Ajab Khan’s five children were born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Now the 48-year-old has brought his family home to Afghanistan — to a tent pitched on a rocky plain just steps away from land mines.
Khan and his children are among nearly 4,000 Afghan families living in a makeshift settlement because their homes were destroyed or overtaken in the decades they spent abroad waiting out wars.
First, with the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, then the strife of civil war and most recently the US offensive against the Taliban.
The UN’s refugee chief visited Chamtala settlement on Monday in eastern Afghanistan and called for wealthy nations to do more to build new communities for destitute returnees like Khan.
“There has not been enough support from the international community,” High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told assembled elders from the camp.
He said he would press rich countries to donate more to the cause of returnees during an international conference on the refugee issue in the Afghan capital this week.
At the height of their exodus, Afghans made up the world’s largest refugee population with 8 million people in more than 70 countries. More than 5 million of these people have returned home since 2002, according to the UN.
Donor nations should show their “full solidarity to the Afghan people, to those that come back, to those that go on coming back, because they want also to rebuild their country but face huge challenges in rebuilding their lives,” Guterres said later.
Chamtala is one of five makeshift settlements countrywide in which more than 30,000 recent returnees from various countries are living in tents with only basic emergency supplies from the government and aid groups, according the UN refugee agency.
They are part of an ongoing influx of people — some pushed back across the Pakistan border by closures of refugee camps, others by fighting between government forces and Islamic militants in border areas. Most of the families at Chamtala have arrived since May.
Pakistan says it is not forcefully deporting anyone. But some in Chamtala say they weren’t given any choice when their camps closed except to board trucks heading across the border.
“They sent the police to make us leave. They put us in a truck and took us out,” said Gul Sadad, 28. He said the truck did not just take him out of the camp, but all the way back to Afghanistan.
About 3 million Afghans are still living in Pakistan and Iran, the UN said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of