TRANSCRIPT:
In just a few days time, up to one-point-seven million Afghans living illegally in Pakistan will be forced to leave. According to the United Nations… many had fled across the border when the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
Almost 1.4 million Afghans are legally able to stay – but the Pakistani government says other Afghan refugees living illegally in Pakistan ‘must exit’ by the end of this month.
Among them, a former interpreter with an Australian security company… we’ll called him Ahmad.
“At the beginning, we didn't have any enmity with the Taliban. Since I started working and supported the people of Australia [in Afghanistan], I worked as an interpreter and received a salary from them. The Taliban consider us as spies."
Ahmad says he survived numerous Taliban ambushes while working as an interpreter but three months after Afghanistan’s capital Kabul fell, he was arrested and later spent 9 months in prison.
After his release, Ahmad escaped to Pakistan. This month authorities began rounding up illegal migrants and preparing to forcibly deport them. Ahmad is among those in hiding.
“In this one month since they announced [the deportation of illegal refugees], it has been very difficult for Afghans. No one is renting them homes and hospitals don’t accept them.”
Ahmad applied for an Australian humanitarian visa and says he has a case number from the Department of Home Affairs, but has no recent updates.
Fearing for his safety as time runs out, he is calling on the Australian government to ‘urgently process’ their applications and support ‘all those who have assisted during their presence in Afghanistan’.
“Not only me but all the police, army, intelligence personnel and interpreters - those who cooperated with ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] and foreigners, they will destroy all of them.”
International rights groups are concerned that sending more than one million Afghan nationals back to Taliban controlled Afghanistan could lead to serious human rights violations.
Daniela Gavshon, Director at Human Rights Watch Australia explains:
“Afghans in Pakistan have been a political football essentially being kicked back and forth between the two countries with very little regard for their rights. And resettlement countries have been really dragging their feet and this recent announcement by the Pakistani government has really caught the United Nations off guard. What it means though is that Afghans are facing the threat of being returned home to face Taliban persecution and what we know is a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan at the moment.”
Following the fall of Kabul, in the two years from August 2021 to August 2023, the Australian government has granted more than 13-thousand permanent humanitarian visas to Afghan citizens under its offshore humanitarian program.
However, forced deportation is not the only crisis Afghan nationals are facing.
The Taliban reports that more than two thousand people have so far died in recent earthquakes around Herat province.
With winter approaching, there are fears for 44-thousand struggling to survive as Sally Thomas, the Caritas Humanitarian Emergency Lead in Australia, explains.
"3,000 homes have been completely destroyed and many more have been damaged. People are too scared to even to go into the homes, but especially to sleep in their homes. They don't feel safe. So many are sleeping outside in tents. It's starting to get very cold. Winter is coming and they don't have many supplies with them."
Caritas is sending food, water and medical aid, as is Australian charity Mahboba’s Promise.
Vice President Nawid ‘Sourosh’ Cina explains:
"They're still pulling people out of the rubble. Literally with their bare hands. And it's families that are doing this. It's critical for shelter to be sorted, but really long-term thinking, how are we going to support these families to return to their homes and to survive a winter? Because right now they're at complete risk of death."
UNICEF says that 90 per cent of those killed were women and children. Mr Cina says many were living in mud brick homes which readily collapsed during four recent earthquakes.
The charity’s 50 staff in Afghanistan are supplying essentials in Herat province and helping survivors cope with longer term trauma and loss.
"It's terrible - there's a child who has lost 34 members of their family. So, all their direct immediate family was killed. They are in a state of shock. So we've also sent workers that have professional expertise on mental health first aid response. We've sent a bunch of activities, games, books for these children, and we'll be guiding them through that process as well, just as a first step response. But they will need decades of help. In terms of our immediate food aid package, we're sending 50 kilograms of wheat flour, 10 kilograms of rice, five kilograms of oil, sugar, tea, red beans as protein per family. And we've reached over 4,000 people so far."
The Sydney based charity was set up in 1998 by Mr Cina’s mother, Mahboba Rawi.
Born in Kabul, she became a student activist and at the age of 14 fled the Russian invasion.
Mother and son now oversee the charity, running Hope House orphanages in Afghanistan, as well as schools and health clinics. In a daring year-long mission, they also flew dozens of Afghan women and children to safety in Australia.
"We evacuated over a hundred people from Afghanistan and over 50 of them were the orphans from the Hope Houses, which were at direct risk. And this is the largest number of unaccompanied children to our knowledge Australia has evacuated in one go in its history."
However, Mr Cina says decades of conflict and natural disasters in Afghanistan have taken a toll – making it harder for people to recover from this latest crisis.
"It’s a devastated landscape. And it's a forgotten people that continue to suffer. And the saddest thing is they will continue to show their resilience because they're accustomed to suffering. So, we need to be there and support them in the best way possible. And that's why we are grateful to the people here in Australia who care and who support us. We've raised now just over $30,000 and all that money has already carried in Afghanistan."
Aid agencies say more international aid is needed to tackle a ‘forgotten crisis’ - with the eyes of the world focused on the Middle East.
