Attacks, unemployment plague Afghanistan (4 MILLION still in exile)

[TexasLawyer]

So if Afghanistan is such a "success story," why are there still 4 million Afghan refugees unwilling or unable to return?


Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Attacks, unemployment plague Afghanistan

By PAUL GARWOOD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

HERAT, Afghanistan -- Promises of work and security made Ghulam Hazara return to this western Afghan city from Iran two years ago. Now a lack of both is driving him back. <snip> "But now I feel there is nothing here, and I have to go back to work in Iran," the 44-year-old Afghan said.

Afghan expectations for a better life soared after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden. But more than four years later, the impoverished nation cannot provide work for millions of its own, and Taliban-led violence hinders development and claims lives. That makes returning an unattractive option for the roughly 4 million registered Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan.

Just over 1,000 of the 900,000 Afghan refugees in Iran have returned this year, the U.N. says, a trickle compared to the 65,000 who came back in 2005. Some 375,000 returned in 2004 amid an Iranian campaign to limit health care and education for Afghans in a bid to get them to leave.

About 25,000 have returned this year from Pakistan, some of them forced out after Pakistani officials closed several refugee camps near the border. The closures sparked a U.N. protest. Some 3 million still live in Pakistani border regions, and in cities like Quetta and Peshawar. Half were born in Pakistan, but are unable to get citizenship.

<snip>

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Afghanistans_Displaced.html

[TexasLawyer]

1. But there's always poppy cultivation to fall back on...

Monday, 3 March, 2003, 13:08 GMT


Afghanistan retakes heroin crown


Production has surged since the end of the Taliban regime

Afghanistan retook its place as the world's leading producer of heroin last year, after US-led forces overthrew the Taleban which had banned cultivation of opium poppies.

The finding was made in a key drug report, distributed in Kabul on Sunday by the US State Department, which supports almost identical findings by the United Nations last week.

Low-grade heroin is refined in Afghanistan from opium, which is manufactured from the extract of poppies.

<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2814861.stm