<figure><img width="1200" height="574" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141144/636d00c99c7e80680e0a35f7jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>(From right) Mohamad Arif Ahamadi, his wife Safika and sons Siar and Zuber. Photos: MUKESH POKHREL</figcaption></figure>Ever since the most recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, they had been fleeing Kandahar and <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandus-little-kabul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kabul to Kathmandu</a> in the hope of third-country asylum.  They have been waiting in limbo for years, and have been watching the shocking images from Kabul airport of their compatriots trying to escape the Taliban. This has dashed their hopes of ever returning to their homeland, but raised the prospect of a speedier asylum process. Humayun Shahzad, an Afghan refugee living in Kathmandu, has not been able to sleep ever since the Taliban began their <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/afghanistan-abandoned/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">rapid advance across Afghanistan last month</a> that led to the collapse of the Afghan government.  “I have been watching what is happening in Afghanistan, and thinking about our friends and family still there,” says Shahzad, who has been spending sleepless nights ever since the Taliban’s rapid takeover and the collapse of the Afghan government. “On the one hand, I have had to constantly think about how I will manage to support my family without a job here in Nepal, on the other there is also the worry about what the Taliban will do to my country,” Shahzad adds.  Like dozens of other Afghan families languishing in Kathmandu, Shahzad fled first to India and then came to Kathmandu, hoping it would be easier to apply for asylum here.  <a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19109#.YTLJty2B3-Z" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Taliban forces</a> had vastly weakened in the first six years after the US-occupied Afghanistan. However, the militants then began to tighten their stranglehold in and around rural Afghanan, leaving many with the choice of either following along, or escaping their harsh rule.  Shahzad was operating a successful photography business in Grishk district in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, and chose the latter. He took his family and flew to Delhi, and then to  Kathmandu in 2014. C R Ahmed had never imagined that he would one day have to flee the country that he had been born and raised in. He owned a thriving gold shop in Kandahar, and lived happily with his family through all the years of Soviet occupation, the mujahideen war, the American bombings. But when the Taliban took over for the first time more than two decades ago, he left. "The Taliban ruined Afghanistan,” says Ahmed. “They will ruin it again.” The Taliban grew out of the US-backed mujahideen fighters who drove out the Soviet military in the 1990s. They became radicalised after coming to power, and were finally banished to the fringes after the US occupied Afghanistan in 2001 following the 11 September attacks — exactly 20 years this week. The Americans retaliated against al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and initiated a state-building process with elections and governments that they backed. But corruption and mismanagement allowed the Taliban to regroup, conduct horrendous terrorist attacks against civilians and inflict heavy casualties on US and NATO forces. The West finally lost its will to fight, and US forces abruptly left Afghanistan, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/who-will-rescue-nepalis-from-afghanistan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">allowing the Taliban to take rapid control</a>. Provincial capitals fell one by one, as Afghan forces either surrendered or were routed.  The whole of August, the world witnessed heart-wrenching scenes of thousands of Afghans flocking to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, clinging to the undercarriage of aircrafts in an attempt to flee the return of the Taliban. At the time of their departure, American and coalition forces had evacuated more than 122,000 of their nationals, diplomats, and Afghan allies from Kabul. But not everyone made it out when the last US Air Force C-17 flew out on 31 August.  The Afghan refugees in Nepal left long before the recent upheavals, but say they escaped because they knew what was coming if the Taliban took over. Zubair Ahmed recalls the Taliban’s oppressive regime making it impossible for Afghans to continue to live in the country of their birth. "Many of us Afghans wanted to educate our children, especially our daughters, and see them go on to become doctors and professionals, but the Taliban would not allow it,” says Zubair Ahmed. “And women were not allowed to leave the house. We saw what the Taliban did 20 years ago, we know what they are capable of.” With the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan once again, the doors have all but closed on the chances of Afghans in Nepal ever returning home. But life here in Nepal, while certainly safer, has not been easy at all — especially with already meagre <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-real-cost-of-nepals-second-wave/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">employment opportunities drying up due to the Covid-19 pandemic</a>. <figure><img width="1100" height="610" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141144/636d00cc9c7e80680e0a35f8jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Murtuza Jaffrey, 37, owned and operated a welding shop in Kandahar Province, but was forced to flee his home with his family after the Taliban threatened him for doing welding jobs for the American military. When they fled Afghanistan, his family was forced to separate. Jaffrey and his four children came to Nepal via India. Meanwhile, his mother and four siblings went to Iran.For Jaffery, the years in Kathmandu have been a constant struggle for survival. <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/author/soniaawale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The pandemic</a>, however, has made it especially difficult— he is now without a job, and has not been able to pay his rent for two months. Moreover, the Rs18,000 annual grant that the UNHCR provided for each of his children’s education has stopped in the last two years.  Like Jaffrey, Mohammad Arif Ahmadi operated a successful business in Kandahar and was contracted to install bars on the doors and windows of buildings for the Americans. “The work was good, but the Taliban would not let us live in peace, they threatened to kill me for helping the Americans,” recalls Ahmadi, who believes that Afghanistan has fallen back into the hands of “terrorists” following the Taliban victory. Unable to live in constant fear for his life, Ahmadi, his wife and four sons decided to leave Afghanistan and come to Kathmandu seven years ago. The family has been struggling to make ends meet ever since. The <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/how-nepal-must-prepare-for-3rd-covid-wave/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">pandemic-induced closures</a> have made it worse for the family, four of whom worked at various grill and welding shops in Kathmandu. “We do fine as long as we can find work,” says Sophika Ahmadi, “But when the jobs dry up, we are not even able to feed ourselves for the day.”For all the Afghans struggling to get through every day in Kathmandu, the journey from <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-and-the-talibans-second-coming/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Afghanistan to Nepal</a> has been long and painful. A few, like Ahmadi and Jaffrey, paid traffickers as much as $2,000 for each family member to come to Nepal — a country unfamiliar to them in terms of language, culture and geography.Similarly, Humayun Shahzad came to Kathmandu after a broker he met in Delhi convinced him to move to Nepal, which he described as a beautiful country where he could find better opportunities. The broker charged Shahzad’s nine-member family $1,000 per person just to come from New Delhi to Kathmandu. They used up all their savings from selling their possessions in Afghanistan for the trip.“We had thought the price was worth it because Nepal was a faraway place, but the broker brought us here within two days,” Seven years later, his family is still here, and struggling to stay afloat.Shahzad was convinced to come to Kathmandu by brokers who assured him that the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Nepal would provide him with the necessary support. But the reality in Nepal has been vastly different, and Afghans living in Nepal believe that the UNHCR has <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/elderly-left-in-bhutan-refugee-camp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">abandoned refugees like them</a>.Now, Afghans living in Nepal have one main demand, that they be compensated for their time living in Nepal, and be resettled in third countries. Additionally, the refugees have also been imploring the Nepal government to exempt them from having to pay the fines for staying in Nepal without a visa.Without any meaningful support from UNHCR, and running out of money, the future for Afghan refugees in Nepal looks bleak.For Murtuza Jaffrey, circumstances here have worsened to the point that he is considering going back to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/bring-us-home-says-nepali-in-kabul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Afghanistan</a>, and taking his chances with the Taliban, a sentiment he says other Afghans in Kathmandu echo.“If we return to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us, and that will be it,” says Jaffrey. “Here, we feel like we are dying day by day.”

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Afghans in Nepal await resettlement

<figure><img width="1500" height="997" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107161120/636922c29c7e80680e03a147jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Mohammed Daoud's family paid an agent $6,000 to get to Kathmandu. Photos: GOPAL GARTAULA</figcaption></figure>When Mohammed Daoud fled Afghanistan in 2014, he did not know where he was headed. All he wanted was to keep his family safe from the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19109#.W6ymmnszaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">never-ending violence in his motherland</a>.Daoud, a 44-year-old motor mechanic from a village near Kandahar, first came to India with his wife and four children and then on to Nepal. He paid $6,000 to an agent who brought his family to Kathmandu by bus.Daoud owned a sprawling house and a garage back home. Here in Kathmandu, he works as a mechanic for someone else. His family lives in a congested room near the Kathmandu bus park. Despite this, he is happy his family is far away from bombs and bullets.“I may not be able to feed my family well here, but I do not have to live in a constant fear of losing them,” he says.His four children were born after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2011, and grew up caught in between American bombings and Taliban terror. They watched many die in gun battles, bombs and in drone attacks. It was rare for them to see someone die of natural causes.“Only after coming to Nepal did my children know that people can also die naturally,” Daoud explains. Most Nepalis have heard about refugees from Tibet. Few know that there are also Afghans who have settled in Nepal. Like Daoud, most have come to Kathmandu from New Delhi after hearing from others that life is relatively easier in Nepal.The UNHCR has identified 53 Afghan asylum seekers belonging to 13 families in Kathmandu, and all of them live in the Samakhusi neighborhood of Kathmandu, which has become Little Kabul. Murtaza Zahfary, 34, owned a welding machine factory in southern Kandahar, and was doing brisk business until he was forced to close it down because security forces saw it as a place where the Taliban insurgents could make weapons. <img width="640" height="556" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107161120/636922c59c7e80680e03a148jpeg.jpg" alt="">Three years ago, a relative was killed in an American drone attack in another village. His father and brother reached there to pay their last homage. On the way back home, their car was blown up by Taliban insurgents.Zahfary lost all hope, and paid $10,000 to a trafficker to get him to Nepal via New Delhi. He says: “Had I not left Afghanistan, I would have probably committed suicide by now, if not killed in an attack. I was mentally disturbed after seeing so many deaths and losing my livelihood.” <figure><img width="1500" height="1187" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107161120/636922c99c7e80680e03a149jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>But life is not easy in Kathmandu, either. Zahfary’s wife is suffering from a neurological disorder, but he does not have money to pay for her treatment. House rents, school fees, food prices and everything is expensive, and they do not earn enough.The government in Nepal has not granted refugee status to the Afghans, but it does not oust them either. Being undocumented, however, they cannot apply for regular jobs or run their own business.Most Afghan refugees in Kathmandu are from Kandahar, but there are some from Helmand and Kabul as well. In an unfamiliar city, nearly 2,000km from their homeland, Afghan refugees miss their homes, friends and relatives.Mohammad Arif Ahmadi, a 53-year-old jeweller from Kandahar, says: “We do not have homes to go back to. They are gone.” He made gold necklaces, bracelets, anklets and earrings, but his shop was blown up four years ago.Ahmadi wept the day he left his hometown for good, and his eyes welled up as he told us in his rented room in Kathmandu: “Everything was reduced to ashes. I now just have memories. And I am learning to live in a new place, remembering the times when Afghanistan also was at peace.”  <figure><img width="640" height="503" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107161120/636922cd9c7e80680e03a14ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/ramadan-in-exile/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ramadan in exile</a>, Sewa Bhattarai<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/family-separation-bhutan-style/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Family separation, Bhutan</a> - style, Jamie Piotrowski

afghan-refugees

Afghans in Nepal await resettlement

Kathmandu's Little Kabul