We need peace, land to go home
AFTER 40 YEARS OF WARS AND CONFLICT, MORE THAN 1.5M AFGHAN REFUGEES LIVE IN PAKISTAN
Hukam Khan isn’t sure how old he is, but his beard is long and white, and when he came to Pakistan 40 years ago fleeing an earlier war in Afghanistan, his children were small, stuffed onto the backs of donkeys and dragged across rugged mountains to the safety of northwestern Pakistan.
Back then the war was against the former Soviet Union and Khan was among more than 5 million Afghans forced to become refugees in Pakistan, driven from their homes by a bombing campaign so brutal it was referred to as a “scorched earth” policy.
After four decades of war and conflict, 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 possibility they might eventually return home. The United States and the Taliban appear to have inched closer to a peace deal, agreeing as a first step to a temporary “reduction in violence.”
If that truce should hold, the next step could be a longsought-after agreement between Washington and the Taliban to end Afghanistan’s current war, now in its 19th year. The agreement would return American troops home and start negotiations between the warring Afghans to bring peace to their shattered country.
Against the backdrop of a possible peace deal, Pakistan hosted a conference yesterday attended by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and meant to recognise 40 years of Afghans living as refugees. “It is a terrible war ... and it needs to be brought to an end,” Khalilzad, who brokered the breakthrough with the Taliban, said. “We’ve made
progress in the sense that we ... are talking about the reduction of violence leading to the signing of an agreement between the United States and the Taliban that will open the door to Afghans sitting across the table, one side by the government of Afghanistan and on the other by the Taliban of Afghanistan.”
Also attending the conference was UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, whose job would be to help the Afghans return home.
Against the backdrop of a possible peace deal, Pakistan hosted a conference yesterday attended by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres.