The unprecedented trend of migrant returns—particularly from Iran and Pakistan—amid regional tensions and Afghanistan’s economic hardships is pushing the country toward a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warns that Afghanistan cannot, on its own, withstand the simultaneous pressures of large-scale return migration, poverty, and climate change.
Nasir Keshawarz, a reporter for Salam Watandar, spoke with Arafat Jamal, UNHCR Representative in Afghanistan, about these challenges. The full interview is presented below.
Mr. Arafat Jamal, Country Representative of UNHCR in Afghanistan, welcome to the Salam Watandar.
Thank you so much, Mr. Keshawarz. It’s a pleasure to be with you. And As-salāmu ʿalaykum, Salam Watandar.
The first question I want to ask is, Afghanistan is currently facing the return of millions of migrants, internal displacement, economic hardship, and consequences of climate change. If you want to identify a single humanitarian crisis as the most urgent challenge facing the people of Afghanistan today, what would it be?
I would like to say that I’ve been in Afghanistan now for two years. It is my second time in Afghanistan. I started my career in Herat in 1996. And it is a beautiful country. It is a country of so much strength. And there are positive aspects, but it is also a country that is facing deep trouble.
I have been throughout Afghanistan these last two years, including at all the border points between Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan.
What I would say is that the issue of returnees to Afghanistan is an issue that is overlapping on many other crises. Six million returnees since September 2023 is 15% of the population. This is a massive demographic shock and it comes to a country where the people are ready to receive them, but they are not equipped.
In other words, this is a country which is suffering from economic downturn. It has suffered last year from drought. It has had earthquakes, and now, of course, we have two wars on the borders with Pakistan and inside Iran.
So this would be a challenge for any country to receive 15% of its population, but when you consider all these other things, I think that the return is just one part of a bigger picture.
Mr. Jamal, your organization recently held a major coordination meeting in Kabul with national and international partners. What was the biggest disagreement or operational challenge discussed during the coordination meeting?
Yes, I think that on the positive side, the international community continues to be interested in Afghanistan, whether it is the Western countries, the Gulf countries, or the Asian countries. There is an interest in Afghanistan. Now, the problem is how do we translate this interest into real support for Afghanistan?
Here the problem is that the different countries have slightly different ways of approaching things. There are those who go so far as to recognize the authorities over here, and there are others who don’t want to deal with them.
For us as the United Nations, and especially as UNHCR, we are a non-political humanitarian actor. What we believe is that assistance is needed in order to support the people of Afghanistan and to stabilize this country. It should not be politicized.
But, Mr. Jamal, diplomatic advocacy takes time, and vulnerable returnees sleeping without shelter cannot wait for a donor meeting. Can you tell us what is your immediate emergency plan right now for those who are returning after two years?
You’re absolutely right. We cannot wait for these discussions to settle. And this is one of the strengths of UNHCR, is that we are able to respond immediately. We receive money from our headquarters that enables us to respond. At the moment, there are three areas of response.
One is at the borders between Pakistan and Iran. Thousands continue to come. This year, 700,000 have come at both borders. What we do in collaboration with other UN agencies, including IOM, UNICEF, and others, is to first respond to the shock, to provide people with cash so that they can meet their basic needs, because these people have been robbed of their belongings often in both countries.
Then, I think the longer-term assistance is what happens inside the country, the jobs, the housing, the education, etc.
And then the third element, which is perhaps the most important, is actually getting the parties together, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, to sit at the table and to work on a civilized, dignified solution for Afghan refugees.
Many returning families are settling in areas that struggle with unemployment, limited access to basic services, and environmental vulnerabilities. In your view, what makes a return truly sustainable rather than simply a temporary relocation?
I’ve been throughout this country and I’ve spoken to returnees everywhere, and they have many problems. But if there’s one problem that everybody talks about, it is how they will feed their family? They need a job. This is the most important thing. And I think that, how do we make this sustainable?
And we’ve tried many things. We, UNHCR, one of our programs is to give a grant to small businesses. We give $1,000 to people to start, to build a greenhouse, to open up a little shop, to do some embroidery or something. This is one way of doing it. More recently, we signed an agreement with the Aga Khan, the FMFB Bank, where we have guaranteed loans, microcredit loans, worth $5 million over three years. I think this will be a very good step.
Another type of thing that we do is large-scale programs targeting, in particular, Afghan women. Recently, I inaugurated together with the governor of Herat a carpet weaving center which employs 400 people. And of these 400 people, 328 are women.
They are working in full respect for the customs and religion of Afghanistan, but they are working to drive the economy and to bring money home to their families and their communities.
You mentioned the $1,000 assistance. Is this cash support provided to all returnees, or is it only to specific groups of people?
I wish it could be, but it is a limited budget. But what we do is we select from the returnees those who present a good proposal for a business and who need the cash, and we have provided it. And I’ve seen some success.
For example, in Lagman, there’s a man who wanted to grow cucumbers. He needed a greenhouse. When we visited him after one year, his cucumbers were growing double, triple, and he was employing five people.
I have seen women working from home who one woman in Nimroz province, while I was talking to her, her WhatsApp kept going. She was receiving orders for wedding dresses. So some of these things are very successful.
Mr. Jamal, up to a few years ago, migration was mostly associated with war and insecurity in Afghanistan, but today the drought, floods, and environmental destruction have also become main reasons for displacement. From your perspective, to what extent is climate change affecting migration pattern in Afghanistan?
I think what has happened in Afghanistan is we’ve had 47 years of people leaving the country. And at certain periods, they’ve left largely because of violent conflict and fear of their life. Today, thanks to God, Afghanistan is more peaceful than it has been before. So the immediate violence is not there. However, the structural issues that have caused people to flee remain.
So there’s the economy, the climatic conditions, lack of opportunities, and educational opportunities. All of these together lead to a situation of hopelessness.
Afghans do not want to leave Afghanistan. Most people I have met are very patriotic, very attached to their country. It is not an easy choice to make, but when all of these factors combine, including the climate, as you say, I see desperate people. And mostly it’s the men in their 20s and 30s, the ones that the families are looking to. They are really desperate and they have to provide for their families, sisters, brothers, and their parents. And I think these are the people who are most likely to leave again.
Some critics argue that humanitarian aid, while essential, is not a sustainable solution on its own. How does UNHCR balance responding to immediate needs with developing long-term solutions for local communities?
One of my former bosses, the former High Commissioner «Sadako Ogata», used to say ‘there are no humanitarian solutions to political problems’. In other words, humanitarianism is just a response, but the solution has to lie in the political. And this is why I was talking about needing to bring the parties to the table, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, also other countries, European countries, the United States, etc. We need to come together to have a conference and to start to rebuild this beautiful country. Humanitarianism will never be a long-term solution, no.
If climate change is driving migration, are you in any package adjusting to focus on climate resilience or are you still distributing traditional assistance?
We are doing our best. It’s a very interesting question and you are more an expert on all of this. But I think what we need to do is how do we adapt to the changing climate. I remember when I was here in the 90s in Herat, there was the system of the Kariz, and it was a good system. People could always receive the water and people were able to manage, the farmers amongst themselves managed the water system.
Now, when I come back some many years later, I see that the system has broken down. Some farmers are using much more water than they should. Others are digging deeper than expected and we need a new solution.
We need to rebuild trust amongst the community and also to use new technologies to both extract the water in a more efficient way and to save it when we use it. That’s very important, but unfortunately we don’t have climate change addressing Afghanistan.
Returnees can only rebuild their lives if host communities also have the capacity to accept them. As you also have traveled to the different provinces. In your opinion, what is the greatest pressure on these communities and how can we prevent these pressures from turning into social tensions?
I think the sense of honor and hospitality amongst Afghans is one of the strongest in the world. An Afghan will never say that they don’t want to host their relative, even if they never met the relative. All of the world knows Afghans for hospitality. All of the world knows this, and it’s very genuine, it’s very real.
But they won’t say it, but you know that they are suffering. And you can see that even this Afghan hospitality, sometimes people are getting exhausted. Sometimes people will say very quietly that, you know, my whole family now, we moved into one room because we had to give the other room to the returnees. So it’s tough. I have not seen it translate into tension yet. And certainly our programs and other UN programs, we focus on the whole community. So we look to places where large numbers of returnees have gone, but then we don’t discriminate. Both returnees and host communities are assisted equally.
What percentage of your current budget goes strictly to long-term livelihood projects compared to short-term cash distributions?
We are shifting quite dramatically. When I came two years ago, most of our budget was going into the cash. This was not a bad thing. At that point, we were able to actually give $2,000 per family when they came back. But with the budget reductions that you know well, in particular with the reduction in aid from the United States, but also from other countries, the cash assistance has gone down.
So I have decided that it is better to spend our money on economic projects. We provide a small assistance at the border now to help people buy food and a bus and so on. But really, the focus is on the carpet weaving type of center I mentioned, on the FMFB microcredit scheme, and other such schemes.
How do you combine this reduction from other donors?
Last year was a very painful year for us. We reduced our staff by 50%. We closed offices. We closed offices in Gardez, in Mazar. We almost closed. Bamiyan was closed. This was not an easy decision, but you know, I also believe that we have a responsibility to the world, to the people who fund us.
If the world felt that the money was not being spent well, then it is my role as an international public servant to show that we can spend the money better. It is no secret that aid money, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we can do better.
So although I wouldn’t say that we are doing the same as we were two years ago, even with the 50% reduction, I think we are improving the way we do our programs. We are trying to focus much more and look at the impact. It’s not enough by far, but this is how we are trying to cope, to be more efficient and to reach the people directly.
The world community has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to the people of Afghanistan; however, a significant gap remains between needs and available resources. Today, what is the most important message you would like to convey to states and international partners?
Just by closing your eyes or blocking your ears, Afghanistan will not go away. Afghanistan is there. Many of the countries have invested in Afghanistan over the decades in good ways and also in negative ways. Now is not the time to forget it. If these countries forget Afghanistan today, Afghanistan will not forget them. And this can be good and it can be bad.
But we know that throughout history, Afghanistan has been at the center of world trade. Afghanistan has been at the center of culture. So Afghanistan has also created turbulence as well. Which direction will it take? My appeal to the international community is pay attention to Afghanistan. Let us work in a structured way. Just because you have had painful experiences during war, during conflict in the past, doesn’t mean that it’s time to give up today. Now is the time to reconstruct. Now is the time to engage and to look out for the needs of the people, especially the women of Afghanistan.
I would like to know your message to Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, particularly Iran and Pakistan, which are deporting large numbers of Afghan refugees within a very short period of time.
This is a center, a great center of civilizations that have met throughout the millennia. Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, whatever the politics of today, the ties that bind the people are very deep, ties of religion, of language, of brotherhood. And I don’t think that it is wise to treat people from one country or the other in an undignified manner, because tomorrow it could be you.
So our appeal to Pakistan and to Iran and to other countries is, one, to treat Afghans with dignity. We understand that after 47 years, you are exhausted by hosting them. We don’t doubt that. But that does not mean that you should treat them in cruel and arbitrary manner.
More than half of the returnees are women and children who live outside of Afghanistan and have no social ties here. UN coordination have also warned about the risk of secondary displacement and social tensions within communities. What concrete practical steps do you and your team take to prevent local conflict between returnees and host communities?
So as I mentioned, we try on the one hand to give assistance equally to host and to returnees. But we can see that things are happening. For example, if you go to the big cities, recently I was in Herat, and you can see that there are many, many informal settlements on the side of the cities, that employment is tough for all people. So we need to be able to work with all sides.
We are trying to focus very much on employment for women through women-only spaces where they can engage in productive labor. Some of these have been quite successful. The Afghan girls need an opportunity in this country. And they had these opportunities in some of them in Iran and in Pakistan, which they don’t have here.
In a country where a large part of the population still receives information from local media and radio stations, how do you assess the role of the media in combating misinformation, reducing public concern, and strengthening social solidarity?
I think independent, impartial, and strong media is essential for any nation, whatever they are, and in whichever country. Believe me, this is in some ways better than in many other wealthier countries where we all know social media is going crazy. We need reliable, authoritative, and serious media. One of the things I really like about the Salam Watandar is also that you take the time to do surveys, to talk to people, and to receive complaints.
When physical and financial resources are limited, communication and information became lifesaving, as you mentioned, lifesaving tools. Is UNHCR ready to build a strong national media alliance with media, especially with Salam watandar, to help manage this crisis together?
Inshallah. Inshallah.
As we come to the end of our interview, what is your personal message to the people of Afghanistan, and especially to the returnees?
The first thing I would say to all of them is that we would like to express our solidarity to those who have been treated badly in their return. It pains me that human beings can treat other human beings in this manner. So my first message to them is our heart goes to you, and to the extent that we can help you at the border, Inshallah, we will do that.
Secondly is, we have to work together to rebuild. And just because you were a refugee does not mean that you do not have skills, that you cannot contribute to this country. I have myself seen returnees who are computer programmers, designers, farmers.
My message is also that you should not be unrealistic. We will not solve all problems, but we are there to help you to help yourself.
Thank you very much, Mr. Jamal, for your direct answers and your strategic vision to your commitment to transparency and to addressing the needs for the most vulnerable returnees highly valued by our listeners.
Thank you so much.
