AFGHAN REFUGEES ARE HERE TO STAY:

Report & Photographs: Noorilhuda

Thirty-year old Saleha has been making carpets since she was ten years old. She left North
Afghanistan as a five year old and came to Peshawar where the rest of her Turkman relatives were
already settled. She got married to her uncles son and has three children with him, 2 sons and one
daughter. Her fourth child was a still-born. She is pregnant with her fifth. She lives in a joint family
system with 14 other people including her mother-in-law, her husbands married brother and his
children in a three-bedroom mud house with a large open seating area used for cooking, washing
and the carpet stitching. The women stay indoors while men do the shopping for the household. The
women take turns hand-weaving the yarn into a large frame, following the pattern provided by a
local manufacturer. They make Rs.5,000 per metre. An average carpet has 10 metres. Poverty reeks
from every corner of their rooms and clothes, except for the gold earrings Saleha is wearing, that
are a gift from her father. Their household expenditure is Rs.20,000/ month. They are currently
working on a 9 x 12 ft design. It takes them 6-7 months to complete a design but they get paid in
installments during that time. These carpets are sent off to the factory where they are processed and
glossed before being sold in Pakistan and exported abroad as Made in Pakistan, though few
buyers will ever know that they are woven by the residents of Camp No. 6 at the Paniya refugee
village in Haripur, KPK.
Saleha and her family are part of 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees currently living in 74
Refugee Villages (RVs, formerly known as just camps) in Pakistan. KPK hosts 63 RVs; 10 are in
Balochistan and 1 is in Punjab (in Mianwali). This figure is separate from the 1.3 million Internally
Displaced People from Swat and Bajaur etc. during Waziristan Operations for whom UNHCR
opened up the closed camp of Jalozai and bound New Durrani and Togh Sarai.

According to March 2005 Census of Afghans in Pakistan, 80% of refugees came between 1979 and
1985.
Different kinds of ethnic Afghans are refugees: Pashai, Nuristani, Kirghiz, Chahar Aimak, Arab,
Persian, Baloch, Turkman, Hazara, Uzbek, Tajik but Pashtuns are the majority. Almost all are
Sunni, save a few Uzbeks. There used to be huge fights among various ethnicities at the height of
the Afghan Wars, but now in their the second and third generation, things have cooled down and
everyone lives in peace.
Out of the 1.6 million registered Afghans, only 37% live in these villages. The rest live outside the
camps, making a living in other urban and rural areas. In villages, they have access to free health,
primary and secondary education and sanitation while they have to pay for electricity and water.
Some residents complained about the huge and unreasonable amount taken from them as bills by
the contractor who has been given tender to supply them electricity. The RVs are fully functioning
with shops of meat, fruit, light, shoes, cloth, wheat etc. that are open and run by refugees. One such
shopkeeper is 30-year old Ibrahim, married with three young ones whose family came 25 years ago.
He pays Rs.1200 as shop-rent and Rs.1200-1500 as electricity bill. He earns Rs.10,000-20,000 per
month, more money in summer, less in cold. Though he studied till class six, he brushes off
education saying he had to earn a living and his two brothers are also working.
The residents also keep goats, chicken and buffaloes. There are mosques, too many as one said.
The ones living off-camp lose their privileges to free education and house but all are covered by
UNHCR against arbitrary arrest and detention. They are often booked under Foreigners Act and
UNHCR provides them legal aid so they are set free.
According to news reports, Haripurs refugee camps are hub of criminals involved in kidnapping,
drug and timber smuggling, who enjoy political patronage. There are often raids. A week before the
visit by this correspondent, 8 people were arrested from the camp. The residents denied hearing of
any such raid but complained of police harassment. In September, Haripur got a new police chief,
its fifth in less than a year. This is 38-year old Khurram Rashids third appointment as district
police commander. Ive settled down, he says speaking on the phone from his office. In Haripur
crime is lesser than other places. There are commercial reasons for the resentment against Afghans.
They are successful because they are hardworking. Local traders dont like it.
The refugees have to follow all Pakistani civil and criminal law. None of them pays direct tax, but
then none of them can legally have bank accounts, own property and do business in Pakistan or
even have a mobile SIM either. The whole idea of being a refugee is that you dont own anything
and whatever you did have, you have left behind and hence are dependent.
Till 1995, the food was free via WFP but since it is no more, most refugees go outside the camp for
livelihood. Officially and legally they cannot work in Pakistan but there is no ban on private sector
and they work in carpet industry, transport and unskilled labor industry; they work as farmers, daily
wagers, fruit sellers, and as waiters in five-star restaurants.
Then there are the millionaires and billionaires who trade in gemstones, carpets, construction and
real estate - possessing Afghan and Pakistani passports.

UNHCR liaises with Chief Commissioner for Afghan Refugees who is a part of Ministry of Frontier
Regions and Northern Areas (Safron) to ensure seamless benefits and repairs are accorded to the
refugees. Safron has 750 employees, a proportion of whom heads each refugee village as camp
administrator. The budget of Afghan Refugees Commissionerate in Pakistan for the year 2014-15
is Rs.432.238million. All of this sum is spent as salaries and other operational costs. The UNHCR
budget for 2014 is Rs.297.106 million. This amount goes into project-related expenditure i.e. spent
directly on health, education, community development and staff salaries.
The land on which refugee villages are situated is not government-owned but leased from private
owners. Government of Pakistan keeps Rs.25million in budget as land compensation, of which
usually Rs.18million are used up. This year the compensation budget is Rs. 16.1 million and a
shortfall is expected.
All registered Afghans are provided a Proof of Registration (PoR) card by UNHCR through
NADRA which is valid till 2015 - the new year for voluntary repatriation of all 1.6 million. The
PoR card guarantees freedom of movement within the country. Registration of newborns is
encouraged and there are 6 NADRA centres dedicated to doing just that, but PoR cards are issued to
those above five years of age. Afghans have the highest population growth rate in the country. At
4% they beat the average Pakistani by many a percentile. Most of the visitors in Basic Healthcare
Units are women like Saleha - the pregnant kind - or the sick children. The BHUs take Rs.10 as fee
for doctor consultation and treat a wide range of diseases from diarrhea to sexually transmitted
diseases. Medicines are free. Interestingly, the polio vaccination rate in RVs is 100% - none of the
residents refused the initiative (Haripur neighbors Abbotabad, the scene of Dr. Shakil Afridi - OBL
saga).

Thats not all. Most of the visitors in KPK government hospitals are Afghans. Afghans make up
50% of the OPD patients in Lady Reading, Khyber Teaching and Hayatabad hospitals. They get free
treatment. Same is the case in other district hospitals, says the chief commissioner for Afghan
Refugees, Dr. Imran Zeb, as he sits in his office in Islamabad. Hence, there is no difference
between a Pakistani and an Afghan refugee in getting medical treatment. Even in private hospitals,
such as Rehman Medical Institute, 70-80% clientele is Afghans. They come from across the
border.
The exact number of Afghans is unknown since many are unregistered or have either dual passports
or Pakistani ID cards but most agree that there are over three million Afghans residing and making a
living in Pakistan. As for going back, few are thinking about it. As Saleha says, with the help of a
translator, The whole family is here.
Even the 55-year old incharge of UNHCRs health program in Haripur, Wali Jan, the Afghan from
Kunar, believes Pakistan should move towards greater recognition of Afghan rights as citizens.

Because a long time has gone by. We learnt something from you, you learnt something from us.
Even if children go back to Afghanistan, they dont stay there, because they cannot adjust......this
camp will never close. if Pakistan does not force the Afghans out, they will never leave. He has
spent 32 years here, and worked for various INGOs since 1984. He still weeps over his family
members gunned down by Russians. He has twice applied to UNHCRs repatriation to third
country program citing Pakistans refusal to grant him nationality as the reason. His case is still
pending.
Indeed, Haripur has its own Afghan graveyard. As one Pushtun told this correspondent, The rich
ones take their dead back. The rest bury here, some even in Pakistani graveyards.

A Pushtun fruit shop owner in main Haripur bazaar commented that his place of birth in Afghan
province Laghman was a wonderful place and he had been there two years ago. But he was quick
to add Home is here, shop is here, chaahat (love) is here. And if I go back Ill be killed.
A dry-fruit seller in Rawalpindi said We think we are Pakistani. I have been born here, I got
married here, I have children here. We are Pakistani.
And a millionaire businessman of Islamabad, on condition of anonymity, lamented that Afghans had
every right to Pakistani citizenship, since even Pakistanis went abroad and got British, American or
Canadian nationalities and carried both special cards as proof. We did not start the war. We
contribute to this country. We have been living here for thirty years. We deserve better.
The solution to this problem lies in Afghanistan. It isnt here, says the jovial Jehangiri Swati
Pathan, Dr. Imran Zeb, who serves as the chief commissioner for Afghan Refugees, Local
integration is not an option for us. They have lived in Pakistan for over three decades, but they have
maintained their identity, even living amongst Pukhtuns, the lines are clearly demarcated. They earn
their living here but social integration is not here.....They think of life in relative terms, over here
they have access to water at 50 yards, a health centre at 500 yards, school at thousand yards, outside
the village is a road that takes them straight to nearby town, hospital. They dont have all this in
Afghanistan. The facilities exist in cities of Kabul, Herat, Kandahar but not in the areas they came
from......the tolerance threshold for them isnt there anymore. During days of Soviet invasion,
people in Pakistan thought they were doing jehad and so people welcomed them. Now people want
their land back. They share energy, water, all resources. Population has grown, security has
reduced.
As for crime and Afghan involvement in crime, the unanimous opinion of all Afghans interviewed
was that poor had no time to do crime and even the Peshawar Army school massacre was the work
of Pakistani Taliban, since they admitted to it themselves. Illegal Afghan mobile SIMS are
available and frequently used in cases of terrorism, extortion and kidnapping for ransom.
Perhaps Haji Hayatullah can shed more light on the topic. An Afghan leader from Kunar, he is the
nephew of jihadist commander Maulana Jamilur Rehman who fought against the Soviets for 10
years before being killed by an Arab. Hayatullah, himself has survived two assassination attempts in
Pakistan. In 2013, a suicide bomber came near his vehicle as it came out of a mosque in Faqiarabad,
Peshawar, blowing himself up, the car, killing his driver and guard. Ironically Hayatullah was not
even in the said car- hence the near escape. He calls the attempts works of foolish people, who
have political or religious differences. He was part of Shura-e-Tahafum (an anti-Taliban shura) in
Afghanistan for four years from 1996-2000 but praises Taliban government for maintaining law and
order, currently absent from Afghan stage. An outspoken U.S. critic, salafi cleric, businessman,
head of Jamaat-ul-Dawat-ul-Quran and a university in Peshawar, he is a refugee and a Pakistani
national.
We have been coming over here since 1974. Bhutto was here and Daud Khan was in government
there. I got married in a family here. I have eight children, all grown, some are married, some are
studying. All were born here. I think Afghans have a right to citizenship of Pakistan. Every country
amends its laws. Thirty years is a very long time. This earth gave the children its own
color......every society has its own mechanism. Good and bad people are everywhere and out of a
population of 3 million, a few thousand will be criminal. It is not fair to call every Afghan bad, it

aches the heart. Black money flows from Karachi to Khyber, but not just because of Afghans.
Pakistan is calling out to the whole world to invest here, nobody is. But Afghans did.
He continues in a soft voice. There was no carpet industry in Pakistan before Afghans came over.
Now it is a huge one. Afghan carpets are shown in international exhibitions, exported to Europe,
gives so much money back to Pakistan. And we are like a khajoor (date) that is neither here nor
there. Life is not of thousand years. One man lives for 60-70 years and is then gone. It is in
Pakistans benefit to accept us. Arent Pakistanis members of Parliament in UK and U.S.?
He staunchly believes that foreign intervention has been the root cause of all evil in Afghanistan
and if it stops, things will go normal. He however is cautious about the new President Ghani saying,
Forty years of problems have accumulated in Afghanistan. U.S. increased those problems. Even
Afghans are tired of fighting. Ghani is a mohajir, educated man but you need a strong-minded and
strong-nerves man over there.
Hayatullah believes that it depends on the person holding the scale to determine whether he is a
good Taliban, or bad Taliban. Crime is a crime, whosoever does it, he says sitting in a house in
Islamabad.
10,000,-14,000 Afghans enter Pakistan every day (unaccounted for), says former IG KPK Malik
Naveed Khan, who served during the 2007-10 period when Pak Army launched various operations
against Taliban. 8,000-10,000 Pakistani skilled labor is working in Kabul and is earning thousand
dollars per month. Pakistani do not do unskilled work, hence the gap has been filled by Afghans.
They are very enterprising people. But crime has nothing to do with them specifically. Wherever the
population is high, usually the crime is high too. For e.g. Peshawar is heavily populated with lots of
commercial activity and tribal door.....The Peshawar school massacre was a huge intelligence
failure and if they are only raiding Afghan strongholds as an eyewash then its unfortunate. If we
had successfully penetrated the terrorists, we could have thwarted the Peshawar school massacre.
But we have no dedication. We sit in homes and take calls (instead of being in the field). The
angrez (American) used to learn Arabic, then used to convert to Islam, then used to sit in tribal
area mosque and give sermons and 20 years later one would find he was an American.....the
terrorists have sleeper cells, Punjabi, Afghans, Swatis all have cells, for e.g. in Shabqadar. They
remain dormant till one is made active. You can only thwart when you know who is where and
where they are going and where they will live.
Iran kept everyone in camps. There was no impact on their economy, no kalashnikov, no security
threat, says a senior bureaucrat who retired in the Finance Ministry. We had to set aside amount
for Afghan refugees. Even in the NFC Award, KPK got more than its share of divisible pool
because of them, war on terror, relief and rehabilitation. Afghans set the scene for all criminal
activities in Pakistan. We allowed them to amalgamate, from Chakwal to Karachi. They are
involved in terrorism in one way or another. The former prime ministers son is in Afghanistan.
Salman Taseers son is there. Everyone knows who took Rana Jamil (MPA abducted from Sargodha
interchange in June and recovered from Pak-Afghan border in Dec. 2014). They have taken a share
of business and snatched it from Pakistanis. If there were no Afghans, our people would have got
those jobs. Black money increased because of them. In foreign countries, you get citizenship after a
whole 8-10 year process.....They will never leave Pakistan. They get $200 from UNHCR as
compensation to leave, they take it and then come back again.....Everyone knows that they live in

the katchi abadi area of Islamabad (I-11 Railway track) but no one dares to remove them - why?
Because they are a vote bank. There is no political will.
Zafar Qadris Kashmiri family came and opened a toy store at Bank Road Rawalpindi in 1946. He
is currently serving as General Secretary for Rawalpindi traders union. Joblessness teaches you a
lot of things. Plus our institutions are corrupt. How can Afghans have Pakistani ID cards? They
have Chaman, Bajaur, Upper Dir cards. They have even given a bad name to our Pathan brothers. In
Islamabads areas of I-10, F-10, Karachi Company, they own properties. We dont know where they
get the money from? An ordinary trader will have to shell out Rs.25,000-50,000 as downpayment
for rental property. Afghans bring in 1-2 lacs. A Pakistani will get caught, but they wont. In
Rawalpindi, these people are involved most of the time in home invasions. The punishment for
dacoity is 3 years maximum. If an Afghan is caught and is proven to be involved in more than one
crime, he still gets three years total sentence instead of 3 years for each separate crime......And they
will not leave Pakistan so easily. They have even started getting married here.
For their part, NADRA has taken notice of the backlash. A NADRA official explained the measures
being taken by their organization to curb the fake ID cards: The number of Afghan refugees with
PoR cards was 2.2 million, out of whom 1.6 million remain. There are two types of fraud cases:
those who apply for a Pakistani ID card and it gets made, and when it is time for renewal
verification, problems are detected for e.g. paperwork is incomplete, the data of parents is
incomplete or lacking. Such people are called confirmed aliens and there are 10,046 detected so far.
It takes more than a year to verify......The second kind of people are those who apply for an ID card
and get blocked during the initial phase itself. They are currently 12,303 in number. The total of
such fraud cases is 22,349 so far.
NADRA is currently working on another project too: to make life easier for Afghans and all other
aliens who came to Pakistan illegally but created a residence for themselves here and got
themselves registered as aliens under NAARA (now merged with NADRA) - to ensure Pakistani
government gets a share of remittances by giving Afghans access to temporary residence and work
permit. They will be able to open bank accounts and do financial transactions. This will enable
Pakistani government to have a share of remittances sent to Afghans which come to Pakistan
through hundi etc. Most of the aliens registered with NAARA were Bengali and Burmese, not
Afghani. Their total number was 118,000. Special Cards will be issued to 64,688 such registered
aliens now digitized by NADRA. Home department will issue these on an annual basis, subject to
renewal. 4,304 are newly registered aliens under this process.
Dr. Zeb even laughs at numerous numbers detected of Pakistanis applying for PoR cards - promptly
cancelled. An Id card guarantees legally applying for a government job, pakistani passport, buy
property, get car, have an NTN number, mobile SIM but what can a PoR card give to a Pakistani is
anybodys guess. The real problem is that 4.4 million came into Pakistan - that is the recorded
influx UN accepted and accounted for. Till 2014, 5.8 million were recorded and assisted in
repatriation. But we still have 1.6 million recorded refugees! That is one bad math! One reason, is
that the returns are not sustained. They come back, misusing the system. Iris eye detection was
introduced. Plus 80,000 Afghan children are being born yearly over here. And the unregistered ones
are not even talked about!
The strain on Pakistans infrastructure and resources is such that it led Safron Minister Abdul Qadir
Baloch to give the outrageous sum of $200billion as the amount spent on Afghan refugees since

1984 - a figure discounted by both Dr. Zeb and independent financial experts, however a program
called Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) has been initiated in 41 districts across
Pakistan to develop need-specific projects for local community burdened with Afghan population
and improve the social and economic conditions for the hosts.
From 2009-2013, amount was released to government departments and NGOs worth more than Rs.
3698.9 million in 429 schemes for health education and employment under RAHA. This amount is
separate from any development expenditure given to each province annually. Rs. 2126 million were
spent on 195 RAHA schemes across KPK; Rs. 1354 million spent in 211 schemes in Baluchistan;
Rs. 91.8 million spent on 9 schemes in Sindh (all in Karachi); and Rs. 126 million spent on 14
schemes in Punjab.
It has been 12 years since UNHCR started its Voluntary Repatriation program whose original goal
was to complete the total repatriation from Pakistan and Iran in three years. A look into 13-year data
maintained by the UNHCR on its website (popstats.unhcr.org), in 2000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan
were 2,000,000; by 2013, they had reduced to 1,615,875 with 5,323 asylum seekers. By contrast,
Iran in 2000 had 1,482,000 Afghan refugees and now has 814,015 with 37 asylum seekers. Iran
took more Tajik and Hazaras than Pushtuns as refugees and they were allowed to spread into cities
but with tough conditions. Critics often called Iranian policy towards Afghan refugees as racist
and discriminatory and there were forced expulsions as well, deportations of immigrants on
smallest of offences and welfare schemes were cut down.
Those unwelcome or repatriated from Iran, found themselves wandering to greener (more
accepting) pastures. In 2014, Turkey witnessed an unprecedented increase in asylum applications
from Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians. Turkey also hosts more than a million Syrian refugees under its
open-door policy and in the beginning confined them to camps, but some have trickled into cities
and towns to live with relatives etc. It will be interesting to see the impact - if any - four waraffected communities will bring to Turkey.
UNHCR representative wrote a reply to sent queries stating that Afghanistan, Pakistan and UNHCR
have reached 2 agreements in the last twelve years to repatriate and reintegrate the population and
to check for those in danger on their return. The most recent one occurred at the Geneva Conference
on 2-3 May 2012 where GoP committed itself to Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees (SSAR)
i.e. voluntary repatriation. A multi-year strategy was also endorsed at the same conference by
governments of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and UNHCR by which conditions will be identified in
refugee return villages that will enable refugees to lead productive lives.
To date, no RVs have been constructed or developed in Afghanistan where the same kinds of
facilities can be made available to the refugees as they are accessible to in Pakistan in health,
education and reasonable livelihoods. Its an idea that could be explored to fruition - after all U.S.
survived 14 years in war-torn Afghanistan by living in a fortified bunker. Why cant refugees?
And so nobody is sure on how to deal with a foreign problem that has evolved into a local one. The
PoR cards issued by NADRA are valid till 2015. From 1st January to 6th December 2014, 12,649
people left Pakistan (source: UNHCR) - a paltry number. In Oct. 2014, GoP estimated a budget of
USD 195,764,312 under SSAR for provision of essential social services to refugee and host
communities, improved livelihood options and food security and environmental support to refugees.
And for the next three years 2014-17 the endorsed amount is USD 490 million.

So no one even in the government thinks that 2015 is really the year 1.6 million registered Afghans
will leave.
The real problem is that there has been no federal legislation for treatment of Afghan Refugees,
which is a serious omission on part of the state, says Ahmar Bilal Sufi speaking on the phone from
Lahore. When after partition people were coming into Pakistan from India, the largest number of
settlement laws was initiated, evacuee property etc. Here we have the largest refugee population and
no law. The classical definition of refugee does not apply on them anymore. They shifted from
camps, took part in economic activity. Then there is the economic migrant, de facto asylum seeker,
and the migrant seeking citizenship. All should be covered under some law. There is a lack of
clarity on what to do.

------------------------------PPVR 2011 SURVEY RESULTS:

The 110-page report Afghan Population and Profiling Verification and Response Survey
2011 (PPVR) conducted jointly by UNHCR and Safron, is the most recent and comprehensive
document that got opinions of approx. 1 million Afghan refugees on wide range of issues:
The surveyed data was conducted in 135,452 Households. Total population of households was
974,961 individuals consisting of 495,595 males and 479,366 females. 50% of household lived in
camps, the rest in urban areas.The average household size was 7.2 people per household.
85% of the households reported having atleast one registered member. Out of those that reported to
be registered, 78% could verify their registration while 22% claimed to have cards but did not
produce them for verification.

Data was collected from the following areas of four provinces and federal capital: Islamabad;
Balochistan (Chagai, Killa Abadullah, Killa Saifullah, Loralai, Pishin, Quetta); KPK (Abbotabad,
Charsadda, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Haripur, Kohat, Lakki Marwat, Lower Dir, Mansehra,
Mardan, Nowshehra, Peshawar, Swabi); Punjab (Atoock, Chakwal, Mianwali, Rawalpindi); Sindh
(Karachi-Malir)
The largest ethnic group of Aghans are Pashtuns (82%), followed by Tajiks (5%), Uzbeks (4%),
Persians (3%), and others (3%). Quetta has majority of Hazaras (84%), Uzbeks (76%) and Tajiks
(48%).
74% of interviewed Afghans were born in Pakistan whereas 26% were born in Afghanistan.
Overall, 90% households had moved to Pakistan before 1985. Half (50%) of Afghan population is
under the age of 15, 64% of which are children (5-14). Adults (25-59) form the second largest age
group (26%) followed by youths (15-24) who makeup 20% of the Afghan population. 97% of the
households are headed by males.
The overall literacy rate of Afghans aged 10 and above is 33%. This rate is highest (44%) among
the youth (12-24) while adults (25-59) and elderly (60+) comprise 34% of total literate population.
219,639 of surveyed Afghans were working. 86% of these are male. 55% of Afghans work as day
laborers; 22% are self-employed; 19% are salaried. Only 497 Afghans said they had employees in
their establishments.
Of the 219,639 Afghans currently employed, 23% work as refuse workers, 21% are sales workers,
12% are handicraft and printing workers. Workers in the employment occupations were 19%, 16%
retails, 13% in construction - and all of these makeup almost half of working Afghans. 8% work as
carpet weavers and in transportation.
20% of Afghans collectively invested over Rs.18billion in their businesses in Pakistan. 10% of
households receive remittances from abroad estimated in excess of Rs. 255 million (USD
2.8million) per month. 25.5% of these remittances come from Afghanistan followed by Iran
(26.4%) and Saudi Arabia (22.2%).
16% of Afghans expressed an intention to return to Afghanistan, while 84% of households
expressed no intention of returning nor did have any time frame in mind as to when they intend to
return to Afghanistan. 43% identified conflict, employment (28%) and housing (12%) as main
obstacles to return to Afghanistan.
----------------------------------All photographs taken in Paniya Refugee Village, Haripur, KPK, Pakistan.

Salehas house, toilet and bath area