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Pushed out of Pakistan into war-torn Afghanistan, refugees are told to be ‘patient'

jared — 2017-04-13T08:14:04Z

Afghan refugees pressured by Pakistan to return to their volatile homeland where they face hunger and homelessness should be “patient”, according to an official who said his government plans to eventually offer more support.

The UN says more than 600,000 Afghans returned last year from Pakistan, where rights groups documented a campaign of harassment by the authorities. Pakistan suspended its repatriation plan in December, but resumed it on 3 April and returnees and advocates say the harassment has begun again.

A similar influx of returnees this year would further strain the capacity of the Afghan government, which is already unable to deal with those who came back in 2016. In addition, the UN says a record 400,000 people were displaced by war inside Afghanistan last year.

A recent UN survey found that 46 percent of returnees around the capital, Kabul, were severely food insecure. The figure was 30 percent in Nangarhar, a province bordering Pakistan. Of those surveyed in both locations, 63 percent listed employment as a “priority need”.

Another primary concern is that many returnees have no home to return to. Land would not only give them somewhere to build a house; it would also allow them to farm, which would cut down on hunger and unemployment.

Hafiz Ahmad Miakhel, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, said the government is working on a land distribution programme. But he said it was a slow process due to factors including the need for various ministries to coordinate, and the time it takes to register all returnees and determine whether it's safe for them to return to their homes districts.

“People have to be patient,” he told IRIN.

Little support

Patience is in short supply among those who are struggling to survive with little help.

“The government of Afghanistan keeps saying for people to come, but does nothing to support them,” said Amanullah, 19, who was deported from Pakistan in November and has been selling soup on the street since then in the town of Daronta, in Nangarhar.

The government gives each returnee $50, while the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, provides registered refugees with another $200.

That money disappears quickly, returnees said. Most have to rent houses at a cost of $75 to $100 a month.

“I wish we could say we spent it on a luxury, but it all went to rent and to feed our families,” said Akbar Khan, who has been unable to return to his home in Paktika Province because the security situation is so poor.

Humanitarian groups like the Norwegian Refugee Council [NRC] provide support to some returnees, including building shelters, but most receive little help. The $200 cash grant provided by UNHCR is half of what it was last year.

The government and humanitarian agencies asked for $550 million to fund programmes in 2017, of which only 21 percent has been committed or delivered so far.

“As aid agencies there is only so much we can do with the budgets and resources we're given,” said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for UNHCR. “There are some institutional matters that different ministries of the Afghan government will have to work on as well.”

The inability of ministries to coordinate and provide long-term solutions, such as land distribution, has bedeviled the government for years.

A year ago, Amnesty International reported that the government had failed to implement a national policy to provide basic living conditions for displaced people. Amnesty found many were living “on the brink of survival”.

SEE: Afghanistan's failed promises to help people displaced by war

That situation is worse now, since 2016 saw record numbers of both returning refugees and people displaced by fighting. And it could get even more desperate as Pakistan ramps up its repatriation efforts, even as the war in Afghanistan intensifies.

Harassment again

There are still more than two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, about half of whom Pakistan has refused to register officially. Will Carter of the NRC has been interviewing people crossing into Afghanistan.

“Unregistered returnees that I spoke with at the border crossing over the past few days expressed that the main reason they returned was because of increases in harassment and detention of family members,” he told IRIN.

Although Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied that authorities were purposefully harassing Afghan refugees, such reports became common during the second half of last year, when most Afghans returned.

SEE: UN under fire even as Pakistan lifts Afghan deportation order

Returnees told IRIN that Pakistani police repeatedly arrested family members, and offered 10,000 rupees [$95] to people to report the whereabouts of Afghans.

Afsad, who spent his entire life in Pakistan, said his family finally decided to leave after neighbours whom they'd lived beside for decades reported them.

“They would say, ‘Leave your livestock, your vehicles, your motorcycles.' Even on our way out, people were taking advantage of us,” said Afsad.

Like many returnees, Afsad and his family had a relatively comfortable life in Pakistan. Now they are forced to start again in a country where the economy has collapsed, a record number of civilians died last year, and the government seems unable to support even their basic needs.

SEE: Afghanistan's deepening migration crisis

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(TOP PHOTO: A girl stands with her family's possessions which they've brought to Afghanistan's Nangarhar province after leaving Pakistan in August 2016 CREDIT: Jim Huylebroek/NRC)

jalalabad_nrc_jimhuylebroek-3.jpg News Migration Conflict Politics and Economics Pushed out of Pakistan into war-torn Afghanistan, refugees are told to be ‘patient' Ali M Latifi IRIN DARONTA AFGHANISTAN Asia Afghanistan Pakistan

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UN under fire even as Pakistan lifts Afghan deportation order

jared — 2017-02-13T09:24:39Z

Pakistan has backed off threats to deport more than two million Afghans starting next month, but the refugees are still under intense pressure to leave and the UN is accused of complicity in alleged plans to coerce them back across the border into a war zone.

Last week, Pakistan announced it would allow Afghans to stay in the country until the end of the year. Insiders say the decision by the administration of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif came after lobbying from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, as well as two allied political parties and the Afghan government. Sharif's cabinet was also warned that such a move could push Afghanistan closer to Pakistan's archrival, India.

But the decision will not alleviate the fear and uncertainty that Afghans live with in Pakistan. In fact, the situation is now similar to last year when about 600,000 Afghans crossed the border under intense pressure from the government, including an initial end-of-year deportation deadline (which was later delayed until the end of March 2017).

“Giving refugees short-term status and threatening deportation is a very effective way to get people to leave,” said Gerry Simpson, author of a report released today by Human Rights Watch.

The report accuses Pakistan of violating international law by committing refoulement: forcibly returning refugees to a country where they face persecution, torture or a risk to their lives. The report says UNHCR is complicit because it has failed to condemn government measures intended to coerce Afghans to leave and has assisted the government by providing cash grants to returnees.

“It's clearly high time for UNHCR to speak in plain, simple English and call it what it is, which is forced return,” Simpson told IRIN.

SEE: Will the UN become complicit in Pakistan's illegal return of Afghan refugees?

Freedom to choose?

The refugee agency rejected HRW's accusations.

“The return of Afghan refugees in 2016 from Pakistan was categorically not refoulement,” said Duniya Aslam Khan, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Pakistan.

She told IRIN that the agency does not promote returning to Afghanistan, but offered the cash grant to those who decided on their own accord to leave Pakistan.

“We acknowledge that conditions for return are less than ideal,” said Khan. “UNHCR facilitates voluntary repatriation upon the request and fully informed decision of refugees.”

Simpson argued that conditions were not only “less than ideal”, but became so difficult for Afghans in Pakistan last year that repatriation became less of a decision than a necessity.

Halfway through 2016, the government launched a public information campaign warning Afghans that they needed to leave the country or face deportation. After that, refugees began reporting increasing animosity from members of Pakistan's host communities and they often suddenly found their rents were increased, their children were not allowed to attend school, and employment dried up. The government has denied ordering security forces to harass refugees, but HRW collected evidence that such harassment dramatically increased after the government announced the plan.

SEE: Families torn apart as Pakistan forces Afghan refugees over the border

Harassment by security forces appeared to have dropped off late last year when the government extended the deportation deadline to March. It's not yet clear whether refugees will be facing the same pressures in 2017, but Simpson warned of that possibility.

Those who decide to return to Afghanistan will be going home to a war that shows no signs of abating and has only become more dangerous for civilians. The UN Mission in Afghanistan recorded 11,418 civilians killed or injured last year, the highest number since UNAMA began documenting civilian casualties in 2009.

The Afghan government is struggling with a record number of displaced people, including those who fled their homes due to conflict last year, as well as record numbers of Afghans who have returned mainly from Pakistan and Iran. The government and aid agencies are asking for $550 million from the international community to support the most “vulnerable and marginalised” people in the country in 2017.

Human Rights Watch

Backroom talks

Afghanistan's government formally requested Pakistan to extend the stay of the refugees until the security situation improves, according to a senior Pakistani official who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media on the subject.

The official said that the cabinet also received briefings, which warned that forced repatriation would put further pressure on the strained relationship between the two countries and that India might use that tension to its advantage.

“India can exploit sentiments of the deported refugees in its favour,” he said. “Therefore, we need to be extra careful in pushing the refugees across the border.”

Imran Zeb, Pakistan's chief commissioner for Afghan refugees, told IRIN that the government also based its decision on appeals by UNHCR and two political parties, Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami and Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam (Fazal).

Both parties receive most of their support from regions along Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan, especially among ethnic Pashtuns who live on both sides of the border.

“We don't want to throw them into mouths of wolves in Afghanistan,” said Muhammad Jamaluddin, a Jamiat member of the National Assembly. “The refugees will go back voluntarily when the situation improves in their hometowns.”

Simpson, of HRW, said another likely factor was that Pakistan simply does not have the capability to quickly deport the approximately 2.4 million Afghans in the country. However, if Pakistan ramps up pressure on them as it did last year, and if about the same number leave as a result, it could force out most remaining refugees within three years.

SEE: Afghanistan's deepening migration crisis

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(TOP PHOTO: A truck carrying Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan travels through Afghanistan's Nangarhar province in August 2016. CREDIT: Jim Huylebroek/NRC)

jalalabad_nrc_jimhuylebroek-17.jpg News Aid and Policy Migration Conflict Human Rights UN under fire even as Pakistan lifts Afghan deportation order Aamir Saeed Jared Ferrie IRIN ISLAMABAD Asia Afghanistan Pakistan

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Radio wars: Islamic State takes over the Afghan airwaves

jared — 2017-01-31T03:51:34Z

It's a chilly winter evening in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. Several men with blankets draped over their shoulders are playing cards under a solar-powered streetlight when someone turns on the radio. It's time for Voice of the Caliphate, a programme broadcast by the so-called Islamic State on its pirate station.

“God loves those mujahideen who fight in the way of Allah,” says the presenter, who urges young men to join IS. “There will be an Islamic state, a pure Sharia regime all over the world.”

The men quieten down as the broadcast rules the cold, windy air for the next hour.

Just a couple of years ago, 90.7 was occupied by Qalam FM, which broadcasted songs, religious talkshows and social programmes that focused on topics ranging from agriculture and health to elections and good governance. Then IS blew up the radio station and took over the frequency.

The broadcast is part of an IS propaganda assault that has accompanied its efforts over the past couple of years to spread from the Middle East into South and Central Asia. So far, IS has only been able to take over a relatively small area of Nangarhar Province, as it battles the Taliban for territory and fights off assaults from Afghan and American forces.

But the militant group's influence stretches much further afield, in part due to its extensive use of various media. Radio is especially important, as it is by far the most important medium in Afghanistan due to high illiteracy rates.

IS “has put far greater effort into its media activities than would normally be expected from a nascent group of its size”, said the Afghanistan Analysts Network in a report last month that examined its reach on social and traditional media, as well as the content. The militants are “already outmatching” the Taliban, noted AAN.

‘Baffled' by recruitment

Nangarhar residents told IRIN that they often tune in to the evening radio programme, but not to show support IS. Instead, they hope to learn what's happening on the battlefield and how close the fighting is. However, people have been won over, including some surprising recruits.

The first half of the nightly broadcast is mainly filled with bulletins about IS victories in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The second half is hosted by Firdoas Bahar, a former professor of Pashto literature, who fills his programme with rhetoric attacking the Taliban and the government. The entire hour is interspersed with jihadi music, messages from IS members in Syria and Iraq, and interviews with captives in Afghanistan who say they regret fighting IS.

Bahar, who joined IS recently along with nine members of his family, tells listeners that the militant group represents true Islam and peppers his presentation with quotes from the Quran. His decision to join IS came as a surprise to his friends and professors at Kabul University, where he was pursuing a graduate degree.

“He was very smart and there was hardly any reason to suspect him,” one of his professors told IRIN on condition of anonymity. “I suspect he was recruited by a secret cell in Kabul University.”

Another IS recruitment that has baffled many people is that of Sultan Aziz Azam, a journalist and poet who was popular in Jalalabad, Nangarhar's provincial capital. “Now, he calls and threatens his former friends about IS beheading reporters,” said a local journalist, who asked to remain anonymous.

Ahmad Ali Hazrat, chief of Nangarhar's provincial council, pointed to a mix of motivations for people to join IS. They include hatred of the Taliban, which may have killed their friends and relatives, as well as poverty and unemployment.

SEE: Islamic State ramps up recruitment in Pakistan

In addition to radio, IS makes extensive use of social media, said a senior security official on condition of anonymity. “Most of the recruitments take place via WhatsApp, Facebook, and online,” he said. “Mostly, they target younger Afghans on university campuses and in the cities.”

Abdul Rahman, 23, was a shopkeeper in Jalalabad before joining IS for a year. He said he started watching videos of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which his friend sent via Facebook. One day, the friend arrived at the shop with a young mullah. They went for a walk and the mullah spoke about the sufferings of Muslims in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and other parts of the world, and the dream of an Islamic empire.

In early 2015, Rahman joined IS at its Afghan headquarters, in Nangarhar's Achin District, where he met foreign fighters as well as locals. He told IRIN that he loved the idea of everyone living together, and that the commander would always make sure that everyone had enough to eat.

“It was a happy family,” he said.

In the following months, Rahman learnt to use guns and started working with a team that used Facebook, Viber, and WhatsApp to recruit people. He enjoyed it, but missed his wife and children – a feeling that intensified when his family managed to send him a message.

One day, Rahman saw IS fighters brutally kill one of their own after accusing the man of being a government spy. It shook him up, and he defected after telling his commander he was going to meet someone he'd recruited at Nangarhar University.

“I came straight to my home and told my father everything,” said Rahman, who quickly left Jalalabad with his family so that IS couldn't track him down.

But Rahman is an exception. Most people who join IS stick with them, and wouldn't dare to run away even if they wished to.

Security officials told IRIN that they are struggling to counter IS propaganda on social media, and that they have twice destroyed the militants' pirate radio station.

“But it is a mobile radio station, on the move, working from some house or a room,” said a different senior security officer, who also requested anonymity.

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(TOP PHOTO: Samar Khel camp, near Jalalabad, where Afghans displaced by war have taken shelter. CREDIT: Bilal Sarwary/IRIN)

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Islamic State ramps up recruitment in Pakistan

jared — 2017-01-11T11:08:52Z

Obaid Khan was planning to join Pakistan's public school system as a teacher after finishing his undergraduate degree in May this year. Instead, he dropped out of university to join the so-called Islamic State, and he's now fighting in Afghanistan.

Obaid's life-plan began to change when a man identifying himself as Qari Abid contacted him via Facebook last August. As their correspondence deepened, Khan became more and more convinced that he needed to join the “jihad against infidels”, according to his elder brother, Hanifullah, whom Abid attempted to recruit as well.

“He used to get promotional Islamic State material and sermons about jihad every second day in his Facebook inbox,” said Hanifullah about his brother.

Then, at the end of October, Obaid suddenly left the family home in Bajaur Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the frontier with Afghanistan. Last month, he called Hanifullah and told him he had finished training with IS and was now fighting in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, where Afghan government and US forces have been battling the militants.

“He was a religious-minded person, but we never thought he would one day join a militant group like the IS,” said Hanifullah in a telephone interview.

Military assaults have squeezed IS out of some of the territory it took control of in Iraq and Syria, and the group has recently expanded its presence in South Asia.

In January 2015, IS declared its intention to establish “Khorasan”, in reference to a historical region that once covered much of modern day Afghanistan as well as parts of Iran and Central Asia. Nangarhar remains its main base of operations, but its tentacles extend across the border into Pakistan too.

SEE: Afghanistan now a ‘continual emergency', as war drives record numbers from their homes

Officially, Pakistan's government says that IS, or Daesh as it is referred to here, is not active in the country. But a senior security official has told IRIN that the group represents a serious threat to the country as it coordinates with other militant groups, and ramps up recruitment using social media. The official and Pakistani relatives of IS fighters have shared information on how the recruitment process works.

Government denials

“There is no organised presence, I repeat, no organised presence of Daesh in Pakistan,” Mohammed Nafees Zakaria, a foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters on 15 December. “The pronouncement of one or two random individuals of having affiliation to Daesh does not form the basis for claiming organised presence for this entity in Pakistan.”

However, a senior counter-terrorism official told IRIN that 14 Pakistanis joined IS in October alone, while hundreds more are also believed to be in touch with the recruiters through social media.

“The IS recruiters contact young, educated Pakistani men and women through Facebook, telegram, and other social media platforms and convince them to join the IS in Syria and Afghanistan,” said the official, who requested his name be withheld due to the sensitive nature of the subject.

He said he believed the presence of IS could pose a more dangerous threat to Pakistan than the Taliban and other militants, because “it has penetrated in urban educated youth through social media and has enough resources too to lure them to Syria and Afghanistan in the name of jihad”.

The resources include cash payments to families of new recruits, according to the official as well as the brother of another young Pakistani man who has joined IS and is now in Afghanistan for training.

The man told IRIN that his family is receiving a monthly stipend of 30,000 rupees ($286) and that leading IS figures in the region had also promised to sponsor the education of his brother's three children.

“My brother was inducted into the IS force through multiple interviews on Facebook,” said the man on condition of anonymity. “We don't know exact identity of the recruiters.”

Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said his organisation has no clear-cut policy to counter the presence of IS on internet and its recruitment of Pakistanis through social media.

“The government has been continuously denying the presence of IS in Pakistan,” he said. “We start monitoring activities of any militant group on the internet only after we receive instructions from relevant government departments."

Asia expansion?

As recently as 21 December, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said during a visit to Bosnia that IS is not active in Pakistan, and that the country has destroyed sanctuaries and safe havens of al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Despite such public statements, the militant group has carried out attacks in Pakistan, according to the counter-terrorism official, and IS itself.

The IS claimed responsibility for a May 2015 attack on a bus in Karachi that killed 47 people. It also claimed responsibility for the attack on a hospital in Quetta last August that killed 72 people, as well as an attack on the Quetta Police College in October, which killed 59 officers.

The counter-terrorism official said IS has linked up with other militant groups that have a more established presence in Pakistan and have better capabilities on the ground.

“The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried out these attacks in Pakistan under the banner of the Islamic State,” said the official. “IS has effectively infused its ideology in these groups through its promotional material of jihad.”

He said Pakistan military operations have forced many Islamist fighters across the border into Afghanistan, particularly those with IMU and the Tehreek-e-Taliban militant group, but the porous border allows them to cross back into Pakistan to plan and carry out operations.

“The IMU fighters have also had their presence in Pakistan's Balochistan province and some tribal areas of the country as they have married local girls and developed relationship with local warlords,” the counter-terrorism official added.

For now, the IS presence in Asia is focused mainly on the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there are signs that the groups has plans to expand throughout the region.

SEE: How a failed peace deal could boost Islamist militancy in the southern Philipines

The group took responsibility for an attack on a café in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in July where 20 hostages were killed. Indonesian police said an IS militant believed to be in Syria ordered an attack in the capital, Jakarta, one year ago that killed two people. Militant groups in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao have also publicly pledged allegiance to IS.

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(TOP PHOTO: Philippines soldiers with bomb-making material and IS propaganda captured from a militant group in Mindanao. CREDIT: Jared Ferrie/IRIN)

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UPDATED: Afghanistan now a ‘continual emergency', as war drives record numbers from their homes

jared — 2017-01-10T09:46:34Z

Bibi Mariam was milking her cow when it suddenly let out a wild howl and collapsed in a pool of blood.

The so-called Islamic State and the Taliban were fighting near her village in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. The stray bullet that killed her cow finally convinced Mariam to flee – joining a record number of Afghans displaced by conflict.

“It could have hit me or any of my children,” Mariam said at her family's new makeshift home, a small tent in a displacement camp near the provincial capital of Jalalabad.

Mariam is one of more than 623,345 internally displaced persons who fled conflict in Afghanistan in 2016 – an unprecedented amount, according to the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA.

“The staggering numbers also confirm a worrying trend: Afghanistan is experiencing significant, year-on-year increases in the number of families driven from their homes,” said Danielle Moylan, a spokeswoman from OCHA. “The numbers of IDPs in 2016 are three-fold that recorded in 2014, and six times more than recorded in 2012.”

Based on current trends, the UN predicts that in 2017 at least 450,000 more people will join those already internally displaced. On top of that, Afghanistan struggles to support many of the 616,620 people pushed back from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan last year. Pakistan has warned that it will begin forcibly deporting Afghans who have not left voluntarily by March, and the UN expects about a million more, many of whom have no homes to return to.

“The constant stream of displaced families means that a state of continual emergency has become the norm in Afghanistan,” said Moylan.

SEE: Afghanistan's deepening migration crisis, in-depth page

‘No future'

Many of those displaced are leaving their homes for the first time, and they are forced to live in temporary camps where they struggle for survival.

Mariam had never left her remote valley in Pachir Aw Agam District, where she also raised five children with the help of her husband, until he was killed after being caught in crossfire between police and IS fighters. Over the past six months it had become increasingly dangerous as IS made inroads into the area. The militants began raiding homes as well as fighting with the Taliban over territory.

Mariam and her children left behind the family farm and livestock; now they survive on the meagre earnings her sons make selling the cookies she bakes in a wood oven. The family is hungry most of the time and conditions are poor. They sleep on the ground on tarpaulins, and there is no health clinic or school in the camp.

“In Jalalabad, I don't see any future for my daughters or sons,” said Mariam, sobbing as she assessed the family's predicament. “Their childhood is destroyed.”

Bilal Sarwary/IRIN

Amir Jan with his children by their tent in Samar Khel, a camp outside Jalalabad where people displaced by war have taken shelter

Rise of IS

The US nation-building exercise in Afghanistan is now a shambles, 16 years after it led the invasion that overthrew the Taliban. The US withdrew almost all of its troops at the end of 2014, and the Afghan National Army was meant to take over security. But government forces have struggled, and lost control of many districts. *The government controlled only 63 percent of its districts by August 2016, compared to 72 percent just nine months earlier, the office of the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report Wednesday.

Most territory lost to the government is under Taliban control. But by early 2015, IS had moved into eastern Afghanistan and announced its intention to carve out an area of control called “Khorasan”, in reference to a historical region that once covered much of modern day Afghanistan as well as parts of Iran and Central Asia.

The group, which is known as Daesh in Afghanistan, has concentrated its activities in eastern Afghanistan, especially Nangarhar, on the frontier with Pakistan. In some areas, local militias have sprung up to fight IS, while others have joined the Taliban or government forces. But IS has also extended its deadly reach throughout the country.

In July, two suicide bombers struck a peaceful protest of ethnic Hazara Shia Muslims in the capital, Kabul, killing 80 people. The IS claimed responsibility for that attack as well as the November bombing of a Shia mosque in Kabul, which killed at least 40 people.

The fight against IS takes place primarily in three districts in Nangarhar Province, according to Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor. He said IS started fighting in Achin in 2015 and entered Pachir Aw Agam and Chaprihar districts in 2016.

“We carry out air attacks and ground operations against them. We also support local resistance against them and [we support the] ALP,” he said, referring to the Afghan Local Police, a government-backed force recruited from local communities to fight against insurgents.

Amir Jan, an elder from Achin, said his son joined a local uprising against IS and was killed in battle. Members of IS then made it clear to the community that if they did not back the group, they were not welcome to stay.

“One morning, Daesh fighters arrived on my doorstep and told me to leave, and when I tried to bring some stuff, they beat me up,” he said in an interview outside his family's tent in Samar Khel camp, outside Jalalabad. “I left with nothing.”

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*(This story has been updated with information from a report by the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.)

(TOP PHOTO: Samar Khel camp, near Jalalabad, where Afghans displaced by war have taken shelter CREDIT: Bilal Sarwary/IRIN)

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کابل پرس

Pushed out of Pakistan into war-torn Afghanistan, refugees are told to be ‘patient'

Table of contents

Little support

Harassment again

UN under fire even as Pakistan lifts Afghan deportation order

Table of contents

Freedom to choose?

Backroom talks

Radio wars: Islamic State takes over the Afghan airwaves

Table of contents

‘Baffled' by recruitment

Islamic State ramps up recruitment in Pakistan

Table of contents

Government denials

Asia expansion?

UPDATED: Afghanistan now a ‘continual emergency', as war drives record numbers from their homes

کابل پرس

Pushed out of Pakistan into war-torn Afghanistan, refugees are told to be ‘patient'

Table of contents

Little support

Harassment again

UN under fire even as Pakistan lifts Afghan deportation order

Table of contents

Freedom to choose?

Backroom talks

Radio wars: Islamic State takes over the Afghan airwaves

Table of contents

‘Baffled' by recruitment

Social networks

Islamic State ramps up recruitment in Pakistan

Table of contents

Government denials

Asia expansion?

UPDATED: Afghanistan now a ‘continual emergency', as war drives record numbers from their homes