Focus on Afghan migration crisis

The visit to Pakistan this week by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ruud Lubbers could lead to a more lenient refugee policy being adopted by Iran and Pakistan. Whether the relaxing of border regimes will lead to a flood of refugees into either country is debatable. Some aid officials maintain that the opening of borders will make no difference to many Afghans too destitute to leave.

Rafael Robillard, the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) manager for Afghanistan, told IRIN on Saturday that the media coverage of potential refugees had overshadowed the fact that even if up to 1.5 million people did cross, there would still be four million vulnerable people stranded inside the country.

"Many Afghans cannot move even if they wanted to. They don’t have the means to pay the US $5 for travel, they don’t even have food in their stomachs to walk the 200 km to the borders," Robillard said, explaining that the migration crisis was multi-layered, like an onion.

Reaching Afghans inside

Inside the country over a quarter of the population live under increasingly precarious conditions, with one million internally displaced prior to 11 September. The most vulnerable are at the core, unable to move, because they cannot afford to leave. Those who did leave their homes, but failed to reach camps for the displaced camps were known as internally stranded people, Robillard said. Besides these were those who had reached camps for the displaced inside the country, such as the IOM-assisted 150,000 person Maslakh camp, near the western city of Herat.

Along with other agencies, IOM has been providing aid to some 200,000 Afghans in camps for the displaced near Herat in the east, and in the northeastern province of Konduz. Conditions in these camps were expected to remain stable, provided access from neighbouring borders was unhindered. Efforts were under way to address the 52,000 displaced people lacking adequate shelter, as identified by an IOM survey of Maslakh camp in early October, and Robillard did not expect a repeat of the deaths from exposure witnessed last year.

IOM maintained that as long as humanitarian action remained subject to the ongoing military campaign, the security situation would remain very fluid. "Our staff in Herat have serious difficulties managing the convoys from the [Iranian] border. Now we see an ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] warehouse hit again. Our staff are not 100 percent reassured that the same will not happen to their convoy," Robillard.

Aid agencies report similar difficulties. The World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Monday that it was experiencing significant problems redistributing food aid once it had been transported into the country, due to insecurity and the lack of trucks and fuel. The WFP spokesman, Khaled Mansour, said on Monday that supplies to the southern city of Kandahar had been severely disrupted since 13 September, when international UN and NGO staff involved in food distributions had been evacuated.

Subsequently, in late September, the Taliban took over the WFP office, and there are no longer any local relief staff working in the city. "In short, there is no food aid from any source in this city," Mansour said. Prior to the 11 September attacks, WFP had been supplying monthly food rations to 150,000 people in Kandahar. NGOs have since reported that they will suspend operations due to worsening security and lack of relief supplies in parts of the country.

Efforts have been made to facilitate the supply of aid to Afghans in northern areas. Senior UN officials, headed by Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima, visited the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in an attempt to improve aid corridors into Afghanistan.

A US-based NGO, Refugees International (RI), went further by proposing that international staff be returned to zones of Afghanistan considered to be secure. Asked to comment, Robillard said IOM would not hesitate to post international staff back into parts of Afghanistan considered relatively safe, provided security clearance was given.

The northeastern province of Badakhshan, under Northern Alliance control, was a candidate for such a return, he added, reflecting the views of many aid workers familiar with the area. However, other aid workers have also warned that the concept is a non-starter in many parts of Afghanistan which are considered far too dangerous at present.

Creating response zones could also encourage more population movements. In a recent policy report, the Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research programme warned that the provision of emergency short-term relief could act as a magnet for further displacement. It said a balance needed to be found between meeting short-term needs and initiatives which would enable families to remain in their areas of origin and sustain themselves.

Afghan sustainability appears to be at its lowest ebb. In a statement on 25 October, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that this season's wheat production, which accounts for 80 percent of total production, was set to decline significantly due to the crisis. FAO said disruptions to farming, such as displacement and the shortage of inputs, had contributed to the effects of a three-year drought, and would further exacerbate the already grave food supply situation inside the country.

Receiving Afghans outside

Outside the country, UNHCR has estimated that as many as 80,000 people had slipped across the Pakistan border since 11 September. An unknown number were suspected to be slipping across the border into Iran, adding to the aggregate of four million Afghans already in the two countries. Redmond, said on Monday that there was sufficient capacity to accept 150,000 people in 15 sites in Pakistan, but government cooperation was required to ensure that these people were not deported and could receive aid.

Joel Charny, RI's vice-president for policy, told IRIN on Friday that about 270 Afghans were in a "twilight zone" camp near Quetta, some 600 metres inside southwestern Pakistan, and not yet registered as refugees. A further 2,700 people, who had unsuccessfully attempted to cross, had been sent to internal camps run by the Taliban, he said. It was unclear whether they would be allowed to cross the border or not.

Afghan refugees heading towards Iran were likely to find themselves herded into one of nine camps inside Afghan territory. With two million Afghan refugees already in the country, Iran maintains it cannot accept any more. Instead, the government has proposed the opening of nine camps along the border, but inside Afghan territory.

The UNHCR spokesman in Iran, Mohammad Nouri, told IRIN that about 6,600 people were located in two camps inside Afghanistan. New arrivals at the larger Mahkaki camp, located two kilometres inside Afghan territory bordering the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan, had risen from 1,500 to 6,000 since last week, he said. Once he has completed his negotiations in Pakistan, Ruud Lubbers's next stop will be Tehran.

Some Afghans have gone further afield with the help of trafficking and smuggling networks. One Afghan in Dubai told IRIN on Friday that he had paid US $1,500 to an agent in Rawalpindi, central Pakistan. Although his trip into Dubai had been successfully arranged, he had been given false information about the benefits he would be entitled to.

"I was told that I would get free accommodation, but I'm having to share a room with six others as it is very expensive here," Aqal Badhsha said. Having arrived in Dubai five months ago, he was now earning a monthly salary of US $500 as a taxi driver. But most of this was spent on living costs, he explained.

Robillard said Afghans were paying between US $5,000 to $10,000 to be trafficked out of the region, ultimately to Europe or Australia. IOM and the Pakistan authorities were about to embark on a study of the trafficking phenomenon. Robillard likened the Afghan migration crisis to an erupting volcano, adding that "the blaze needs to be extinguished at the core".