Uncertain of their country's future, Afghans are migrating in droves – but leaving can be a risky proposition.
The toppling of Afghanistan's repressive Taliban regime in 2001 had ignited new hope about the future of Afghanistan, bringing waves of Afghan refugees home, but recent years have witnessed a stark reversal of that trend.
The number of Afghans seeking asylum in industrialized nations has surpassed all previous years since 2001, with the UN refugee agency reporting a 65 percent surge in 2014 applications over the previous year.
Trying to escape the violence and a tanking economy in record numbers has meant massive queues outside Kabul's passport office. It has also lead many to seek the help of people smugglers.
Ashraf, 28, casts worried looks around him as he bolts the door of his spartan home in a crowded Kabul suburb and gets a smuggler named Murad, “highly recommended” by a friend, on the phone.
“Meet me in Nimroz (on the Iran border),” Murad says over the crackling line after a lengthy exchange of Islamic greetings. "The journey to Tehran will take four or five days — partly by car, partly on foot.”
“I have a handicapped, wheelchair-bound brother,” says Ashraf, who allowed AFP to listen to the conversation but requested that his last name be withheld.
“For you it'll cost 2.2 million Toman ($700); for your brother, 3 million — because he cannot walk,” said Murad.
"What if we are arrested and deported?" Ashraf asked, his tone cagey.
“No, no,” retorts Murad, who then offered a “100 percent guarantee.”
But Ashraf, an oil-tanker driver who carries supplies from Kabul to military bases in Taliban-prone provinces, knows better. He was deported — first from Indonesia, next from Malaysia — while attempting to reach Australia in 2012.
That this is Ashraf's third attempt to flee spotlights the anguished personal choices of Afghan civilians, increasingly caught in the cross-hairs of an ascendant 14-year insurgency.
Four decades of war has brought endurance, but the expanding conflict, the specter of the Islamic State along with rampant joblessness and economic distress have whipped up an undercurrent of fear and hopelessness.
The fractious power-sharing government headed by President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah — seen as a “car with two drivers” working sometimes at cross-purposes - is blamed for failing to halt militant attacks.
“Almost everyone I know is leaving or planning to leave — my aunts, my cousins, my neighbor, my friend in Kandahar,” said Azeem Raheemi, 48, a transporter for a poultry feed supplier.
Raheemi, a father of three, lives near Shah Shaheed, a working-class Kabul neighborhood which was hit in a recent wave of fatal bombings.
The truck bombing which engulfed the area in flames was strong enough to tear a massive hole in the ground, evoking comparisons to a meteor strike.
As Raheemi cowered inside his home with his family, his resolve to leave strengthened.
After cold-calling Western embassies did not bear fruit, he is attempting to get a visa for neighboring Iran.
“A bomb could explode any minute, anywhere. You could be sitting on the curb in a street and wind up dead,” he said.
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