Repatriation and displacement overwhelms war-torn Afghanistan
JALALABAD, Afghanistan: Marooned in a tent billowing in the winter wind, Gul Pari’s family is among thousands of wardisplaced Afghans crammed into settlements alongside a flood of returning refugees, in a doublepronged humanitarian crisis engulfing the country.
Conflict-torn Afghanistan is struggling to reabsorb large masses of refugees and failed asylum seekers being sent back from Pakistan, Europe and Iran, joining more than half a million others uprooted by war.
Clutching meagre household possessions, often with small children in tow, unprecedented numbers like Gul Pari seek refuge in crowded cities such as eastern Jalalabad, straining public resources that are already near breaking point.
“We are praying our tent does not fall down in the winter rain,” the mother- of-four said, as her children huddled around a kettle inside the fragile shelter cobbled together from rags.
Gul Pari’s family was forced to flee the badlands of Pachiragram district in Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan, where the Islamic State group has ushered in a new age of barbarity with beheadings, arson attacks, and by blowing up some enemies with explosives buried beneath them.
More horrifying, Gul Pari said, was their diktat in some areas to families with unmarried daughters or widows to raise white flags over their houses, marking the women as wives for new IS recruits.
Officials say IS is on the retreat owing to a sustained campaign of US airstrikes, but the UN has documented an alarming increase in attacks by the groups on civilians, perhaps evident in the steady number of people fleeing areas with their presence. — AFP