Afghan Returnees Face Harsh Winter Of Discontent

Zabet Qasim's forced return to Afghanistan after five years living in Pakistan is hardly a happy homecoming.

The head of a household of 14, Qasim at the age of 62 must rebuild his family's life in a country whose hardships and insecurity they thought they had left behind.

"Since we arrived, we cannot buy wood or anything else," Qasim told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi on December 7, a few weeks into his unceremonious return to his native village of Khulazai in Afghanistan’s northern Parwan Province. "Winter has arrived. Our children are all sick from the cold."

With Afghanistan suffering from natural disaster after natural disaster, unemployment and poverty at record levels, and the country already in what has been described by aids agencies as a state of "forever emergency," the expected arrival of more than 1 million refugees like Qasim is amplifying the din of human misery and threatening to overwhelm aid efforts.

This week the number of Afghan returnees expelled from Pakistan will exceed 500,000 people, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) told RFE/RL on December 7, and that number is expected to double -- at the least.

In recent weeks, Pakistan has taken steps to expel 1.7 million undocumented Afghans as part of its policy announced in October to repatriate "illegal foreigners" living on its soil. The situation has led to chaotic scenes at the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings as returnees are funneled back into Afghanistan, where international aid groups are already struggling to provide humanitarian assistance to millions of people displaced by insecurity and a recent spate of earthquakes and perennial drought.

"This is population movement on a massive scale and the country is simply not in a position to safely manage these returns," NRC advocacy manager in Afghanistan Becky Roby said in written comments. "The humanitarian response is already overwhelmed and underfunded."

Afghan families returning to Afghanistan from Pakistan

The dire humanitarian situation and continued human rights concerns in Afghanistan led the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to issue a joint statement on December 8 calling for Pakistan to maintain a "protection space for Afghans in need of safety."

"People arriving at the border are exhausted and require urgent assistance as well as psychosocial support," the statement said. "Arrivals back to Afghanistan are adding to the worsening humanitarian crisis, as winter temperatures start to dip to minus 4 degrees Celsius in some locations. Many Afghan returnees are vulnerable, including women and children, who could lose their lives in a harsh winter if left without adequate shelter."

Multiple international organizations have answered the IOM's call to deliver critical care to Afghans at the border, many of whom are arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs. But the provision of shelter, health care, essential household items, cash, and transportation and food to prepare them for re-entry into Afghanistan is just the first step.

Once inside Afghanistan, a whole new crop of challenges awaits.

"The hurried nature of their departure from Pakistan has also meant that many of those returning to Afghanistan have extremely high needs and vulnerabilities and few safety nets," the NRC's Roby said. "This means that many families are left living in temporary overcrowded transit shelters with few resources to survive the harsh winter, let alone rebuild their lives."

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Many staying at large resettlement camps set up along Afghanistan's long border with Pakistan have said they face formidable hurdles to returning to their home regions, leaving them with no place to go.

Some returnees say they appealed to their extended families for help but were told they were unable to accommodate them. The prospect for some of returning to areas they left due to extreme poverty, insecurity, or the threat of retribution by the Taliban after the extremist group returned to power in August 2021 is also a powerful deterrent.

Oftentimes, "home" is no longer home at all.

"Many of the people returning have not lived in Afghanistan for decades and therefore often have little or no connection with their original homes," Roby said. "In many cases their children were born in Pakistan and don't speak the language. In some cases, they fled the country because their original homes were destroyed in fighting."

Like Qasim, 35-year-old Mirzai made it back to his native Parwan Province. And like Qasim, he has found it difficult to resettle.

"We don't have flour or wood to burn, we don't have anything to live on," Mirzai told Radio Azadi last week. "This house belongs to my brother. I don't have the money to build two rooms for me. There is no work. I’m sitting idle. I borrow money from friends and relatives."

Adding to the complications is that western Afghanistan is still reeling from multiple earthquakes in October that killed around 1,500 people and displaced tens of thousands of others, a situation that had already strained humanitarian aid efforts.

"Our fear for the longer term is that these people returning from Pakistan are going to end up living as internally displaced people across the country," Roby said. "There are already more than 6 million internally displaced people living in squalid temporary settlements through the country and few options available for sustainable solutions to their displacement."

Aid groups like the World Food Program, which is on the ground on both sides of the Pakistani-Afghan border alongside other UN agencies and NGOs, has said that more than $26.3 million in emergency funds is needed to support an expected 1 million new arrivals through the winter.

Afghan refugees sit outside their tents at a makeshift camp upon their arrival from Pakistan near the Afghanistan-Pakistan Torkham border in Nangarhar Province on November 12.

"These families arrive at the worst of times and face a bleak future in a country where one-third of people do not know where their next meal will come from," WFP Afghanistan Country Director Hsiao-Wei Lee said on December 1. "Leaving behind their homes and livelihoods, they return to start over in a country that gives them few economic opportunities and where many struggle to survive."

Afghan returnees who spoke to Radio Azadi are already considering their next moves, including to other countries. But with Pakistan -- which for decades has been a refuge for Afghans escaping war, political turmoil, and poverty -- out of the equation, there are no real options.

Some said they were even considering moving to Iran, which like Pakistan is currently embarking on an effort to deport over 2 million undocumented Afghans. Tehran has expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghans in recent months, according to Taliban officials.

The situation currently faced by millions of Afghan migrants has factored into the NRC's calls for the international community to work together "to ensure Afghans are not forced to leave hosting countries until it is safe and sustainable for them to return to Afghanistan."

In its joint statement on December 8, the UNHCR reiterated that its "non-return advisory for Afghanistan" put in place after the Taliban seized power in 2021 is still in effect, "and continues to call for a bar on the forced returns of Afghan nationals to a country still impacted by recurrent conflict, instability, and climate-induced disasters."

Afghans like Qasim who have already been forced into an Afghan homecoming are slowly coming to terms with their new reality, however.

"We have nothing to turn to but God," he told Radio Azadi. "No one has taken care of us yet."