Why are Afghan refugees being forced back to a worsening war?

The UN planned to provide assistance to about 250,000 displaced people in Afghanistan this year. Now it’s looking at a million — far more than the government and aid agencies are able to handle.

There are four reasons for the spike: Pakistan has been pushing Afghans back over the border, and so has Iran. Far more people than expected have been displaced by war inside the country this year. Despite the worsening conflict, the European Union has made a deal that could see tens of thousands of Afghans who were denied asylum sent home.

As winter approaches, the dire situation threatens to become a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Already, some internally displaced people are in remote and insecure areas, beyond reach of aid agencies. And the Norwegian Refugee Council has documented malnutrition amongst returnees from Pakistan, some of whom are living in tents.

In September, the UN launched an emergency appeal for $152 million to help the rapidly increasing number of “people on the move”. Donors have yet to commit funds.

Afghanistan has been in a state of conflict since the 1970s and remains so today. Still, Pakistan has said it wants all Afghan refugees to go, and the authorities have been harassing them. To date this year, almost 370,000 have returned, according to the UN emergency aid coordination body, OCHA.

Afghans are also facing harassment in Iran, including theft and beatings, while others have become drug addicts as they were paid by their employers in heroin, according to the International Organization for Migration. More than 250,000 people have crossed the border this year, “but most are going back to abject poverty, joblessness and the horrors of war”.

Meanwhile, the conflict is getting measurably worse.

So far this year, 382,371 people have fled their homes due to fighting, according to OCHA. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said on 19 October that 8,397 civilians were killed or injured from January to September this year, about the same number for the first nine months of last year. In total, 2015 saw 11,002 civilian casualties, including 3,545 deaths — a record since UNAMA began counting in 2007, when 1,523 civilians were killed.

Despite those statistics, the European countries are shifting away from considering Afghans refugees. After a period of relative security (and relative is a very relative term in Afghanistan), the war started heating up over the past few years. As the chart below indicates, European countries correspondingly granted more Afghans asylum. Rejection rates dropped from 48 per cent in 2013 to 35 per cent in 2014. In 2013, UNAMA recorded 8,615 civilian casualties; the number jumped to 10,548 the following year.

As security deteriorated, Afghans began leaving the country in droves. By October last year, more were fleeing than at any time since the Taliban, and Afghans made up a quarter of asylum seekers in Europe. Unfortunately for them, Syrians were fleeing war in their country in even greater numbers and comprised the largest group of asylum seekers.

There has been a growing perception among Europeans that they are being overwhelmed by refugees, and governments have tried hard to pump the brakes. During the first three quarters of 2016 – when casualties were roughly the same as the record-setting numbers last year – the rejection rate of Afghan asylum seekers has risen to 45 per cent, on a much greater volume of applications.

The writer is IRIN’s Asia Editor