The Independent: The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes. Kandahar is in Taliban hands – all but a square mile at the centre of the city – and the first Taliban checkpoints are scarcely 15 miles from Kabul. Hamid Karzai's deeply corrupted government is almost as powerless as the Iraqi cabinet in Baghdad's "Green Zone"; lorry drivers in the country now carry business permits issued by the Taliban which operate their own courts in remote areas of the country.      more...

AP: 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 80s, then the strife of civil war and most recently the U.S. offensive against the Taliban. 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 U.N.      more...

IRIN: UXOs and explosive remnants of war have also been reported in other returnees' settlements in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar. Hundreds of thousands have returned there in the past few years. "About 200 metres from our settlement the area is full of landmines and explosive devices which often kill animals," said Mohammad Afzal, a resident of a settlement in Nangahar Province. Provincial officials said mine-clearing agencies had been asked to re-examine areas in Baghlan and Nangarhar provinces for any hazardous explosives.      more...

Quqnoos: Jobless refugees turfed out of Iran turn to lives of crime, officials say. Rising unemployment has forced many people living in the south-western province of Nimroz to turn to crime, militancy or drugs for money, officials say. About 30,000 illegal Afghan immigrants have been ordered out of Iran since the start of October for not having work permits. The returnees say they are willing to work in Nirmoz for $2 a day, but they complain that there are no jobs available for them.      more...

IOM: Trafficking in persons is a crime that can impair a personality and even destroy a human life and it gravely affects today’s Afghanistan as a source, transit and destination country. The traffickers ruthlessly exploit men, women and children by violating their basic human rights and this modern-day form of slavery continues to thrive with impunity.      more...

IRIN News: Hundreds of Pashtun refugees who have returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan's northeastern Takhar Province say their properties have been seized by local people and militias from other ethnic groups. Their allegations were confirmed by the Ministry of Refugees and Returnees (MoRR).      more...

NCRI: "In the third phase of the plan to deport illegal aliens, the [Iranian regime] is bulldozing their slums in the outskirts of southern city of Shiraz," Jam- e jam added. Ali Gholami, Shiraz governor said that city council will deal swiftly with those providing shelter to Afghan refugees.      more...

SF Chronicle: Along a parched sandlot where sporadic bursts of wind kick up spinning clouds of blinding dust, Abdul Quiam wakes from an afternoon slumber. A tent constructed of bamboo poles and threadbare blankets is the weathered 75-year-old man's only defense from a scorching midday sun.      more...

IRIN News: About 490,000 Afghans have been deported from Iran over the past 18 months, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Returnees (MoRR) told IRIN. “One hundred and forty thousand undocumented Afghans have been deported so far in 2008, and some 350,000 were deported in 2007,” said Salvatore Lombardo, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, adding that most of the deportees were “single males” who had gone to Iran in search of work.      more...

IRIN News: The worsening security situation, unemployment, the food crisis, drought, shelter problems and lack of socio-economic opportunities may force some Afghans who have returned to their country in the past six years to cross international borders again in search of a better life, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repartition (MoRR) warned.      more...

Qoqnoos: Saudi Arabia has deported thirteen Afghan children after locking them in jail for six months without telling their families where they were. The expelled children, aged between five and 11, were living illegally in Saudi Arabia , according to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.      more...

IRIN News: "I have cousins in Kabul whom I have never met. But then I also hear that the city is still full of broken buildings, that living costs there are very high and that there is a great deal of insecurity," Ghazala told IRIN. She is torn between wishing to see the city her parents talk nostalgically of, and staying on in Peshawar, where she now has roots.      more...

Herald Tribune: Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are creating new waves of refugees, according to the United Nations refugee agency. The report released Tuesday by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees shows around 3 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, and around 2 million Iraqis moved, mainly to Syria and Jordan.      more...

The Guardian: The number of Afghan children discovered being smuggled through Dover has risen dramatically in the last 12 months after a surge in violence between Taliban and Nato forces in Afghanistan.      more...

IRIN: The once largest Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Jalozai, has been closed down and most of its residents have returned to Afghanistan, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said. More than 120,000 Afghan refugees have been repatriated from Pakistan, almost half from Jalozai, since March 2008, with UNHCR assistance.      more...

The Observer: Afghanistan, struggling with a huge indigenous drug problem, has a new crisis. Its drug treatment centres - particularly in the capital, Kabul - are being inundated by heroin-addicted former refugees, many forcibly expelled from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan. 'The biggest problem now is the returning addicts. It is a tsunami coming to this country,' Suliman said.      more...

IRIN News: The killing and abduction of dozens of health workers in the past two years has prompted officials to shut down at least 36 health facilities in Afghanistan’s volatile southern and eastern provinces, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).      more...

PAN: More than 5,755 families have so far returned to Afghanistan after their 2,808 houses at Jalozai camp, the biggest Afghan refugee camp, were bulldozed, sources said on Monday.      more...

Tolo TV: The Pakistani police at the Torkham border killed a 7-year-old Afghan girl for carrying 3 kg of flour by crushing her under a car.      more...

IRIN News: Hundreds of people have abandoned their homes and moved to urban areas in different parts of Afghanistan, and some have reportedly migrated to neighbouring Pakistan, due to worsening food insecurity, largely resulting from soaring food prices and low cereal supplies, provincial officials said.      more...

IRIN News: Shops and mud-huts owned by Afghan refugees in Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province have been demolished and refugees who still live there have been ordered to vacate the area by the end of April, according to Pakistani officials and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).      more...

Middle East Times: During the previous year, an estimated 434,000 Afghans used hashish, 130,000 used opium and 41,000 used heroin, according to the UNODC. Some agencies report higher numbers, but this may be due to their failure to adjust the population base. While the population of Afghanistan is officially listed as 31.8 million, the UNODC figures are based on the figure of 23.8 million people who currently live in Afghanistan. The other 8 million, including refugees in Pakistan and Iran, live outside of Afghanistan.      more...

IRIN News: Food shortages in Ajristan District of Ghazni Province, central Afghanistan, have forced some families to eat dried grass in order to survive, local people and the district administrator told IRIN.      more...

AFP: Kabul is seeking an urgent meeting with Teheran about the deportation of Afghans, the government said on Wednesday, with 7,000 forced out in the past month despite a pledge to halt expulsions over winter.      more...

The Guardian: A growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is being overlooked as an unknown number of people are fleeing their homes, caught between security forces and the Taliban, Red Cross officials have told the Guardian.      more...

VOA: An official at Iran's Interior Ministry says the estimated 1.5 million Afghan refugees illegally living in the country could face arrest and detention for up to five years.      more...

The Canadian Press: After the Taliban toppled from power, Qahir packed up his family and all they could take with them and crossed the border back into his Afghan homeland. Qahir, 57, had spent 19 years in Pakistan, most of them in a sprawling refugee camp. But six years later, he says he is "hopeless and disappointed."      more...

The Epoch Times: Thirteen-year-old Mohammad Bahari swings the long-end of a grain broom in a quite street in uptown Tehran in the early hours of morning. His boyish face and small figure resemble a child of no more than 10, making it difficult to believe he's a contractor employee with the city.      more...

UNHCR: A lack of jobs, safe drinking water, accessible health care, education and housing are the main obstacles to the return and reintegration of Afghan refugees, according to a recent report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).      more...

UN News Center: A United Nations envoy warned today that the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan could rise significantly if the conflict there continues at the current rate, adding to the multitude of Afghans that have already fled their homes.      more...

Associated Press: Dumped at this frontier outpost alongside hundreds of weary Afghan laborers, Khalil Jalil stepped out of Iran and back into Afghanistan only days after he said Iranian authorities beat him, threw him in the trunk of a car and locked him in a detention center.      more...

BBC News: The queues of refugees start to pour over the border from first thing in the morning - as they have been doing for the last month. Ninety thousand people have so far been forcibly returned to Afghanistan from Iran since 21 April, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.      more...

Pajhwok Afghan News: "My father and mother had gone to an invitation; police of Iran came to our house and deported us through the way of Nimrooz." These are the sad words of Noorbashee, 9, that according to her claim she has been expelled from Iran along with her 3 years old sister, now they are living with difficult situation in a camp in the frontier region of Nimrooz Province that doesn't any thing except for burning desert and sand storms.      more...

IRIN News: Forty-eight-year-old Zahraa lived in the eastern Iranian city of Zabul for more than 12 years with her husband and two sons. On 8 May she was deported to Afghanistan for illegally staying in the country. She gave IRIN an account of what she said was her forced journey to Afghanistan.      more...

IRIN News: The family of Nezamuddin Mohammadi in the Iranian capital, Tehran, does not know that their only breadwinner has been deported to Afghanistan. "I was arrested at work and confined for two nights in a dark cell," Mohammadi told IRIN on Sunday in the Afghan border district of Islam Qala where deportees from Iran were taken.      more...

Reuters: Pakistan says its Afghan refugee camps are a hotbed of support for a resurgent Taliban and they should be closed, but it seems no one in the Pir Alizai camp wants to go home.      more...

IRIN News: "We returned from neighbouring Pakistan in June 2002, after hearing that living conditions had improved and the government was providing proper shelter and plots of land for returnees, but unfortunately nothing has happened yet.      more...

IDMC: Fierce fighting between NATO troops and insurgents in southern Afghanistan has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing from their homes in a new wave of displacement. Although numbers are unverified, the government said that more than 20,000 families had been displaced due to the fighting in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan as of November 2006.      more...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Promises of work and security made Ghulam Hazara return to this western Afghan city from Iran two years ago. Now a lack of both is driving him back.      more...