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These Afghans Have Built Their Lives In Pakistan. Soon, They’ll Be Forced To Leave That All Behind.
Marjan Khan is one of many Afghan refugees who has made the long trek to a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan. He sits atop his belongings as he departs for Afghanistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – On a recent fall morning, hundreds of families pile atop trucks packed to the brim, clutching what remains of their life’s possessions beneath them. The vehicles line up alongside Grand Trunk Road outside the United Nations Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, they’ll make the over 35-mile-long journey to the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan. The scene, just after dawn, is not unusual for this part of the country these days. The crowds of people frequenting the breakfast stalls at the center are just some of the Afghan refugees being forced to return to their home country from Pakistan daily in large numbers in recent months.
As of 2015, Pakistan held the second-largest refugee population in the world, including 1.5 million U.N.-registered Afghan refugees and about 1 million unregistered Afghans.
Refugees from Afghanistan have funneled into Pakistan through various periods of turmoil and unrest in recent decades. Between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, conflicts between the Afghan Taliban and other extremist groups and tensions during the Soviet war, many Afghans have been forced to leave the country for safety and economic reasons, with a large portion escaping to Pakistan over the years.
Now, as many of these refugees and their children, some born and raised in Pakistan, return to Afghanistan, they are forced to do so under the pressure of a national deadline imposed by the Pakistani government. The deadline, issued earlier this year, mandates that all legally registered Afghan refugees return to Afghanistan before March 31, or face deportation. The date of the deadline has been moved several times, and some speculate that it may be moved again. But since the initial announcement, there has been an increase in the number of Afghans repatriating early to Afghanistan, some of whom have faced backlash in Pakistan as security forces reportedly intimidate them.
“Unprecedented numbers of Afghans are fleeing increased incidents of violence, arbitrary arrest, detention and other forms of harassment,” The International Organization for Migration noted in a press release issued in September.
“The situation is dire and we expect it to become far worse as winter approaches,” IOM Chief of Mission and Special Envoy to Afghanistan Laurence Hart was quoted as saying in the release. “These people are between a rock and a hard place. They have nowhere else to go. They have already lost everything and now they are entering a country in conflict, as the winter is about to hit, and they are seeking protection from a government and the international community that is stretched thin trying to cope with existing needs.”
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which functions as a U.N. emergency organizing body, already estimates that around 538,100 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year.
WORLDPOST
These Afghans Have Built Their Lives In Pakistan. Soon, They’ll Be Forced To Leave That All Behind.
“I have never been to Afghanistan. It is unfamiliar territory for me.”
6 hours ago
Haroon Janjua Freelance Investigative Reporter
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
Marjan Khan is one of many Afghan refugees who has made the long trek to a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan. He sits atop his belongings as he departs for Afghanistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – On a recent fall morning, hundreds of families pile atop trucks packed to the brim, clutching what remains of their life’s possessions beneath them. The vehicles line up alongside Grand Trunk Road outside the United Nations Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, they’ll make the over 35-mile-long journey to the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan. The scene, just after dawn, is not unusual for this part of the country these days. The crowds of people frequenting the breakfast stalls at the center are just some of the Afghan refugees being forced to return to their home country from Pakistan daily in large numbers in recent months.
As of 2015, Pakistan held the second-largest refugee population in the world, including 1.5 million U.N.-registered Afghan refugees and about 1 million unregistered Afghans.
The map above shows some of the routes taken by families interviewed for this article.
Refugees from Afghanistan have funneled into Pakistan through various periods of turmoil and unrest in recent decades. Between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, conflicts between the Afghan Taliban and other extremist groups and tensions during the Soviet war, many Afghans have been forced to leave the country for safety and economic reasons, with a large portion escaping to Pakistan over the years.
Now, as many of these refugees and their children, some born and raised in Pakistan, return to Afghanistan, they are forced to do so under the pressure of a national deadline imposed by the Pakistani government. The deadline, issued earlier this year, mandates that all legally registered Afghan refugees return to Afghanistan before March 31, or face deportation. The date of the deadline has been moved several times, and some speculate that it may be moved again. But since the initial announcement, there has been an increase in the number of Afghans repatriating early to Afghanistan, some of whom have faced backlash in Pakistan as security forces reportedly intimidate them.
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
A family sits on a bench at the UNHCR repatriation center in Peshawar, Pakistan while they wait for their forms to be approved to cross the border into Afghanistan.
“Unprecedented numbers of Afghans are fleeing increased incidents of violence, arbitrary arrest, detention and other forms of harassment,” The International Organization for Migration noted in a press release issued in September.
“The situation is dire and we expect it to become far worse as winter approaches,” IOM Chief of Mission and Special Envoy to Afghanistan Laurence Hart was quoted as saying in the release. “These people are between a rock and a hard place. They have nowhere else to go. They have already lost everything and now they are entering a country in conflict, as the winter is about to hit, and they are seeking protection from a government and the international community that is stretched thin trying to cope with existing needs.”
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which functions as a U.N. emergency organizing body, already estimates that around 538,100 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year.
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
Large trucks carry the belongings of Afghan refugees as they make their way towards the Torkham border to resettle in their native Afghanistan.
And some refugees are worried about the political turmoil they are being thrown in the middle of and the danger that it presents for them, especially those who are moving to Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan, where fighting and violent clashes still take place on a regular basis.
“We are the victims of political tensions between the two governments,” Marjan Khan, one of the refugees migrating back to Afghanistan, said.
The WorldPost spoke to some of these refugees at a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan about their fears, their hopes and their visions for the future.
Roz Qul, 55, and his family have mixed feelings about returning to Afghanistan. Though they appreciate Pakistan, they have become fed up with the prejudice they face here because of their Afghan roots.
“Pakistan is paradise,” Qul said. “It’s our home, but we are badly treated in the[se] last days.”
While discrimination against the Afghan population in the country has occurred since the migrants began arriving here, the political and social backlash against them has picked up in the last few years, particularly following the now infamous Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar in 2014.
Just last year, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing what it described as increased hostility and brutality from Pakistani police towards Afghan refugees, a feeling that was echoed by the refugees that it interviewed.
Qul can attest to those feelings firsthand as well, and it’s those negative experiences that have made the prospect of leaving more bearable for the Qul clan.
“We were harassed [by the] police and civilians as well,” he explained. “[We are] happy to leave.”
Marjan Khan is one of many Afghan refugees who has made the long trek to a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan. He sits atop his belongings as he departs for Afghanistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – On a recent fall morning, hundreds of families pile atop trucks packed to the brim, clutching what remains of their life’s possessions beneath them. The vehicles line up alongside Grand Trunk Road outside the United Nations Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, they’ll make the over 35-mile-long journey to the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan. The scene, just after dawn, is not unusual for this part of the country these days. The crowds of people frequenting the breakfast stalls at the center are just some of the Afghan refugees being forced to return to their home country from Pakistan daily in large numbers in recent months.
As of 2015, Pakistan held the second-largest refugee population in the world, including 1.5 million U.N.-registered Afghan refugees and about 1 million unregistered Afghans.
Refugees from Afghanistan have funneled into Pakistan through various periods of turmoil and unrest in recent decades. Between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, conflicts between the Afghan Taliban and other extremist groups and tensions during the Soviet war, many Afghans have been forced to leave the country for safety and economic reasons, with a large portion escaping to Pakistan over the years.
Now, as many of these refugees and their children, some born and raised in Pakistan, return to Afghanistan, they are forced to do so under the pressure of a national deadline imposed by the Pakistani government. The deadline, issued earlier this year, mandates that all legally registered Afghan refugees return to Afghanistan before March 31, or face deportation. The date of the deadline has been moved several times, and some speculate that it may be moved again. But since the initial announcement, there has been an increase in the number of Afghans repatriating early to Afghanistan, some of whom have faced backlash in Pakistan as security forces reportedly intimidate them.
“Unprecedented numbers of Afghans are fleeing increased incidents of violence, arbitrary arrest, detention and other forms of harassment,” The International Organization for Migration noted in a press release issued in September.
“The situation is dire and we expect it to become far worse as winter approaches,” IOM Chief of Mission and Special Envoy to Afghanistan Laurence Hart was quoted as saying in the release. “These people are between a rock and a hard place. They have nowhere else to go. They have already lost everything and now they are entering a country in conflict, as the winter is about to hit, and they are seeking protection from a government and the international community that is stretched thin trying to cope with existing needs.”
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which functions as a U.N. emergency organizing body, already estimates that around 538,100 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year.
WORLDPOST
These Afghans Have Built Their Lives In Pakistan. Soon, They’ll Be Forced To Leave That All Behind.
“I have never been to Afghanistan. It is unfamiliar territory for me.”
6 hours ago
Haroon Janjua Freelance Investigative Reporter
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
Marjan Khan is one of many Afghan refugees who has made the long trek to a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan. He sits atop his belongings as he departs for Afghanistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – On a recent fall morning, hundreds of families pile atop trucks packed to the brim, clutching what remains of their life’s possessions beneath them. The vehicles line up alongside Grand Trunk Road outside the United Nations Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, they’ll make the over 35-mile-long journey to the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan. The scene, just after dawn, is not unusual for this part of the country these days. The crowds of people frequenting the breakfast stalls at the center are just some of the Afghan refugees being forced to return to their home country from Pakistan daily in large numbers in recent months.
As of 2015, Pakistan held the second-largest refugee population in the world, including 1.5 million U.N.-registered Afghan refugees and about 1 million unregistered Afghans.
The map above shows some of the routes taken by families interviewed for this article.
Refugees from Afghanistan have funneled into Pakistan through various periods of turmoil and unrest in recent decades. Between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, conflicts between the Afghan Taliban and other extremist groups and tensions during the Soviet war, many Afghans have been forced to leave the country for safety and economic reasons, with a large portion escaping to Pakistan over the years.
Now, as many of these refugees and their children, some born and raised in Pakistan, return to Afghanistan, they are forced to do so under the pressure of a national deadline imposed by the Pakistani government. The deadline, issued earlier this year, mandates that all legally registered Afghan refugees return to Afghanistan before March 31, or face deportation. The date of the deadline has been moved several times, and some speculate that it may be moved again. But since the initial announcement, there has been an increase in the number of Afghans repatriating early to Afghanistan, some of whom have faced backlash in Pakistan as security forces reportedly intimidate them.
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
A family sits on a bench at the UNHCR repatriation center in Peshawar, Pakistan while they wait for their forms to be approved to cross the border into Afghanistan.
“Unprecedented numbers of Afghans are fleeing increased incidents of violence, arbitrary arrest, detention and other forms of harassment,” The International Organization for Migration noted in a press release issued in September.
“The situation is dire and we expect it to become far worse as winter approaches,” IOM Chief of Mission and Special Envoy to Afghanistan Laurence Hart was quoted as saying in the release. “These people are between a rock and a hard place. They have nowhere else to go. They have already lost everything and now they are entering a country in conflict, as the winter is about to hit, and they are seeking protection from a government and the international community that is stretched thin trying to cope with existing needs.”
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which functions as a U.N. emergency organizing body, already estimates that around 538,100 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year.
HAROON JANJUA/ WORLDPOST
Large trucks carry the belongings of Afghan refugees as they make their way towards the Torkham border to resettle in their native Afghanistan.
And some refugees are worried about the political turmoil they are being thrown in the middle of and the danger that it presents for them, especially those who are moving to Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan, where fighting and violent clashes still take place on a regular basis.
“We are the victims of political tensions between the two governments,” Marjan Khan, one of the refugees migrating back to Afghanistan, said.
The WorldPost spoke to some of these refugees at a UNHCR repatriation center in Pakistan about their fears, their hopes and their visions for the future.
Roz Qul, 55, and his family have mixed feelings about returning to Afghanistan. Though they appreciate Pakistan, they have become fed up with the prejudice they face here because of their Afghan roots.
“Pakistan is paradise,” Qul said. “It’s our home, but we are badly treated in the[se] last days.”
While discrimination against the Afghan population in the country has occurred since the migrants began arriving here, the political and social backlash against them has picked up in the last few years, particularly following the now infamous Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar in 2014.
Just last year, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing what it described as increased hostility and brutality from Pakistani police towards Afghan refugees, a feeling that was echoed by the refugees that it interviewed.
Qul can attest to those feelings firsthand as well, and it’s those negative experiences that have made the prospect of leaving more bearable for the Qul clan.
“We were harassed [by the] police and civilians as well,” he explained. “[We are] happy to leave.”
