Since 2002, in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations refugee agency's Afghanistan office has been involved in the largest repatriation project in its history, attempting to assist longtime Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran to move back to their homeland. Some five million refugees have moved back, but some three million have yet to do so. For the past year and a half, Salvatore Lombardo has been at the centre of this massive operation, as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) representative in Afghanistan. As he prepared to leave his post, Lombardo sat down with Himal's contributing editor in Kabul, Aunohita Mojumdar, to reflect on the situation of the millions of Afghans who remain outside of Afghanistan.
On the eve of your departure, how do you assess the situation of Afghan refugees?
What is very clear is that the era of mass returns is over, and we are now entering a situation – with two million registered Afghans in Pakistan, and one million in Iran – that is much more complicated, much more challenging. We must understand that those who have not yet come back are people who have been in exile for a very long time, who are almost second generation. The aspirations they have, the wishes they have, certainly do not find an answer in the Afghanistan of today. Because of insecurity, many of them cannot go back to the places they came from; and even if they did return, they would probably like to go to the cities.
Now, if conditions were better, would all the people start coming back? I am not so sure. [To begin with,] the economic situation being what it is, their condition is very, very poor. And one aspect that is often neglected is the issue of what the refugees have become after 30 years: there is not enough recognition that a population that has been in exile for 30 years may not necessarily want to return.
How could they become full citizens in their countriesof refuge?
I think that is the big question, because the government position in both places is a 'no' to local integration, and I don't think that this position is likely to change because of the overall situation in the region – but also, to be fair, it is not easy for any country. In my view, the biggest challenge would be the destiny of the population, knowing that they have changed and knowing that the answer to their problems is not in Afghanistan. There is clearly a humanitarian problem in all of this. No doubt about that.