Thousands are stranded near the neighboring border in Afghanistan

No airports in Afghanistan are currently open, although Qatar has begun efforts to restore flight operations in Kabul. This means that some at-risk Afghans who managed to get off the ground were smuggled in or used forged documents.

A senior State Department official said the US estimates that most Afghan interpreters and others applying for visas to flee the country after August’s international evacuation effort took more than 120,000 people out of Kabul. was left behind.

On Thursday in Kabul, the Taliban began preparations for the official opening of their government, which is expected in the coming days. According to footage on social media, thousands of white flags of the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban are being made. In the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, the only part of the country not under Taliban control, fighting continued between the Taliban and resistance militias.

In the previous stages of Afghanistan’s more than four decades of wars, starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, Pakistan took in millions of refugees, many of whom never left. Now she is not ready to accept any more. The other major sanctuary, Iran, is not letting them enter either, and neither are the Central Asian states.

According to the United Nations, more than half a million Afghans were displaced from their homes this year in fighting between the Taliban and the former Afghan government. The Taliban completed their military takeover by entering Kabul on 15 August, after a power victory over the rest of the country.

The United Nations this week called on neighboring states to open their borders and provide more resettlement places for Afghans to countries outside the region. It’s a hard sell, especially in Europe, where anti-immigrant sentiment has become a major political issue in the wake of the 2015 influx of Syrian refugees.

European interior ministers meeting this week said they did not want to see large-scale illegal migration and would support Afghanistan’s neighbors “to ensure that people in need, mainly in the region, have adequate protection.” However, the European Union and some member states said they were ready to welcome some at-risk Afghans as part of an international resettlement programme.

The US State Department said that people wishing to apply for refugee status should first move out of Afghanistan, adding, “We believe it is important for Afghans to obtain a third country visa or find a way to enter a third country.” It can be difficult. Country.” There is a separate program for “special immigrant visas” for interpreters and others working closely with the US, and its application processes are still being worked out after the embassy in Kabul is closed.

Britain has said it will offer asylum to 20,000 Afghans over the next five years, in addition to those airlifted last month.

“I had a legal life in Kabul for the last 20 years. Then I was forced to cross the border illegally,” said one man who worked for contractors for the US government, the United Nations and directly the Afghan government, making him a potential target for the Taliban. I don’t know what will come next for me.”

The man, who belongs to the Hazara ethnic and religious minority that was persecuted during the Taliban’s last period in power in the 1990s, hid in Kabul for a week after the group entered the capital. Finding the devastation at Kabul airport too alarming, and receiving no response from Western embassies, including the US and Canadian missions, he took a bus south to Kandahar with his wife and three children, where he found a smuggler , which captured the family. Pakistan.

The Taliban say they will allow Afghans with valid passports and visas to leave the country. Till now the country’s passport offices are closed. Embassies of all Western countries and India have closed and their diplomats have left the country.

Aid workers say a large number of Afghans may soon have to try to flee, as the country’s economic slowdown following the Taliban takeover, exhausting food, fuel and cash.

“When the airlift and the media frenzy is over, the overwhelming majority of Afghans, about 39 million, will remain inside Afghanistan. They need us,” Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said this week. “

The UNHCR says there has not been a significant increase in the number of people crossing the Pakistani or Iranian border from Afghanistan in the past few weeks. It warns that Iran and Pakistan, home to nearly 90% of the last registered Afghan refugees, will struggle financially to deal with more.

Pakistan already hosts 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, although they believe the true number is around 3 million.

In the second half of August the country helped evacuate more than 9,000 Afghans and foreigners from more than 20 countries, mostly by air, but almost all of them made easy transit. Pakistan says it is working to help bring stability to Afghanistan, to prevent refugee migration.

“We are the country with the largest number of Afghan refugees right now. “It is very clear that we would not like to take any more,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Asim Ahmed said.

Pakistan’s nearest crossing point from the Afghan capital, east towards Torkham, is closed to Afghans, except in exceptional cases such as medical emergencies. The second main crossing point south of Kabul at Chaman is open, but only to those who have documents to show that they live close to the border and can therefore benefit from a long-standing special arrangement for border areas.

Locals estimate that several thousand Afghans have been smuggled into Chaman over the past few weeks, paying up to $90 per person. Afghans are also paying hundreds of dollars to reach across the border within Afghanistan, and a taxi ride from the border to the nearest major Pakistani city, Quetta, has increased fares by as much as 10 times normal.

Traveling Afghans said that entering Pakistan through Chaman was an easier option than moving to other countries. Still, some people lined up at the border for two days amid crowds and were turned back even after paying to the smugglers.

Pakistan says no new refugees have arrived in recent weeks. The UNHCR says some Afghans in Pakistan have approached for asylum, but could not provide numbers. Unofficial residents in Pakistan say they seek help from the US and other countries to move forward.

Entering Iran is an even more difficult option, despite Tehran’s announcement that it will set up camps along the border. According to the UNHCR, only people with visas or other travel documents can cross.

A 23-year-old engineering student at Kabul University said he and his friends paid a smuggler $200 to enter Iran from the nearby Afghan province of Nimroz. They were taken to the border, where hundreds of people were crossing. They ran with Iranian guards firing in the air and begged to stop, but they kept on meeting the smugglers on the other side. For the next 24 hours, he had nothing to eat or drink. It took six days to reach Tehran, where they are constantly on the lookout for officials looking for illegal arrivals.

“I was a good student at Kabul University with good dreams. Now, I am an Afghan laborer in Tehran and cannot go out, cannot study, cannot be counted as a real human being,” he said. “I am heartbroken.”