The story of how power games triggered by the extra-regional forces, the US and former Soviet Union, made Afghanistan a bastion of terrorism is both fascinating and distressing. Refugees have been the core instrument used. The heightened Cold War and Soviet invasion of Afghanis­tan in 1979 were followed by massive US arms supply—roughly $630 million annually—to Afghan Mujahiddins to fight the Soviet forces. The result: Violent clashes between the Afghan forces and the resistance groups, indiscriminate rocketing and shelling on civilians, over 10 million land mines scattered around the countryside and years of civil war. All these uprooted almost six million Afghans—one-third of its total population—in the 1980s.

Most of the Afghan refugees were absorbed in Pakistan because of physical proximity, cultural and linguistic affinity and politico-strategic support from the host government. This was despite the fact that like other South Asian countries,

Pakistan has neither signed the 1951 UN Convention Relat­ing to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, nor enacted a domestic refugee law or procedure. A whole range of international humanitarian and aid agencies led by the UNHCR intervened in the management of refugees.

Refugee management

The repatriation process which had started after the with­drawal of Soviet forces in 1989 and the fall of the communist government of Najibullah in 1992 was abruptly halted with the capturing of Kabul and two-thirds of Afghanistan by the Taliban in September 1996. Over fours million refugees have been repatriated from Pakistan, while over 1.56 million Afghan refugees are still present there. The refugee camps mostly located in Peshawar and Baluchistan have been dismantled.

It has been a tight rope walking for Pakistan as it has to constantly strike a balance in its economic, security and humanitarian interests. A significant proportion of the refugee population has been living outside the camps. The UNHCR alone has spent over $2 billion on refugee management in Pakistan.

The very nature of refugee camp management brought about conflicts within and outside the refugee community. Extension of relief and other support measures was literally aimed at raising a fighting force. It was not exactly based on humanitarian princi­ples. Saba Gul Khattak, a Pakistani scholar, found that every registered household in the camp mandatorily needed a political affiliation with a tanzim (political party) to get food, shelter and security (in­cluding guns, shoes and training to fight in Afghanistan). Pakistan supported seven major political parties of the Mujahiddins led by four fundamentalist leaders, Hekmatyar, Khalis, Rabbani and Sayaf, and three moderate

leaders, Nabi, Gailani and Mujadaddi. Each party leader had to show the strength of the followers.

A covert chain of control on camp operations was directly juxtaposed with the political and mili­tary moves in Afghanistan by the host Pakistan. The motives of major aid donors were so militarily oriented that strategic considerations far outweighed the humanitarian aspects. This was the most critical turning point in the management of Afghan refugees by ‘freedom fighters’ and the consequent ‘Talibanisation’ of Afghanistan.

Rise of Taliban

On the other hand, constant presence of refugees generated newer dimensions of threats to Pakistan. Besides compassionate fatigue, the refugees were invariably perceived as a challenge to its cultural identity. A study on Afghan refugee camps revealed that besides pastureland and employment, collection of firewood was the most important source of conflict with the local population. At the height of their exodus, the Afghans came along with three million heads of livestock and literally exhausted the grazing land in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

Two most vital fallouts have been the large scale proliferation of narcotics trade and open access to sophisticated weapons leading to a range of ‘destructured conflicts’ or ‘low-intensity wars’ in and around the region. A fragile economy like that of Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in drug addicts. The nexus between politicians and drug barons has crystallised steadily. It later brought devastation to Pakistan. The UN Drug Control Programme Report mentions 50 percent of the world supply and 80 percent of European supply of heroin comes from Afghanistan with a street value of $30-40 billion.

A significant portion of the arms supplied to the Afghan Mujahiddins to fight the Soviet forces by the US made its way into the arms hungry mafia and the Taliban. A US Senate Staff Report in 1988 mentioned that “anywhere from 20-70 percent of US military aid for insur­gents never reached its real destination; rather, for reasons ranging from expediency to personal profit, it has been appropriated, traded, sold or hidden by groups with access to the shipments to the Pakistan armed forces, Afghan political parties based in Peshawar, rebel com­manders or individual guerrillas.”

Pakistan has now been infested with an open arms bazaar and entirely new profile of crimes and terrorist activities. The Taliban naturally capitalised on this steady penetration of ‘Kalashnikov culture’ with freely available lethal arms. All these naturally transcended the frontiers of Baluchistan. Its impact on violence in Karachi in Pakistan and Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir and other north eastern states of India are visibly ugly. It is only after the September 11 bombing of World Trade Centre and its global ramifications and reactions that Pakistan started taking Talibanisation as a threat to its own security.

Herculean task

The plights of the returning refugees have been more acute. The ultra conservative interpretation of Islam and the harsh regulations imposed by the Taliban regime (1996-2001) particularly on women have made the lives of returnees miserable—no education for girls, no employment for women, no music, no kite flying, no photography of living creatures and the stipulation that women should be attended only by female physicians. Amnesty Interna­tional highlighted large scale ‘executions and amputations’ of the persons not adhering to these inhuman diktats. On the other hand, Islamic militia defended these actions as the penal code for social peace and order. Large deposits of land mines that contaminated grazing and agricul­ture land made the resettlement process a Herculean task.

This also discourages the remaining women Afghan refugees in Pakistan from repatriating. The democratic regimes also seem to have had no impact as even today asylum seekers from Afghanistan waiting for UNHCR’s decision stands at a whopping 0.26 million. As per the latest report by the UNHCR, ‘Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015’, Afghanistan is only second to Syria as the top refugee generating country.

Protracted and fierce civil war and violence in Afghanistan has led to the emergence of a new generation of people with little education, strong weapons training and no memory of life in a peaceful state. Therefore, handling of and interventions in the refugee situation demands a comprehensive policy with detached stands. The politico-military goals should be marginalised. Failure to do so will trigger a fresh set of alliances and alignments of terrorists against the post 2001 ‘partnership of retaliation’ with the present democratic regime. This will definitely be more vicious and spiteful.

Lama, former member of National Security Advisory Board, Government of India, is a professor of South Asian Economies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a member of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) from India. He can be reached at [email protected]