REFUGEES: AFGHAN

Afghans who fled civil war in their country during the 1980s and 1990s.

The flight of refugees from Afghanistan began in 1978, driven by internal conflict caused by the takeover of Afghanistan by the Marxist-Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and later by the Soviet invasion in December 1979. By the early 1980s, a large-scale resistance war was being waged and more than six million refugees had fled Afghanistan, most settling in the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran, but many thousands also fleeing to India, Turkey, the United States, and Western Europe.

The Afghan refugees referred to themselves as muhajarin, from the Arabic root hijra, referring to the flight of the prophet Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, thus giving the refugees a religious status. Afghan refugee camps were established in Pakistan and Iran, assisted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other world relief agencies. Areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, especially the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan, became crowded with Afghan refugees, creating local hostility among the Pakistanis. In Pakistan, most of the refugees were ethnic Pushtun from the southeastern provinces of Afghanistan, although some Persian-speaking refugees, especially Hazara, fled from central Afghanistan to the area around Quetta in Baluchistan. Most of the two million Afghan refugees who fled to Iran were Persian speakers from the western provinces of Afghanistan. These large refugee camps became centers of political activity and recruiting grounds for young men to fight in the Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan.

Attempts at large-scale refugee repatriations occurred several times, beginning in 1992, only to be halted by renewed instability and the outflow of even more refugees. The first repatriation attempt occurred in 1992, after the mojahedin succeeded in ousting the Soviet-supported government in Kabul. (The Soviet Union had withdrawn its troops in 1990). More than 1.4 million refugees were repatriated in 1992 and 1993. However, the mojahedin, which was split into several antagonistic groups, was unable to develop a viable government, leading to internecine warfare and increased instability in Afghanistan. As a result, hundreds of thousands of refugees again fled Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.

In the midst of this chaos, the Taliban, a religious movement from the Kandahar region, gained control of most of Afghanistan. The Taliban government's strict Islamic codes, human-rights abuses, and bias against non-Pushtuns led to a steady refugee flight throughout the 1990s.

In addition to the political and economic instability in Afghanistan during the 1990s, Afghanistan also experienced a severe drought beginning in 2000, which created harsh conditions for millions of Afghans. In the year 2000 alone, over 172,000 Afghans fled to Pakistan because of the drought conditions or the political instability. Hundreds of thousands were displaced internally.

After the events of 11 September 2001, coalition forces began bombing the Taliban government in Kabul, and by November 2001 an interim government headed by Hamid Karzai had replaced it. Although this presented opportunities for refugees to repatriate, the immediate consequence of the allied bombing and the change in government was an increase in refugees. Even though Pakistan had closed its borders, over 160,000 Afghans crossed into Pakistan between 11 September 2001 and the end of the year. At the same time—the fall of 2001—the Iranian government, fearing a large exodus of Afghans into Iran, established two refugee camps just inside Afghanistan, which housed over 11,000 refugees.

By the spring of 2002, the refugees' situation began to change as the Karzai government brought some stability to Afghanistan. In addition, the United Nations and other relief agencies began large-scale repatriation efforts, which gave refugees who were willing to return grain and help with transportation. In total, 1.8 million refugees were repatriated during 2002. By 2003, the repatriation rate had slowed, in large part because most of those who wanted to return had already done so. Even with the massive number of refugees who returned, four million Afghans still lived outside of their home country as of the early twenty-first century. Many, maybe most, of these remaining refugees may never return.

see also afghanistan: overview; baluchistan; hazara; karzai, hamid; pushtun; taliban.

Bibliography

"Afghanistan: Displaced in a Devastated Country." In Caught between Borders: Response Strategies of the Internally Displaced, edited by Marc Vincent and Brigitte Refslund Sorensen. Sterling, VA; London: Pluto Press, 2001.

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