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November 17, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Khaama Press: After the rapid increase in number of citizens leaving Afghanistan, Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of the Parliament on Monday summoned the Minster of Foreign Affairs Salahudin Rabbani and Minister of Refugees and Repatriations Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi to respond to lawmakers. Both the ministers hailed the security situation and lack of employment opportunities as the biggest causes behind the flee. Full news...
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September 17, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: Tens of thousands of Afghans have swelled the ranks of those seeking refuge in Europe this year. Second only to Syrians, Afghans represent the next largest group - 13 percent - of those making the journey so far in 2015, Human Rights Watch reported this week. This is because, for many Afghans, the war is only getting worse - something that’s easy to forget as international interest in Afghanistan wanes and most foreign troops are long gone. Full news...
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September 3, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The United States has allocated 950 million USD for assisting Afghan refugees and returnees, but much of that money has been lost to corruption while those in need remain in dire conditions. That’s just one finding in a scathing report released today by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)... Full news...
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May 19, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Spiegel Online: His war only lasted from one dawn to the next. When the sun rose for the second time over the Syrian city of Aleppo, Murad, a farmer from Afghanistan, was still cowering on the second floor of the house he was supposed to defend to the death. That, at least, is what his Iranian officer had ordered him to do. Full news...
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April 6, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FSRN: Pakistan hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world, and more than 1.5 million of those refugees are from neighboring Afghanistan. Many refugees first arrived decades ago during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and young generations of those families were born on Pakistani soil. Full news...
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March 15, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Life has become harder for Afghan refugees in Pakistan after the attack on a school in Peshawar last December that killed 132 students. Media reports say the police have launched counter operations against refugees. The police have ringed camps, and put restrictions on the freedom of movement of refugees, even those who are registered and possess valid identity papers. Full news...
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September 28, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: An Independent Media Consortium (IMC) investigation reveals serious administrative corruption in the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations (MoRR). Findings by the IMC have also implicated Refugees and Repatriation Minister Dr Jamaher Anwary. The minister got UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, to transfer tens of thousands of dollars to the personal accounts of family members and others. Full news...
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August 19, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Six years ago, when Najib* was 15, Taliban fighters came to his home in Shinwar District* in the eastern province of Nangarhar telling him to join them. After repeated visits, his family sought a way for Najib to escape, and paid a smuggler to take him to the UK. Six years on, he has just arrived back in his village, having been deported from the UK, but the threats to get him to join the Taliban are now greater than ever, he says. Full news...
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July 6, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three militants were killed and nearly 300 families displaced as a result of an operation by security personnel in the Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province, officials said on Saturday. The ongoing offensive -- codenamed Operation Eagle -- was launched three days ago by Afghan National Army and police personnel in Zikarkhel and Himmatkhel areas of Baghlan-i-Markazi district. Full news...
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June 20, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Diplomat: Despite the situation in Syria and the ongoing unrest in the Arab world, South Asia—largely thanks to Afghanistan— remains the region where the largest numbers of refugees originate from. Ahead of world refugee day on Thursday, on Wednesday the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released its annual report on the globally displaced people. Full news...
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May 16, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CBS News: As the U.S. military continues its exodus from Afghanistan, the long war has caused another exodus few know about in the U.S. Thousands of mostly teenage boys have fled their war-torn country to embark on a 10,000-mile trek to Europe that most will not complete -- many because they die along the route. Anderson Cooper reports on one of the largest child migrations in modern times on 60 MINUTES, Sunday, May 19 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Full news...
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March 4, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Channel 4 News: It has come to this. A woman sits in the mud and puddles. The snow falls relentlessly. It is minus 6 degrees, even at 11 in the morning. But sit here she must. If she moves suddenly, she will be hit, for she sits in the middle of the road and covered head to foot in the blue burkha. Her vision is restricted ahead and her peripheral vision is non-existent. Full news...
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January 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: After spending 10 years as a refugee in Pakistan, Nafas Gol never thought she would be living in a tent in a camp for the internally displaced in Kabul. “[Afghan President Hamid] Karzai was everywhere saying ’come, your country is ready’, so I did,” she said. More than five million refugees have returned to the country since the US-led invasion in 2001. Full news...
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December 2, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Winter is descending on the Shakur clan. In the pale gray twilight of late autumn, a sharp wind slaps at the scraps of plastic that Abdel Shakur, the clan patriarch, has installed on his mud hut walls in a futile attempt at insulation. The thin tarpaulins that serve as a roof are held fast by round patties of cow dung and worn auto tires. Full news...
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August 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Abdul Karim walked for nearly 12 hours to cross the border into Pakistan and escape the warlords who were raining rockets on his neighborhood in the Afghan capital Kabul. That was nearly two decades ago, when he was a young teenager. Since then, he’s gotten married and raised six children, all born in Pakistan. Full news...
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March 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Time (Blog): When Zikariya Nazar Muhammad, 60, embarked on his journey from Karachi in Pakistan to his ancestral home in Afghanistan’s rural interior, he carried a silent hope: that life in his own country would be better than a life of exile in a foreign land growing increasingly intolerant of refugees like himself. Full news...
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February 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: In an attempt to find long-term solutions for the estimated 1.4 million unregistered Afghans living within its borders, Iran adopted a legalization scheme last year that paved the way for Afghans to enter Iran legally with work visas. Observers say few Afghans have taken advantage of the new programme, and instead Afghan migrants continue streaming into Iran illegally every day in search of jobs. Full news...
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February 24, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan, mainly from the strife-torn southern provinces, have been heading for Kabul in the hope of finding work and a better life, but most end up living in appalling conditions in makeshift camps. Besmillah (he goes by just the one name), 38, fled the southern province of Helmand with his five children and wife two years ago after a rocket landed in his compound. Full news...
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February 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA News: An international human rights group says fighting in Afghanistan has displaced half a million people who lack access to adequate housing, food and schools. London-based Amnesty International said in a report Thursday that the situation is a “horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis.” Full news...
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February 20, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Abdullah was left catatonic and almost mute by the electric shocks meted out to him by Iranian police before they bussed him to the border and sent him back to Afghanistan. His arms marked with slashes of red paint to identify him as a deportee, the 18-year-old lies on a bed of cushions in an otherwise bare hut that has become his temporary home... Full news...
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February 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here: Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen ridges of the muddy floor. Full news...
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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Much of Dawood Boy’s village in northern Afghanistan is empty. More than 1,000 families from Alburz in Balkh Province abandoned it 4-6 months ago after a drought affecting nearly half the country left 2.8 million people in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Programme. The drought destroyed the crops Boy had planted, killed his livestock which no longer had animal feed, and left his family without seeds for next season. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan’s officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul’s police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need. From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Full news...
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November 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: At a bustling Kabul market, people smugglers are making a quick buck out of Afghans increasingly desperate to buy a new life in Europe before NATO combat forces leave in 2014. Ordinary people pay up to $13,000 for the chance to embark on a long and perilous journey -- hiding in truck chassis, stowing away on boats or trekking across mountains -- that they hope will take them to a better life. Full news...
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November 9, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Resettlement challenges in Afghanistan have discouraged refugees living in neighbouring countries from going home, with 60,000 returning in the past 10 months against 100,000 during the same period last year, officials said. "The most important [reasons] relate to lack of opportunities for livelihoods and shelter, but also due to insecurity in some parts of the country,"... Full news...
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October 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: Today we observe the tenth anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. It is an anniversary that is important to many. For the American military and its allies, this is a time to reflect on sacrifices made during this long and difficult war. Full news...
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August 8, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: This tiny village rose from the rocky soil with great hopes and 10 million USD in foreign aid, a Levittown of identical mud-walled houses built to shelter some of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans set adrift by war and flight. Five years later, the village of Alice-Ghan and those good intentions are tilting toward ruin. Full news...
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June 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: More than 250,000 people have been displaced in the last two years of fighting in Afghanistan, and “local police” programmes sponsored by NATO have exacerbated the problem by arming militias, according to a new report from Refugees International. Most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled “international and Afghan military forces’ operations against the Taliban,” the report found. Full news...
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June 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
GlobalPost: The man sits cross-legged on the floor of his mud house, one of several in a walled compound on the barren outskirts of Kabul, welcoming his visitors with tea, cookies and a wan smile. There’s nothing out here but a few other mud-brick structures, hidden behind walls ― no stores, no schools, no toys for the wide-eyed children. Behind them dusty emptiness stretches as far as the eye can see. Full news...
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June 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Continued Taliban-led insurgency, insecurity incidents, high rate of unemployment and poverty have been main obstacle to delay the return of over six million Afghan refugees from neighboring states. “Almost all Afghan refugees living in neighboring country of Iran prefer to return home country, but they were forced to stay abroad due to continued war, insecurity and high rate of unemployment in Afghanistan,”... Full news...