Afghan refugees hope peace talks will finally take them ‘home’

KARACHI: With talks to end decades of armed conflict in Afghanistan currently underway in Doha, refugees at the New Saranan camp in Pakistan’s Balochistan province gathered on Sunday to discuss the repatriation process for nearly 5,000 displaced Afghan families.

Intra-Afghan talks between President Ashraf Ghani’s government and the Taliban began on Saturday and are expected to yield a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing arrangement.

“If the talks are successful, we will not care if it’s day or night, we will just embark on our journey,” Muhammad Agha Ishaqzai, an Afghan elder who left his home in Sar Pul province more than 30 years ago, told Arab News. “We are thirsty for our homeland like a person who has fasted during all hot summer days, waiting for a glass of water.”

The talks have raised hopes among Afghans scattered around the world including the 1.4 million who are registered as refugees in Pakistan, most of whom live in camps and urban centers of provinces bordering Afghanistan.

“We are watching the news and hope that Afghans will see peace after 40 years,” Zahir Pashtun, a youth activist who attended the Sunday meeting, told Arab News. “We Afghans have seen UN-brokered talks between the mujahideen and Najibullah,” he said, referring to the president of Afghanistan who held office from 1987 to 1992, shortly after which the mujahideen took over Kabul following the Afghan-Soviet war from 1979 to 1989.

He added that while all the talks so far, including those between the mujahideen and Taliban, had failed, Afghans were still hopeful.

At least three things should happen in order for Afghans to be repatriated, Pahstun said. “There should be an inclusive Afghan government, having representation of all ethnicities and sects. Ethnic divides should be removed, and lands and properties that refugees had left behind should be recovered so that they may start a new life.”

For many, however, returning home will not be easy.

“This has been the main agenda of our discussions now, and when I ask people if they will return, the majority say they have no reason to go back, even if the talks succeed,” Syed Mustafa, a teacher and a community elder in the refugee-dominated Al-Asif area of Karachi, told Arab News. 

“A majority of over 60,000 refugees living in Sindh province were born and raised here. When they go back to the land of their parents, they would feel like in a strangers’ land. Those who had gone there in the recent past have come back.”

“I’m Afghan, but my wife and children all were born here, and for them, Pakistan is home,” Naemullah Rahimi, a vendor in Al-Asif, told Arab News.

Muneeba Hayatullah, an Afghan widow living in Karachi’s Metroville area whose daughter recently married, said the peace talks made her happy regardless of what the future brought for her.

“I want to see a peaceful Afghanistan, not one which is a graveyard,” she said. “But I don’t know if I will go back.”