Afghan refugees' continuing plight

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' participation in the "International Conference on 40 Years of Hosting Afghan Refugees in Pakistan: A New Partnership for Solidarity" has hopefully helped refocus the world's attention on this lengthy displacement of millions of people. The call from the Conference to the representatives of nearly 20 countries attending as well as the world at large to support efforts for ending the protracted Afghan conflict to facilitate the return of the refugees is both timely and apt. It is estimated that Pakistan provided refuge to around 4.5 million Afghans at the peak of the conflict. Although with time and the conflicting fortunes of the Afghan wars, many refugees returned to their homeland, nearly 2.7 million refugees still reside on Pakistan's soil. During this long stay, at least two generations have been born and grown up in exile in Pakistan. It should be mentioned that although the US-led West contributed to the upkeep of this huge population during the period when they were invested in the Afghan conflict and particularly against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, after the Soviets withdrew and the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, the so-called international community incrementally turned its back on the interminable conflict, including its victims the refugees. The West began from then on to treat the Afghan conflict as a 'sideshow' compared to its triumph over Communism, the seal on which was administered by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. That meant Pakistan was left holding the baby of the continuing civil war in Afghanistan as well as the burden of the huge Afghan refugee population, virtually alone and single-handed. Although it could be argued in hindsight that the 'solutions' engineered by our strategic thinkers, such as the raising and supporting of a new force, the Taliban, which entered the fray in 1994 and by 1996 were in control of the country, did not yield either peace or the return of the refugees. The US's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan after 9/11 when the Taliban government refused to cooperate in bringing Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to justice for the 9/11 atrocity has gone the way of all previous such adventures in Afghanistan. Not for nothing has the country been dubbed 'the graveyard of empires'.

Now, 40 years later and still counting, Pakistan is very much within its rights to demand that the world accept its responsibility for this huge displaced population. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres framed it during his address at the Conference, it is time for the international community to step up to the plate and contribute to creating the conditions for a return of the refugees. Islamabad has rightly linked the refugees' return with the peace settlement under discussion between the US and the Taliban. Given that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi was also in attendance at the Conference, he should have lent an attentive ear to what Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi delineated in his proposed 7-point action plan on the refugee issue, which included a call for providing the host country with the necessary resources to bear this huge burden, particularly since the Pakistani economy is not in the pink of health itself. Despite the fact that the peace deal under discussion between Washington and the Taliban still appears some way from closure, it remains the critical factor in creating the conditions of an absence of conflict and rehabilitation programmes for returning refugees that would provide a dignified return to their homes after decades of eking out a miserable existence in the refugee camps in Pakistan.