Roots, Repatriation, and Refuge: Pakistan and the Afghan Refugee Crisis

Abstract

In the world today, registered Afghan refugees total approximately 1.6 million with one to two million more living undocumented in border nations like Iran and Pakistan. They are the largest ‘protracted’ refugee population on the Asian continent and have existed in a perpetual state of displacement since the Soviet-Afghan War from late 1970-1980. The status of these refugees in Pakistan today remains steadfastly connected to the concepts of displacement, migration, settlement, and repatriation. This research paper explores how the Afghan refugee crisis evolved within the confines of socio-cultural, political, economic, and historical crises created and imposed by international actors who sought to control it for their own purposes. A major component of finding a solution to the Afghan refugee crisis requires us to move away from the overworked ‘objective’ view of their situation and toward a more subjective identification of their personhood as refugees, and this act pulls into itself the question of how they dealt with and continue to deal with refuge and resettlement in Pakistan. Furthermore, the Afghan refugee crisis is an ongoing global dispute involving human lives that requires much more attention and sincerity than it has received.