ISLAMABAD, July 15 (Reuters) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani meets regional leaders for talks in Uzbekistan on Thursday as deteriorating security in his country raises fears of a new Afghan refugee crisis with neighbouring Pakistan already ruling out taking any more. Several million Afghans have been displaced within their country over years of war, 270,000 of them in fighting since January as U.S.-led foreign forces have been withdrawing, according to the U.N. refugee agency. With Taliban insurgents apparently intent on defeating Ghani’s Western-backed government, Afghanistan’s…Continue Reading “Afghan neighbours wary of new refugee crisis as violence surges”
For Al Jazeera English: Every Sunday, Hamdi Mohseni, his wife Serda, and their five remaining children, walk the 15km from their apartment to the paupers’ cemetery where their daughter Zahra is buried. Mohseni brings a ballpoint pen with him to trace the letters of her name in the concrete tombstone, to make sure it does not disappear among the hundreds of knee-high concrete slabs in this cemetery in Van, in the east of Turkey near the Iranian border. Most of the gravestones have no names…Continue Reading “City to city, camp to camp: Afghan refugees struggle to find home”
For Foreign Policy VAN, Turkey—It’s been two years since Qadir fled Kabul, but the fear that someone will kill him for having worked with U.S. troops still haunts him in the Turkish city where his family has been allowed to stay and wait in hopes of reaching the United States. He doesn’t take the same way home from the odd jobs he can find and hasn’t called his relatives in Afghanistan since leaving. “I am afraid someone there will get my phone number in Turkey….Continue Reading “As America Shuts Its Doors, Afghan Refugees Are Stuck in Turkey”
For The Los Angeles Times: This year Rehmat was deported to a country he had never known. Weary of hiding from authorities after living in Turkey illegally for more than two years, he turned himself in to police and was shipped off to Afghanistan. When he landed at the airport in Kabul, a long-lost uncle greeted him. “We had never seen each other before, but he knew I was coming,” Rehmat said. “He was holding up a sign with my name on it.” Rehmat, 22,…Continue Reading “Even if born and raised in Pakistan, Afghan refugees are deported to Afghanistan, a land they’ve never known”
For the Christian Science Monitor: The Pakistani government is working with the US to make sure a key ingredient for bombs stays away from insurgents in Afghanistan, but that effort may be having an unintended casualty. Read more here.