U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2000 - Afghanistan

At the end of 1999, more than 2.6 million Afghans were refugees in neighboring countries. The vast majority were in Iran (1.4 million) and Pakistan (1.2 million); a much smaller number, 14,500, were in India (14,500), and 17,000 were in the neighboring Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).

Tens of thousands of Afghans fled to Pakistan during the year. More than two million other Afghans – many of whom also fled Afghanistan's internal conflict – lived in Pakistan, Iran, and the Gulf states as migrant or undocumented workers. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 26,000 Afghans sought asylum in Europe in 1999, the largest number ever. It was difficult to estimate the number of internally displaced persons in Afghanistan with any accuracy, but the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) believed the figure to be 500,000 to 750,000.

Some 154,600 Afghans repatriated voluntarily from Pakistan and Iran during 1999; Iran forcibly returned 100,000 Afghan refugees. Only a handful of refugees were in Afghanistan, including five whose asylum claims UNHCR was still considering at year's end. UNHCR facilitated the repatriation of 63 Tajiks during the year. UNHCR considered former Tajik refugees still in Afghanistan to be locally integrated, although it assisted any who wished to repatriate.

Background

More than 20 years of war has left Afghanistan completely ravaged. Historically a poor nation, by 1999 it was totally impoverished. Afghanistan's per capita income was one of the lowest in the world. Its infant mortality rate, 200 deaths per 1,000 infants, was one of the world's highest.

In recent years, the mostly ethnic Pushtun Taliban, which espouses and imposes a strict interpretation of Islam, has taken control of nearly 90 percent of the country. Nevertheless, only three countries recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Taliban has increasingly resorted to drug trafficking for income. In 1999, Afghanistan doubled its production of opium (the vast majority grown in Taliban-controlled areas) and became the world's largest producer of opium.

The Taliban enforced rigid moral codes on the population and restricted women's and girls' access to health care, employment, and education. The Taliban spent few resources on social services for the civilian population, devoting most of its income to the war effort.

Human rights organizations accused the Taliban of committing widespread human rights abuses, both against civilians in areas already under its control and against civilians in newly captured areas. Taliban forces reportedly killed hundreds of men, and allegedly some women and children, following their capture of Bamiyan and nearby towns in Hazarajat in May, and of the Shomali Plains in late July. The Taliban also forcibly displaced tens of thousands of people from the Shomali Plains and burned their homes and crops to the ground.

The "Northern Alliance" remained the only major opposition force in Afghanistan. Comprised mostly of ethnic Tajiks, it primarily controlled areas in Northeast Afghanistan. Northern Alliance forces also reportedly committed human rights abuses against civilians, including killings, indiscriminate shelling of urban areas, rape, and kidnapping for ransom.

Developments During 1999

Several international efforts to mediate an end to the conflict took place during the year, including a high-level meeting on July 19 between the two main Afghan factions and leaders of neighboring countries, the United States, and Russia. The meeting produced no positive results. In October, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan resigned, expressing frustration with the warring factions' lack of commitment to peace.

The next month, November, the UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on the Taliban for failing to extradite accused terrorist Osama bin Laden. The United States accuses bin Laden of the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In August 1998, the United States bombed a site in Afghanistan where bin Laden was said to be living. When the UN voted in November to impose sanctions, mobs – apparently orchestrated – attacked the UNHCR offices in Kabul and Farah. The protesters did not mistreat UNHCR staff. However, four World Food Program (WFP) representatives were assaulted near Bamiyan.

The first major displacement of the year took place in the area of Bamiyan. In early April, a number of ethnic Hazaras said that the Taliban had forced them to abandon their homes. On May 9, the Taliban captured Bamiyan city. Most of the city's residents fled into the mountains. According to Amnesty International, the Taliban killed dozens of civilians upon entering the city and later took hundreds of men, and some women and children, with them when they left. They did the same in Yakaolang, Bamiyan's second largest city, which the Taliban captured a week later.

According to Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), by late May there were more than 70,000 displaced people in the Bamiyan area. Other sources reported that as many as 115,000 civilians became internally displaced in the Bamiyan area between March and May. According to the UN, 500 displaced persons from Bamiyan, including 360 children, died of cold and hunger while hiding in the mountains.

In late July, the Taliban launched a major offensive into the Shomali Plains, some 25 miles (40 km) north of Kabul. The Taliban forces reportedly included many foreign volunteers and recruits, including child soldiers under the age of 14. The Taliban and their allies pushed the Northern Alliance forces out of the plains and caused a major exodus of the civilian population. More than 100,000 people fled to the northeast, into the Northern Alliance-controlled Panjshir Valley, and another 10,000 fled to Kunduz Province. The Taliban reportedly forced more than 40,000 of the plains' ethnic Tajik residents to move to Kabul. In just one four-day period in early August, 20,000 forcibly displaced persons from the Shomali Plains arrived in Kabul. According to a UN spokesperson, the displaced arrived destitute and dehydrated. "It is a chilling sight," the spokesperson told the Associated Press. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the forced displacement.

A disproportionate number of those forced to go to Kabul were women and children. Taliban forces reportedly separated more than a thousand persons, mostly men but including some women, from their families during the trek from the Shomali Plains to Kabul. Members of the group taken away by the Taliban were not seen again.

The Taliban's hold on the Shomali Plains did not last long. A week later, Northern Alliance forces recaptured the area. By then, however, the Taliban had destroyed almost everything in sight, including homes, crops, orchards, and irrigation systems. The Taliban regrouped and once again advanced into the plains, but were stopped at Charikar and Bagram. The renewed fighting and purposeful destruction of the area forced thousands more displaced persons into Kabul, raising the number of displaced there to nearly 60,000.

Most of the displaced in Kabul found shelter with local families. An estimated 15,000, however, set up a makeshift camp on the grounds of the former Soviet embassy.

In Kabul, the newly displaced population joined an already impoverished local and displaced population of some 1.7 million, many of whom were dependent on aid. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), WFP, and CARE operated bakeries that provided bread to more than 400,000 people. Lack of international funding for assistance to displaced Afghans affected relief groups' ability to help, however. Two Western NGOs suspended their programs because of lack of donor funding during the year.

About 50 to 70 percent of the displaced who fled to the Panjshir Valley took refuge with local people whose resources were also already depleted because of the conflict. Those who could not find room in private homes sought refuge in public buildings or remained out in the open.

Delivering aid to the Panjshir Valley was not easily achieved, however. The area could not be reached from Kabul because the Taliban did not permit movement of goods from Taliban-controlled Kabul to Northern Alliance-controlled areas like the Panjshir Valley. There was only one road into the valley from the north, and that was so badly damaged that a one-way trip from the Tajik border took ten days. Transporting relief goods by air was the only feasible solution, even though it was expensive and could deliver only limited quantities. As autumn progressed and Afghanistan's early winter approached, relief groups became deeply concerned over the fate of the displaced. WFP's director told Agence France Presse, "If we don't get substantial amounts of aid into the region before the snow arrives, there will inevitably be widespread malnutrition."

For weeks, the UN sought Taliban approval to transport food and other relief goods by road from Kabul to the Panjshir Valley, but the Taliban refused. On November 18, Taliban fighter planes bombed the Panjshir Valley. Among the places they bombed was a school sheltering 700 displaced persons and the marketplace in the town of Bazarak. According to news reports, 24 displaced persons were killed and dozens more injured in the school, and ten others were killed in the marketplace. The UN's coordinator for Afghanistan "deplored" what he termed "this murder of civilians." Two days later, on November 20, the Taliban granted the UN permission to transport food to the valley overland from Kabul. Trucks carrying food to displaced persons in the valley began leaving Kabul on December 6.

Number of Internally Displaced Persons

The number of internally displaced Afghans is unknown. In recent years, Taliban offensives in northern Afghanistan have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Many are thought to have returned home as the lines of battle shifted from their home areas to new ones. Camps for displaced persons in Jalalabad that once housed more than 120,000 people are now closed. Yet most of Kabul's present population is displaced. A survey of Kabul's population carried out by the ICRC found that 83 percent of those interviewed had been displaced from their homes at one time or another.

During the year, more than 350,000 people were newly displaced, particularly from Bamiyan and other areas of Hazarajat (115,000), Darae Souf near Mazar-i-Sharif (50,000), the Shomali Plains north of Kabul (170,000), and Taloqan (16,000). Many of those who fled, perhaps as many as 150,000, later returned home, but some 200,000 remained displaced. Based on the number newly displaced in 1999 who were still displaced at year's end and on the number displaced in Kabul and other areas from previous years, USCR estimates the number of internally displaced persons to be 500,000 to 750,000.

Repatriation

Some 154,600 Afghans voluntarily repatriated during 1999. Of these, 92,600 repatriated from Pakistan and 62,000 from Iran. Iran also forcibly returned more than 100,000 Afghan refugees during the year (see Iran).

UNHCR assistance to Afghan refugees repatriating from Pakistan focused on projects aimed at providing refugees the resources to survive upon return. UNHCR provided extended families or even entire repatriating communities a six-month supply of food, seeds, and materials to help rebuild their homes. The program suffered from lack of international financial support, however.

In February 1999, the assistant UN high commissioner for refugees visited Afghanistan to draw attention to the needs there. He said that the previous year UNHCR received only half of the $21 million it sought from donors for the Afghan repatriation. In its 1999 mid-year progress report on Afghan repatriation, UNHCR said that the operation remained underfunded. The report added, "This has resulted in the suspension of reintegration assistance to returnees, damaged UNHCR's credibility, and has in some cases forced previously repatriated refugees to return to Pakistan and/or the Islamic Republic of Iran."