Afghanistan itself is now taking in the most Afghan migrants

SAMARKHEL, Afghanistan — There is one country in the world that is now taking in more Afghan migrants than all the countries in Europe and South Asia put together this year.

That would be Afghanistan itself.

By the end of the year, aid officials here expect some 1.5 million migrants to return to Afghanistan — many of them forcibly, and including some officially registered as refugees.

Some will come from Europe, which has recently signed a deal with Afghanistan to return tens of thousands of migrants who were not granted asylum.

Far more are being forced back by Iran and, particularly, Pakistan, where the United Nations says there are 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees and an additional 700,000 undocumented Afghans.

Many Afghans report that concerted harassment and discrimination by the Pakistani authorities have become too much to bear.

Pakistan has flatly given undocumented Afghans a Nov. 15 deadline to obtain legal documents like passports and visas — a near impossibility for most — or face arrest and deportation, which could lead to even greater numbers leaving Pakistan in the coming weeks.

The last straw for Ghulamullah, a father of 10 who had sons in Pakistani schools and one married to a Pakistani woman, was when a soldier entered his house with a dog.

“I came to Pakistan to save my honor and my religion,” he said, “but I see there is no more honor in Pakistan. The Pakistani Army gave me 15 days to leave.” He has now settled in a camp near Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan.

Official or unofficial, many of the Afghans have lived abroad for decades, and they are now returning to a country where the war is at its most traumatic since 2001. And as they come back, they are redrawing the demographic map of a region that has long been defined by its displaced population and where cities are already straining to deal with rapidly expanding tent camps and shanty towns.

“With all these returns from Pakistan and Iran as well, and looming returns from Europe, it’s a perfect recipe for a perfect storm because that puts a strain on the capacity of the government to respond,” said Laurence Hart, head of the International Organization for Migration office in Kabul.

Aid groups do not have budgets to care for many of the new arrivals, who are expected in many cases to end up swelling the ranks of the internally displaced — people who have lived often for years in squalid conditions in camps around cities.

“It’s a poverty competition here now,” Hart said. “Existing IDPs are increasingly vulnerable because of new arrivals.” IDP stands for internally displaced people.

Within Afghanistan, the worsening war with the Taliban has sent record numbers of people fleeing their homes in conflict areas.

Just in the past two months, according to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, 600,000 people have been displaced from their homes by conflict, swelling the ranks of the 1.2 million internal refugees or displaced people in Afghanistan from previous years to as much as 1.8 million.

That could mean more than three million internal or returning refugees inside the country, more than Afghanistan has ever before experienced.

Many of them will have nowhere to go, pitching up at existing camps, making new settlements, and crowding into already overcrowded villages — since few of the returnees can go back to their original homes, often in war-torn areas that they left decades ago.

Add to that mix, programs have quietly ramped up in recent months to return Afghans from Europe who are judged ineligible for asylum there.

Norway this year has sent back 442 Afghans, more than half of them forcibly, while Germany has returned 2,900 Afghans, nearly all voluntarily.

Early in October, the European Union signed an agreement with Afghanistan to return Afghans whose asylum appeals are rejected — most likely resulting in tens of thousands of repatriations.

Known as the Joint Way Forward declaration, which critics say Europe made a condition of continued development assistance to Afghanistan, it even provides for building a dedicated airport terminal in Kabul to handle the expected repatriations.

Many of those returning are people who have spent many years and even decades in their host countries, including many cases of people born there who are now adults with children of their own.

“I don’t remember a time this difficult,” said Maya Ameratunga, the Afghanistan director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. She had previously worked in Pakistan. “Now we’re dealing with the population who left Afghanistan in the 1980s and don’t know this country.”