans who live in Pakistan has changed in 25 years. This is
not at all to say that Afghans are assimilating or hoping to assimilate in
Pakistan. In my own interviews with Afghans, they are very quick to point
out their pride in their Afghan identity, their patriotism and their desire to
return home to Afghanistan. A pronouncement I heard on several occasions
ran, ‘Even if we stay in Pakistan a thousand years, we will always remain
Afghans and our home will always be Afghanistan.’ When it comes to
specifics, however, it is clear that the choice is not such a simple one. Many
Afghans now depend for their livelihoods on economic and social linkages
that have significant components in Pakistan. From this perspective the
issue is not just how to count refugees, but who constitute refugees in the
first place.

Conclusions: Old Patterns Emerge Anew

By nearly any measure, more Afghans have lived as refugees than any other
population in the world’s recent history. Considering the monumental chal-
lenges associated with keeping track of this population—charting millions of
border crossings occurring over dozens of years in some of the least accessible
and most inhospitable areas on earth—it should be no surprise that numbers
do not agree from source to source and from year to year. When estimates
differ by well over a factor of two, however, it is worth investigating the
assumptions that underlie them. From an empirical perspective, it appears
that three processes in particular led to both the rapid increase of Afghans
58 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
in Pakistan and the relative difficulty in detecting this increase: high
population growth rates, unseen migration, and uncharted urbanization.
Yet these processes do not explain why different observers have adduced
different numbers at different times. In examining this, it appears that despite
the apparently clear legal distinction between refugees and non-refugees, in
practice the determination is not so straightforward, especially when dealing
with very large populations. In fact, the decision whether to call someone
a refugee depends to a certain extent on the goals and perspective of the
observer. Is the purpose to allocate food or to chart refugee returns? Is it
to reduce host country grievances or to support source country claims? Is it
to minimize expenditures or to maximize donations? There is nothing inher-
ently sinister or manipulative about the notion that who is counted will
depend in part on the goals of the counter. After all, we count for different
reasons. Yet when our figures differ so dramatically from one another, all the
while purporting to measure the same category, it is time to acknowledge that
the category itself is too restrictive.
The information presented in this short review suggests the need to

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consider more flexible solutions for Afghan displacees. The dichotomy
between refugees and other migrants may not make sense in the Afghan
situation, or indeed many others. Afghans have left their homes for a variety
of reasons, some of them ostensibly covered under international humanitar-
ian law and some not. This in itself would not be a challenge to the current
system if it were always possible in practice to disentangle one reason for
displacement from another. But often the resources and even the logical
ability to adjudicate individual cases are lacking. As environments change
and people draw upon past experience and present possibilities to survive
and flourish, the lines separating humanitarian crises from ‘ordinary’ crises,
targeted depredation from general deprivation, and, finally, refugees from
migrants, become difficult to detect, let alone legislate. A sound refugee
policy must acknowledge this, and search for alternative means of resolving
longstanding issues.
UNHCR has itself for some time realized that the ‘causes of displacement
from Afghanistan have become much more complex over the years’, and that
‘a new approach is required to address a situation for which additional
solutions that lie outside UNHCR’s mandate need to be found’ (UNHCR
2003: 3). Unfortunately, UNHCR has to some extent been hamstrung by this
mandate and its perceived competencies. Suggesting the need to find a
comprehensive approach that includes migration and development is one
thing, but finding someone to fund such an approach is quite another.
Some steps have nevertheless been taken. The first was the census of 2005.
The second is the issuance of temporary identity documents allowing Afghans
to continue to use the minimal health and educational facilities they currently
have, as well as to maintain the possibility of working in Pakistan. Such a
registration was being conducted at the time of writing this article. According
to some accounts, maintaining some Afghans’ ability to work in Pakistan
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 59
yields positive benefits for both countries: it provides a relatively cheap and
productive source of labour in Pakistan, while providing Afghanistan with an
important source of income in the form of remittances (Goodhand 2004: 163;
Stigter and Monsutti 2005; World Bank 2005a). Even the Afghans I spoke to
who had not set foot in Afghanistan for 25 years said they continued to send
money home to relatives in Afghanistan. This model should be familiar to
Pakistanis: according to the World Bank, Pakistan is the fifth-highest recip-
ient of remittances in the world. Pakistanis working abroad, many of them
in the Persian Gulf, sent home some $4 billion in 2003 (World Bank 2005b).
While reliable estimates of the value of remittances to the Afghan economy
are not available, the figure is certainly quite high, especially as a proportion
of Afghanistan’s GDP.12
In the long run it is clear that effective solutions to protracted refugee
situations must involve not only a broader understanding of the causes
and effects of displacement but also more substantive coordination among
agencies and organizations traditionally divided into humanitarian, develop-
ment, and legal fields. This is easier said than done, however. Large bureau-

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cracies move slowly, and are often loath to give outsiders a genuine role in
making decisions they see as lying squarely within their own competencies.
In the meantime, however, it may be appropriate to revisit UNHCR’s
current preference for voluntary repatriation as the preferred durable solution
to refugee crises (Crisp 2004: 5). While the reasons for the preference make
sense, especially with regard to difficult international negotiations, it is often
impossible to return to the status quo ante, especially in protracted refugee
situations, while local integration, which has grown out of favour since the
1980s, may be a more appropriate solution. In saying this, it is important
to point out, pace Crisp 2004, that local integration automatically implies
neither naturalization nor assimilation. Countries are free to work out the
terms of any such agreement on their own. But considering the history of
cross-border movement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the length of
time many Afghans have spent in Pakistan, and the potential economic gains
to be realized on both sides of the border, some such agreement may make
good sense for Afghans.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following people for their helpful
comments and suggestions: Larry Bartlett, Mara Kronenfeld, Loren B.
Landau, Lisa K. Walker, the participants at the author’s session at the 2006
International Association for the Study of Forced Migration conference, and,
finally, two anonymous reviewers, whose comments were particularly
insightful.

1. The views expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect
those of the US Department of State or the US government.
60 Daniel A. Kronenfeld
2. The 8 million figure is based on 4 million returns between 2001 and February 2005
plus 3 million Afghans in Pakistan in February 2005 (Government of Pakistan 2005)
and 920,000 in Iran (UNHCR analysis as of 1 April 2005). The 3.5 million figure was
UNHCR’s estimate from June 2001. More detail will be provided below.
3. According to some estimates, the proportion may even approach two-thirds of
the population. Fully 55 per cent of the respondents in a 2004 nationwide survey
said they had been ‘forced to leave the country because of war’ (Asia Foundation
2004: 96). If we extrapolate using the recent census and UNHCR’s return figures,
there were five million Afghans outside Afghanistan who were not in the sampling
frame when the survey was taken in early 2004. Assuming a total Afghan popu-
lation of 25 million (including Afghans abroad), we may deduce that 64 per cent of
all Afghans have lived as refugees. There are reasons, however, to choose a more
conservative figure. To begin with, the phrasing of the survey question makes it
possible that respondents included very short trips abroad in their responses.
Beyond this, the survey’s accuracy is also questionable because it relies on very
faulty population estimates from the partial 1979 census, which was itself a ques-
tionable enterprise. (To be fair, accurate figures will not be available until a new
census is conducted in the next year or two.)

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4. It is not clear whether the ‘estimated annual population growth’ cited in the census
(p. 5) is meant to indicate the rate of natural increase—i.e., births minus deaths—
or the population growth rate (PGR), which measures population change based
on ‘natural’ events as well as migration. In principle, the wording suggests PGR,
but the subsequent discussion of a spike in the birthrate draws attention to the rate
of natural increase. The assumption is made here that the authors are referring to
the rate of natural increase, but either way the argument is the same: high rates are
by no means surprising, and should have been expected from the beginning.
5. This figure is curiously still frozen in time on UNHCR’s Pakistan website: http://
www.un.org.pk/unhcr/Afstats-stat.htm. One year later UNHCR revised the
Pakistan estimate upward to 3.4 million (Turton and Marsden 2002: 19). This is
not to suggest that UNHCR has been unaware of the difficulties in estimating the
population of Afghans in Pakistan (see UNHCR 2004).
6. The census was carried out by the Government of Pakistan’s Population Census
Organization (PCO) with technical assistance from UNHCR between 23 February
and 11 March 2005. While there is no evidence of any systematic bias in the
census, the very nature of enumerating a non-territorially delimited subpopulation
within a shifting and disorganized urban environment in a developing country,
especially where Afghans may perceive advantages to remaining out of the sight
of official enumerators, may raise some questions about the accuracy of the
census. The census-takers sought to reduce this possibility by launching a mass-
information campaign in which Afghans were told that being counted in the census
was a first step toward receiving identity documents that would, at least for a time,
regularize and legalize their status in Afghanistan. Despite this, some Pakistani
authorities believe that the true number of Afghans in Pakistan is rather higher
than the three million counted (personal communication from UNHCR official in
Islamabad, August 2005).
7. The 2005 closure of camps in the Kurram and Bajaur agencies of the Federally
Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in Pakistan resulted in approximately 100,000
Afghan repatriations. The rest of the estimated 130,000 inhabitants relocated
within Pakistan. Earlier operations in 2004 and 2005 cleared out the other camps
 Afghan Refugees in Pakistan 61
in the FATA agencies of South and North Waziristan. The Government of
Pakistan has been eager to move refugees out of the FATA, which has historically
lain somewhat outside of Islamabad’s writ. More recently, it has been the site of
militant organization, including alleged Al Qaeda activity.
8. Observers periodize the successive waves of displacement differently. The
Collective for Social Science Research (2005: 19), for example, distinguishes
four waves, which occurred during (1) the Soviet military intervention (1979–
1988), (2) the mujahideen’s internecine fighting (1988–1996), (3) the Taliban’s reign
(1996–2001) and (4) the US-led invasion of 2001. Khattak (2003: 199–201) adds to
these a fifth group, those escaping drought in the 1990s.
9. The fair distribution of passbooks was dubious from the very beginning. Faced
with overwhelming numbers of refugees following the Soviet invasion, Pakistani
authorities relied on traditional Afghan community leaders to help register the
population. A black market for passbooks quickly emerged. This factor calls into
question the accuracy of even the earlier refugee numbers (UNHCR 1994:
paragraphs 4–5, 27).
10. I conducted two group interviews, one in the I-11 neighbourhood of Islamabad
(50 respondents) and one in Ichrian Camp in Mansehra (100 respondents).

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Respondents were all male and generally tilted toward elders. Almost all the
refugees I spoke to had been in Pakistan for two or more decades. I would like to
have interviewed women but was not able to under the circumstances. I thank
UNHCR and Church World Service for their assistance in arranging the interviews.
11. The Government of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR)
is working to identify and distribute land to returning refugees and other landless
Afghans in order to address this problem. Efforts have been hampered by difficulties
in identifying suitable land that has clear title, adjudicating rival land claims, and
finding financing for the construction of shelter on the land.
12. See the many publications of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit
(AREU) available on their website: www.areu.org.af. It has been estimated that
Afghanistan received some $20 million a month in the 1970s from Afghans
working abroad, mostly in the oil industry (Blood 1997: ch. 3).

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