Afghans expelled from Pakistan rebuild lives from “scratch”

TORKHAM:

Rocked gently on his mother’s lap, a fly on his nose, a baby sleeps uncomfortably in a tent in a barren border camp as his family prepares to leave the site to rebuild their lives in Afghanistan.

At the transit camp in Torkham, where returnees expelled from Pakistan sweat in scorching heat during the day and shiver at night, many of the blue tents at the foot of the rocky mountains that stand stark against a cloudless sky have already emptied.

Trucks overloaded with many families, carrying pillows, brightly colored blankets and cooking utensils, are ready to go.

Border officials say at least 210,000 Afghans, including many who have lived decades, if not their entire lives, outside their country have passed through the Torkham border crossing since Pakistan ordered the undocumented to leave.

From the reception camp, they have dispersed to different provinces of Afghanistan with a donation of about 15,000 Afghani ($205) — enough to support a family for a month.

For many, nothing and no one is waiting for them.

“We have nowhere to go, no house, no land, no job,” said Sir Agha, a former security guard in Pakistan.

He bundled his nine children and all the family’s possessions into a truck to head north to the province of Kunduz, where he was born.

But the 43-year-old has no memory of his homeland, having fled Afghanistan when he was five.

Afghan refugees head from a makeshift camp near the Torkham border to Jalalabad, in the Ghani Khel district of Nangarhar province, November 12, 2023. PHOTO: AFP

“I don’t have family there anymore,” he said AFP.

“My kids ask me, ‘Which country are we going to?'”

In a tent occupied by her, her husband and their 10 children, 40-year-old Amina hides her face behind a red headscarf.

They are destined for Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province where Torkham is located and where she has “many brothers”.

“I asked my family to find us a house” to rent, he said, “but they say there isn’t one.”

“No one has called us or come to see us,” he added.

In Pakistan, her sons worked selling vegetables or driving rickshaws to earn enough money to support the family, but Amina fears for their prospects in Afghanistan, which has been ravaged by economic crisis and unemployment.

“If the boys don’t work, we won’t make it.”

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Another nearby tent is filled with the 16 members of Gul Pari’s family, who have been sleeping in cardboard boxes without blankets since arriving at the transit camp.

Her voice is drowned out by the honking of tankers carrying much-needed water to the camp, with piles of laughing, barefoot children strapped to the back.

The 46-year-old grandmother, with her grandson’s slender body cradled in her arms, said that in five days they will leave for Kunduz to start a new life in a country she has not seen for four decades.

Life was precarious for the family scavenging in Pakistan, but in Afghanistan, “We have nothing,” he said.

“We are afraid of hunger. But if we find work, it will be fine. We will be happy in our country. In Pakistan, we were harassed.”

Most of those who returned fled an Afghanistan wracked by decades of deadly conflict, but the end of fighting after the Taliban returned to power in 2021 has encouraged some to return.

Amanullah and his family were stranded in a makeshift camp in neighboring Laghman province, with nowhere else to go in Afghanistan.

Amid a dozen white Red Crescent tents that sprout from the lunar landscape, the 43-year-old, who lived in Pakistan for 35 years, said life in the camp was difficult for him, his wife and their six children.

An Afghan security personnel stands guard at a makeshift camp for refugees deported from Pakistan in Surhakan locality of Laghman province, November 13, 2023. PHOTO: AFP

“There are no toilets,” the former construction worker said, and the women “have a very hard time” because they have to wait until nightfall to go out to relieve themselves in groups for safety.

There is almost no electricity.

“All scenes are pitch black” once night falls, he said AFPholding up a small red flashlight.

“We have young children, so we have a lot of difficulties,” he said, adding that all his children were going to school in Pakistan, but he fears for their future now.

“If we stay here for five days, a month, a year, it could be okay, but we need a job, a house… we’re starting from scratch.”

On the way to Jalalabad, Shazia and 20 other women and children piled into a small truck that tilted precariously as it swerved around the bends of the road, flapping the women’s blue burqas around a pile of bundles.

Of the Afghans who returned from Pakistan, she is luckier than most: her husband went ahead of them to Jalalabad and found a four-room house to rent for four families.

“Rent is expensive,” said the 22-year-old mother of three, her youngest child just two months old.

“But tonight we will be able to sleep.”