Afghan refugees tell UN: 'We need peace, land to go home'
Hukam Khan isn't sure how old he's, but his beard is long and white, so when he came to Pakistan 40 years back fleeing a youthful war in Afghanistan, his children were small, stuffed onto the backs of donkeys and dragged across rugged mountains to the safety of northwestern Pakistan.
In the past the war was against the former Soviet Union and Khan was among more than 5 million Afghans forced to be refugees in Pakistan, driven from their homes by a bombing campaign so brutal it was known as a "scorched earth" policy.
After four decades of war and conflict, a lot more than 1.5 million Afghans still live as refugees in Pakistan, feeling abandoned by their own government, increasingly unwelcome in their reluctant host country and ignored by the United Nations.
Now, for the first time in years, there's a faint likelihood they might eventually return home. The United States and the Taliban appear to have inched nearer to a peace deal, agreeing as an initial step to a short-term "decrease in violence."
If that truce should hold, the next phase could be a long-sought-after agreement between Washington and the Taliban to get rid of Afghanistan's current war, now in its 19th year. The agreement would return American troops home and start negotiations between your warring Afghans to bring peace to their shattered country.
Against the background of a possible peace deal, Pakistan is hosting a conference Monday attended by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to recognize 40 years of Afghans living as refugees. Also attending the conference in the capital, Islamabad, may be the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, whose job would be to help the Afghans return home.
It won't be easy.
Many refugees have previously tried going back - lured by promises of help and hope from the international community and from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani - only to find there was neither food nor shelter for them. Many also found out they were no more welcome in the villages that they had left decades earlier.
Disillusioned, they returned to Pakistan also to Iran, while thousands of other Afghans paid smugglers and risked their lives to flee to Europe. From there, many were later loaded on planes and returned to war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Grandi called the forced return of refugees from Europe "shameful" within an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday.
"I really do ... fervently hope that the countries like Iran and Pakistan, who've hosted so generously ... don't take their example from much richer countries that are shutting borders, not only to Afghans, but to numerous other refugees," he said.
As the specter of a U.S.-Taliban peace deal raises hope that the refugees will eventually return home, Grandi said, "I believe these times, the people who are still left outside will be very cautious in their judgment. They would want guarantees that it could be sustainable."
Another challenge will be raising the vast sums of money had a need to help return home not merely refugees abroad, but also the an incredible number of Afghans who are internally displaced inside their own country. The world is continuing to grow sick and tired of sending money to a country with such endemic corruption, which includes driven poverty levels up despite vast amounts of dollars in aid since 2001.
Just last month, a U.S. government watchdog said the Afghan government was more enthusiastic about ticking off boxes to demonstrate compliance than making real inroads to curb corruption.
Poverty levels in Afghanistan are climbing. In 2012, 34% of Afghans were listed as below the poverty level, living on $1 a day. Today, that figure has increased to 55%.
Khan, the Afghan refugee in Pakistan, now is continuing to grow children who've children of their own. He said he blames the overwhelming poverty in his homeland on a corrupt leadership.
"To tell you the truth, lots of money came to Afghanistan and every influential person, even the mullahs, stole that money," said Khan. "The leaders are all traitors, they betrayed Afghans. The kids of poor persons got killed, while no leader lost his son."
Khan said he previously a note for Guterres and for Grandi.
"We don't require much," he said, searching over the sunbaked mud and straw homes in the camp where he's lived for 40 years. On the edge of Peshawar, the administrative centre of Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, the refugee camp is only about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border with Afghanistan.
Among locals, the camp is called Kabobyan Camp, named for the countless kabob shops that sprung up around it, most of which have long since disappeared.
"First we require peace," said Khan, surrounded by dozens of children dressed in tattered clothes. None were wearing socks regardless of the chilly February morning, their feet and hands caked in mud.
"When there is peace, we have to discover land on which we can build our homes first. Then we need to have food, and then we need to have the ability to build our schools, our shops and our mosques," he said.
Indrika Ratwatte, the U.N. human rights organization's regional director for Asia, told the AP within an interview the other day that Afghan refugees have little faith in their government or international organizations.
Khan's obtain land is reasonable, Ratwatte said, explaining the way the U.N. really wants to set up 20 zones throughout Afghanistan that could offer returning refugees land to get started on anew, as a sort of prototype.
"We know how resilient Afghans are," Ratwatte said. "In the event that you provide them with that small opportunity, they'll make it work. They'll make it happen. So we have to really 'walk the talk' on the land allocation."
Shah Wali, another elderly refugee, left his home in Surkhrud in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province almost 40 years back. He tried returning, but found nothing left. What wasn't destroyed by war had been taken by neighbors and thieves.
But even the faint potential for peace has him hopeful.
"Give us peace and we will return back," he said. "Who doesn't want to back again to their homeland?"
