For more than three decades, Pakistan has been home to one of the worlds largest refugee

communities due to multiple waves of Afghans crossing over the porous international
border to flee repeated bouts of escalating conflict within their war-ravaged country.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had unleashed the first wave of refugees into Pakistan
and neighbouring Iran, but then more refugees came to escape years of civil war, and then
the brutality of the Taliban regime. Since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, some 3.8
million have returned home, but around 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees chose to
remain in Pakistan, with roughly another million living among our midst illegally.
While broader geostrategic interests such as the proxy war against the Soviets and the war
against terror have triggered the repeated exodus of Afghans from their homeland,
international support to help Pakistan cope with this long-lasting refugee influx remains
modest at best. Refugees have added further pressure on limited public goods available
within our country. Popular perceptions of refugees have also become more negative since
the past decade as Afghans are often suspected of being linked to militant and terrorist networks.
In large urban centres like Karachi, Afghans have also become caught up in ongoing ethnic
conflicts.
While some Afghans have managed to create a niche for themselves within Pakistan, a
majority of them are confined to reside in squatter settlements and have a tough time making
ends meet. Hazara Afghan refugees in Quetta are also being subjected to targeted sectarian
attacks.
Most Afghan refugees have received little assistance and they still think of themselves as
outsiders in Pakistan, despite having lived here for years. Unfortunately, the prospects of
them returning to their homeland remain dismal. The Afghan government has repeatedly
admitted that it lacks the capacity to reintegrate returning refugees. This situation will
probably become even more difficult as uncertainty increases in our neighbouring country
after the withdrawal of the US forces.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently admitted that it
has followed a misguided strategy in dealing with the nearly five million refugees it helped
return to Afghanistan since 2002. Besides providing Afghan returnees meagre financial and
logistical support, the UNHCR has failed to effectively reintegrate them back home.
Development agencies like the UNHCR should have pooled resources and worked more
closely with Afghan authorities to focus on improving the security and infrastructure of
particular localities where refugees were being encouraged to return en masse.
The failure to adopt such a holistic approach has resulted in a bulk of refugees congregating
around Kabul, which has experienced a tripling of its population in just seven years. Nearly
60 per cent of communities surveyed in a recent study by the UNHCR and the Afghan
Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation found returnees to be living in worse conditions than
local communities that had not left the country.
It remains very difficult for Pakistan to cater to the existing Afghan population in our midst,
let alone contend with another potential influx triggered by further uncertainty in
Afghanistan. Instead of wasting untold amounts of resources in the effort to singularly fight
terrorism, international powers should have paid more attention to the lingering
development needs of Afghanistan in general, as well as addressing the particular needs of
Afghan refugees to enable them to return to their home country, rather than leaving them
stranded abroad.


By the end of 2013, Pakistan continued to host the largest number of refugees in
the world (1.6 million), nearly all from Afghanistan, according to a report released
by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad at a
ceremony marked in connection with World Refugee Day which is being
celebrated on Friday.
Speaking at the World Refugee Day commemorative event in Islamabad, senior
UNHCR official Ms Maya Ameratunga, lauded Pakistan's role.
She said Pakistan has generously hosted the worlds largest refugee population for
three decades, and it was essential to mobilise more support from the international
community to sustain efforts such as the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (Raha)
initiative, which is a way of thanking the hosts of these refugees.
The report titled, Wars Human Cost: UNHCR Global Trends 2013, shows that the
number of refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people (IDPs) worldwide
has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.
The situation is similar for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which hosted 857,400 refugees
by year-end, almost all Afghans.
At the same time voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan
has also been the largest in the world, with 3.8 million having been assisted by UNHCR
to return home since 2002.
The report said 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2013, six million
more than the 45.2 million reported in 2012 and added that the reason for this massive
increase was driven mainly by the war in Syria, which at the end of last year had forced
2.5 million people into becoming refugees and made 6.5 million internally displaced.
Internal displacement amounted to a record 33.3 million people globally.
The UNHCR report said with some 2.56 million refugees in 86 countries, Afghanistan
remained the leading country of origin of refugees in 2013 the 33rd consecutive year it
has topped this list.
Today, on average, one out of every five refugees in the world is from Afghanistan, with
95 per cent located in Pakistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The strategy helps Afghan refugees to return home safely and voluntarily and to
reintegrate as citizens in their own country.
The strategy also provides support for host countries, for example through the Raha
programme.
The report commended the efforts of the government of Pakistan which took the
commendable initiative of adopting a National Policy on the Repatriation and
Management of Afghan Refugees.
It further said that as part of this policy, the government is renewing the Proof of
Registration cards of Afghan refugees, with validity until the end of 2015.
So far, some 90% of the refugees have renewed their cards at PoR Card Modification
Centres.
The remaining PoR card holders must do so by August 2014 in order to remain as
refugees.