April 25, 2004

The Afghans are not exactly aliens. They are our own, but society has deliberately shunned them as unwanted beings

It was the morning of November 17th, 2001, when a radio address by Laura Bush was broadcast for the Americans.

“Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror — not only because our hearts break for the women and children in Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan, we see the world, the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.”

Speeches are a dime a dozen. But for those whose bodies boil in the cauldron of hell everyday, the reactions have to be more immediate. The world is driven by political action, rather than committees, sub-committees, their findings, facts and figures, and speeches. The time that this lip service will take to make it through the rigmarole of bureaucratic and diplomatic statements, would mean the destruction and death for millions of breathing and living humans, and eventually, they will look for more immediate answers.

Twenty-year-old Shafiqullah and his brother never want to go back to Afghanistan. They have dreamt of a bright future and have plans for a living in this country. He and his brother chat happily about the future as they help each other in building up various sizes of tandoors. The burning sun could have no effect on their bodies, as their hands kept busy overtime, quickly mixing mud and clay. They barely eke out a living in this katchi Afghan Abadi, which is about 30 kilometres from Karachi, on Super Highway.

These Afghan colonies, like the surrounding slums, have suffered from lack of transportation, essential utilities, medical facilities and proper schools. This is the oldest settlement just on the outskirts of Karachi for Afghan refugees, who following the Soviet invasion laid waste to the country in 1980s and the subsequent civil war with dire consequences.

Nearly about 100,000 Afghans were residing in these Afghan Refugee Camps 1 and 2, a while ago, on the fringes of Karachi. However, more than half of them have been returned home with the support of United Nation High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Just after that, the local authorities promptly destroyed the mud houses.

The first thing I noticed was that these settlements look like a mini Kabul, where women hide behind thick veils and are escorted by male partners. They are still fearful of arrest, if by accident, they trip or the breeze lifts their veils, and showed their faces or ankles. On December 25, 1979, Soviet forces intervened in Afghanistan and quickly gained control of Kabul and other key cities. Then, Babrak Karmal, the leader of the Parcharn Faction of Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), became President. His dependence on Soviet military forces made his government unpopular amongst the Afghan nationalists, and the rebellion intensified. This caused severe demographic and economic complexities. More than six million Afghans fled to the neighbouring borders, and a huge chunk of them came to Pakistan. Now, more than two million refugees have returned home since the Soviet left in 1989, but another 2.2 million remain in Pakistan and Iran, including 340,000, who fled since Taliban seized power in 1996. Many refugees are in UN camps and amongst other local communities in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

Most of them are reluctant to return due to fears of severe drought conditions and natural calamities, apart from the consternation of obvious persecution at the hands of the Taliban.

“There are very few visitors here,” said young Abdul Hafiz who was too scared to talk. “Traffic is few and far between in this region. We literally live here cut off from the city.”

The Afghan teenager is sadly right. Near these settlements, just a fair distance away, there are lavish parks for the city folks, who enjoy there daily. But noticeably, these hapless Afghan men and women don’t have the pleasure of ever visiting or enjoying these parks that are a source of recreation for the upper-middle and middle class suburban families.

Hafiz’s appreciation for Taliban makes him talk, dream and eat religion. Once a free medical clinic and basic education centre was functioning here, but it has now turned into a madrassah and Afghan children are getting religious education there. The students inside the madrassah had their heads bowed, and looked up like timid sheep, accentuating a suppressed lifestyle, although some of these children do continue to end up going for jihad in Afghanistan.

Very few NGOs and UNHCR have been able to set up education programmes for the Afghan refugee children, but due to poor coverage these kids are at a high risk of being sexually abused. Many of them become scavengers, street children and sex workers.

The Afghani word ‘Taliban’ means ‘student’, and this is literally a new military force comprising of a group of students from Pakistan’s religious schools, who, with almost no soldierly training, were inspired by Mulla Omar to take up arms. The Taliban started off as little more than a gang of illiterate schoolboys between the ages of 14 and 24. Many of them were orphans. These kids probably never had anyone, stayed away from homes, with no parents to help them grow up. And yet, they were expected to rule the country with the Wisdom of Solomon — a task which was made even more difficult when they were having to face attacks from pockets of armed bandits.

The Islamization era, right from the days of the Zia Regime, saw young mujahideens being inducted into the Taliban force and being sent to Afghanistan to fight in the name of Islam. Such a religious military drill has always been the priority of those who have been announcing jihad in the region.

Afghanistan is one of world’s poorest countries. After two decades of guerrilla war against two superpowers and great infighting, followed by a 4-yearlong drought, nearly seven million people are now on the rim of hunger. Many are dying from scarcity of basic necessities of life, and half a million people have been mutilated by the ravages of war. September 11 has brought them more maladies and fast spread of sickness. More than a million Afghans were killed during the Russian invasion, but the country’s real nightmare took root just after the Russians pulled out.

Seven different mujahideen of shoots, which made up the Afghan resistance, immediately started fighting over who would share the spoils of war. Abdul Rahim, a 90-year-old Afghan, remembers the day and time he left his home, and the military operation that ousted his along with the rest of the inhabitants of Konduz. Now, he feels that if peace remains the dominant initiative in the region, they could move towards some kind of progress and prosperity.

It is important to note that these Afghan refugees and their settlements stand removed from the locals. The refugees remain separated from the host population, and live in restricted and overcrowded conditions without privacy. Their homes and loved ones are lost, and they face a new culture, language and society. And this situation is not just essential to this region. It is a world phenomenon. In 1980, there were approximately 16 million refugees and displaced persons in the world.

Pakistan, a country of 140 million, does not have adequate resources to provide shelter and food to the incoming refugees. After September 11, 2001, about 80,000 Afghanis moved into Pakistan. The Interior Minister says that there are about two million illegal immigrants in Karachi. Illegal immigration has always been on rise in Pakistan as far as Afghanis, Bangladeshi, Filipinos, or Bhutanis are concerned.

Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol to meet the international legal standards for refugee protection. Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore and other cities have different pockets of these asylum seekers. But with a not-so-strong currency of ours, why is such migration still going on?

Malir, Machchar Colony, Sohrab Goth have all got large pockets of Afghan refugees who indulge in different businesses of garbage-sorting, recycling, carpet-weaving etc. Most of the Afghanis work at Sabzi Mandi as labourers.

“I wish I had gone to school so that I could read and write. My brother is in jail and we cannot afford the money for his bail,” says 14-year-old Nadra, who hardly speaks Urdu, but has a great thirst for education.

In Karachi Juvenile Jail, there are four Afghani kids who were picked up under the Foreigners Act. The police always harass Afghan scavengers and extort money from them. Women in these settlements are assaulted, while they were living under suffocating conditions in Taliban’s Afghanistan that restricted their movement and enforced a restrictive dress code.

Al-Asif Square is one of the residential areas for those Afghans, who came earlier and settled in Pakistan. They started with small businesses like food stands, carpet weaving and transportation. Every day a large number of people every day go out to eat Afghani dishes at the premises, but regardless of these micro-finance businesses, people are unaware of much more corruption going on beneath the very nose of the law enforcement agencies.

Drug traffickers cater to a huge business cartel of heroin, and have already ruined half of the population of the country. Afghanistan cultivates heavy crops of poppy and exports it to the world market. There is no action against poppy cultivation right now because the country’s economy is already in tatters.

Many Afghan women, whether livings at refugee camps or around permanent settlements, are put into prostitution, as these women face financial problems. As a consequence, their children suffer from hunger, malnutrition, and a chronic state of poverty. Most of them have lost their means of income and have sold most of their belongings to buy food. A large percentage of the money that clients pay to these women goes to their pimps and old women working for them. Many Afghan and Pakistani girls are being trafficked to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Some 42 Afghan children allegedly trafficked to the Middle East recently, returned home and around 208 children, including girls, are scheduled to be repatriated in near future, reports an English daily in UAE.

Ojanal is a mine victim, who lost his legs during the war with Soviet Union. He recalls his days when he was in his twenties. “I am now in my forties, and since I lost my legs this 3-wheeled hand-pulled cart is my means for earning. I beg and survive.” Ojanal is satisfied, as he earns Rs20 to Rs30 daily. According to UNHCR resources, more than 157,000 Afghan refugees have left Karachi through the borders and others have left through Torkham in the NWFP province. The leftover half a million Afghan refugees are reluctant to go back to their homeland, as they feel the US-rebuilt Afghanistan still holds less promise for them.

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