KANDAHAR (SW) – Mirajan, a 27-year-old resident of Panjwai district of Kandahar province has been living in Kandahar city for the past seven years now.
As the head of his family, Mirajan was encouraged by a friend to migrate irregularly last year in search of a comfortable life. He sold his pomegranate garden, which he inherited from his father, just for 245,000 Pakistani rupees and gave all the money to smugglers.
At the start of his journey, Mirajan lef for Herat one day after handing over his money to the smugglers without informing anyone.
One summer morning, Mirajan secretly traveled to Zahedan with his friends. Mirajan recalled: “At three o’clock in the morning, we entered the city of Zahedan after enduring all the difficulties of the treacherous route. The smugglers handed me and my companions over to the Baluch tribe men. They never fed us food or water behaved very roughly. “If anyone complained, they would be insulted and beaten”, he said.
“We spent the night in a remote plain and the next night we were handed over to another group of smugglers,” he said. According to Mirajan, he and his companions arrived in Turkey at the Greek border after three months of suffering.
When he remembers the bitter memories of irregular migration, he said, his body suddenly shivers.
Mirajan said that after a month of waiting at the Turkish-Iranian border, he spent a month and a half as a prisoner in a Turkish camp and suffered a lot. Mirajan said he and his companions starved several times and barely survived.
“I call on the youth of my country to work in their own country; never think about irregularly moving to another country. I have endured many hardships. Wherever you go, this (Afghanistan) is your country; “But, going to foreign countries in an irregular way is playing with your life.”
Mirajan returned from Turkey empty-handed and has been bedridden for six months now. Irregular migration has disrupted life, he said.
Kher Mohammad Akmal, a university professor, said in this connection that most young Afghans leave the country due to unemployment and poverty and end up trapped by smugglers.
According to him, the government needs to provide employment opportunities for young people to prevent irregular migration from the country.
Dost Mohammad Nayab, the head of Kandahar’s migrants and returnees department, said the government has launched public awareness programs to reduce irregular migration. According to the head of migrants and returnees department, said this year alone, some 883 migrated families returned to Kandahar via the Spinboldak route.
Millions of Afghan refugees now live in misery in Iran, Pakistan and other countries, according to the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations.
ENDS
