The Unwelcoming Homecoming: Afghanistan’s Return Crisis
By Amenah Patel
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the already dire situation for Afghan refugees has reached a new high. Pakistan and Iran, Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries, which have hosted millions of refugees for decades, are now escalating policies of forcible returns, blaming economic pressures and security concerns. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are flooding back into a country incapable of receiving them. This forced homecoming is not a repatriation, but a crisis layered upon crises, creating major challenges for returnees and straining hosts past the breaking point.
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The immediate challenge is survival. Returning Afghans arrive with nothing more than what they can carry by hand after authorities have confiscated their usual savings. The borders of Pakistan display scenes of chaos, with families including newborns and the elderly, stranded for days without shelter, food, and water. To make matters worse, homes have been destroyed, occupied, or are in regions not safe to return to. Internally displaced camps are becoming permanent slums filled with overcrowding but lacking basic services, and host communities who already find themselves living in extreme poverty see these returning refugees as a burden on scarce resources such as firewood, water, and humanitarian aid. The harsh Afghan winter further aggravates the situation, with families threatened to freeze to death in makeshift tents
Afghanistan’s public services have now collapsed, and with the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the system is overwhelmed to the point of no return. Clinics and hospitals are lacking medicines and staff, schools are struggling with the Taliban’s restrictions on female education and are full, water sources are depleted, and sanitation systems are nonexistent, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks such as cholera in crowded settlements.
People who fled conflict, poverty, and instability are being forced back into a country where all these problems have deepened. They are not coming home to rebuild but are instead being expelled into an open-air prison of desperation where their struggle for survival worsens the misery of those already there.
There is no simple solution to Afghanistan’s growing refugee crisis. The immediate imperative would be for the international community to increase pressure on Pakistan and Iran to halt forcible returns. Within Afghanistan, humanitarian aid must be significantly increased and distributed in a manner that benefits both returnees and residents to prevent further conflict.
