Posted by Saleem Ali of University of Vermont (USA) January 16, 2012 Comments (10)

Hazara Children on their way to school in the fabled Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan, famous for the mountain Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban. Photo by Hadi Zaher, creative commons license

By Saleem H. Ali and M. Saleem Javed

The current predicament of ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a cause of grave concern, and it is essential for the international community to be aware of multiple complexities and rivalries in the region. For this article I partnered with an ethnic Hazara human rights activist and Chinese-educated medical doctor, M. Saleem Javed, based in Quetta, Pakistan to provide a brief history of this threatened community and to document the challenges they are currently facing.

Origin and Identity

Central Asia has been the crossroads of ethnicities for millennia as exemplified by the diversity of languages and other cultural expressions in this region. The West has been exposed to these narratives in the past decade unfortunately through the lens of conflict in Afghanistan.  As NATO forces withdraw from the region, the plight of indigenous minorities deserves greater attention and scrutiny. Perhaps the most vulnerable of these minority groups are the Hazara people. Phenotypically, the Hazara have distinct similarities to Mongols and there may have been an ethnic connection as evident from the etymology of many Hazara names. There was likely widespread intermarriage when the Mongols invaded South-central Asia in the twelfth and the preexisting descendants of the Indo-Hephthalite Kushan Buddhist empire as well as subsequent Persian settlers.

A Chinese traveler, Tauchaun, wrote about people similar to Chinese in Hazarajat called ‘Hosalo’ in June 644 A.D. Since the Chinese alphabet does not have an ‘R,’ this reference could have been ‘Hozora’ or Hazara’. The proximate etymology of the word is derived from the Persian word for a ‘thousand’ (Hazar) which may be a reference to a military contingent. During the various conquests of the times perhaps this syncretic identity emerged beyond the battlefields. Now more than 5 million people consider themselves to be Hazara, a vast majority  of whom live in Afghanistan (constituting at least 20% of the country’s population), followed by around a million in Pakistan. In Iran, there is a sizeable population of Hazara but they are intermingled with the Khawari ethnic group and a definitive census is hard to determine. The largest Hazara diaspora abroad is in Australia, which has been welcoming of Afghan immigration due to old ties of Afghan workers during British colonial times (even now one of Australia’s major train lines is called “The Ghan” in respect of this legacy).

Ethnicities of Afghanistan. Map by US Army Combined Arms Center, Leavenworth, Kansas, USA

Marginalization and Conquest

Discrimination towards the Hazara was poignantly portrayed by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini in his epic novel The Kite Runner. The roots of persecution towards the Hazara are largely related to sectarian rifts within Islam – the dominant religion in the region. Though a comprehensive census eludes us, it is fair to say that a vast majority of Hazara are Shia (believing in twelve imams) with small Sunni and Ismaili minorities as well. While a majority of Pashtuns are Sunnis, there are also several Shia groups within Pashtun ranks, particularly among the Orakzai tribes. As documented in Sana Haroon’s book Frontier of Faith, there were several episodes of anti-Shia movements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most notable among these was the one led by Mullah Mahmud Akhunzada against the Shias of Orakzai which led to a bloody confrontation and expulsion of many Shias in 1929. The British supported the Shia at the time as a persecuted minority, though tribal leaders (particularly the Afridis) were highly suspicious of British intentions and tried to prevent their intervention by mobilizing their own dispute resolution system with the mullahs.

The inhabitants of Hazarajat in the central highlands of Afghanistan, were semi-independent until Amir Abdul Rahman, the King of Afghanistan, invaded their homeland in the late nineteenth century with the help of Sunni clergymen who declared Jihad (religious decree) against the Hazara Shias. According Afghan historian Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar The Amir’s army and tribal militiamen massacred almost 60% of the Hazaras, confiscated much of their fertile land and enslaved many others. Many of them sought refuge in Quetta Pakistan and Iran’s Mashhed at that time leading to current populations in these areas. The remaining population has faced persecution and social discrimination at the hands of Afghan rulers ever since then.

Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (circa 1897).

Brutally quashed Hazara rebellion.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Similar dynamics of dissent and conflict with foreign forces in the region appear to be playing out almost a century later. In March 1979 the Hazara launched a major offensive against the communist Afghan government and claimed their homeland (Hazarajat) in just a few months. However, in the 1980 various Hazara factions were engaged in a civil war while trying to establish domination over Hazarajat which ended in 1988 under the platform of the Hizb-e-Wahdat.

Taliban terror and its aftermath

Following the Russo-Afghan war and the subsequent Afghan civil war, the Taliban toke over Kabul in 1996 which marked the beginning of another wave of persecution  and repression against the Hazara. From 1998 to 2002 thousands of Hazaras were massacred by Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif (1998) , Rotak Pass (2000), Bamiyan (1998 -1999) , Yakao lang (January 2001) and other places of Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented through archived sources the massacre of thousands of Hazara Shias by Taliban forces during these years.  Mullah Manan Niazi, the Taliban governor of Mazar-e-Sharif, had issued a Fatwa that ‘Hazaras are not Muslim, killing them is not a sin’.  While the Taliban did make some tentative alliances with a few Hazara, it is widely believed that it was an official policy of the Taliban to marginalize the Hazara, confiscate their lands and force them into exile, particularly in Iran.

Termination of the Taliban government was wholeheartedly welcomed by the Hazaras and other ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan. The situation greatly improved as compared to Taliban times as the Afghan constitution gave fundamental protection to persecuted minorities, including the Hazara. However, minority communities continued to have grievances even under Hamid Karzai’s democratic government and violence continued. In 2004, 16 Hazaras were pulled from their vehicle by Taliban forces in south-central Afghanistan and executed.  Hundreds of them have been massacred by Kochi nomads—who are presumptively allied with Taliban — in Behsud since 2007.  Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission has produced a report on the dreadful series of incidents in this region.

Quo vadis NATO?

After ten years of the presence of US led NATO forces and at the eve of their withdrawal, there are ominous signs of a return to wider persecution of the Hazara Shias. On December 7, 2011 more than 70 Shias, mostly Hazaras, were killed in simultaneous suicide attacks on the tenth day of Moharram in Kabul and Mazar e Sharif. These attacks were ambiguously claimed and then denied by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi-al-Alami, a Pakistan based Taliban affiliate, with historic ties to Pakistani intelligence services that have operated under the despicable doctrine of “strategic depth” (exerting influence through destabilization of Afghanistan in order to gain leverage with their arch-rival India).

Pakistani Hazara diaspora protesting in Oslo Norway, Photo by Penny Thew, creative commons license

Similar attacks have taken place against the Hazara Shias of Pakistan since 1999 in which more than 700 innocent people have lost their lives along with hundreds injured and maimed. Two of the worst attacks which shocked the world were when 29 Hazara passengers were taken off a bus, made to stand in line and executed one by one in Mastung on 20 September 2011.  Another 13 were executed after being identified as Hazaras Shias in Akhtarabad, Quetta, on Oct 04, 2011. The responsibility of almost all such attacks/targeted killings have been claimed by Lashkar e Jhangvi. A few weeks before the massacre, this banned terrorist outfit had circulated an open letter addressed to Hazaras in Quetta reading: “All Shi’ites are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of unclean people….”

London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG) has identified the Hazara as the ‘most under threat minorty group’ in Afghanistan. The Hazara, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, have been persecuted because of their religious and/or ethnic heritage and are particularly fearful of the peace talks with Taliban that are being brokered by Qatar. These talks may lead to the release of a particularly ruthless anti-Hazara Taliban commander and former deputy defense minister in their regime, Mullah Muhammad Fazl from Guantanamo Bay, who is known for his pernicious attacks on Shias.

For peace to prevail in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuring security of the Hazara minority is essential. The United States and all interested states must not compromise on the security of this persecuted minority population in their peace talks. The Hazara constitute a vital indigenous culture that has survived for centuries and is threatened. While all groups must try to promote sectarian harmony internally, the responsibility of protecting the fundamental human rights of the Hazara remains with the Afghan and Pakistani states and their allies who purport to support peaceful pluralism.

source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com

Sally Neighbour

Yusuf Hamid was a shoemaker in the village of Kharaba in Ghazni Province, eastern Afghanistan. It was the time of the Taliban, as Afghans invariably refer to the years between 1996 and 2001 when the bearded talib, students from the Islamic madrassas strung along the Afghan–Pakistan border, imposed their draconian brand of Islamic law on Afghanistan.

Hamid (not his real name) is a member of the minority Hazara, reviled by the Pashtun Taliban for their ethnicity and their adherence to the Shia creed of Islam, regarded by Sunni zealots as heretical. After coming to power, a Taliban commander had announced: “The policy of the Taliban is to exterminate the Hazaras.” A Taliban governor decreed, “Hazaras are not Muslim. You can kill them. It is not a sin.” The wholesale slaughter of Hazara communities followed. As many as 8000 people were killed in what diplomats called a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing when the Taliban took the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. Many more such deaths followed. Hazara groups estimate 15,000 of their people died in orchestrated killings under the Taliban. Many thousands more were forced to flee their homes. Yusuf Hamid was among them. His escape from Afghanistan marked the beginning of a ten year odyssey that saw him take to the seas in a rickety Indonesian fishing boat bound for Australia, not once but twice: first in 2001 and again last year, having failed the first time. His journey has taken him to Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Christmas Island, Nauru – under the Howard government’s ‘Pacific Solution’ – and finally to the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in remote far north Western Australia, where he is presently incarcerated. His claim for asylum rejected by the Australian government, Hamid – along with hundreds of his countrymen – is facing forced repatriation to Afghanistan, which may occur any day. “We cannot go back to Afghanistan because the situation is very worse for us because of the Taliban,” Hamid says, speaking by phone from the Curtin. Hamid is polite and articulate, but his voice betrays a prevailing desperation among the Afghan detainees. On 28 March a 20-year-old Hazara man, Mohammed Asif Atay, committed suicide in his room at Curtin – hanged by a bedsheet, according to fellow inmates. Two weeks earlier another Afghan, Miqdad Hussain, also aged about 20, killed himself in the same way at the Scherger Immigration Detention Centre in north Queensland. In April a third Afghan threw himself through a plate-glass window at Curtin, but survived. Refugee advocates are worried more will follow suit. A Hazara detainee named Taqi, who also spoke by phone from Curtin, told me: “If they want to send me back I try to hang myself, kill myself. I can’t live there.” Of the many vexed issues that confront the Gillard government in the polarised debate over asylum seekers, none is more pressing than the fate of the Afghans, who outnumber all other nationalities in Australia’s crowded immigration detention centres.

Afghans make up almost half of the 10,500 or so asylum seekers who have washed up on Australia’s shores (according to figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship) since the spike in boat arrivals began in 2009. Almost all the Afghans are Hazaras. The persecution of Hazaras and the perils in their homeland are so well documented that, until recently, more than 95% of the Afghans who sought asylum got it. That was before the current crackdown, which is aimed at cutting detention centre numbers and signalling that the welcome mat has been withdrawn. Between 700 and 900 Afghans have had their claims rejected and could face deportation, according to Hassan Varasi from the Hazara Foundation. (DIAC will not release the numbers, a spokesman saying, “we don’t give out those figures.”) Varasi says: “The Immigration Department is pressuring every one of them to go back to Afghanistan, [telling them] ‘there’s no hope for you, you have to go back.’” Yusuf Hamid arrived in Australia in late 2001 amid a hysterical public debate over a surge in boat arrivals. In August that year, ahead of a highly charged election, the Howard government had refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa to enter Australian waters carrying 438 Afghans rescued from a foundering fishing boat.

In October asylum seekers on another sinking boat had been wrongly accused of throwing their children overboard. Then, as now, there was little public sympathy for ‘queue jumpers’ such as Hamid. He was shipped to Nauru and detained there for about a year before being deported back to Afghanistan in 2003. By this time the Taliban had been ousted and the US-backed Hamid Karzai installed as interim president pending democratic elections. But already the Taliban was re-grouping and preparing its comeback. As Hamid soon learned, Taliban commanders in his native Ghazni Province were bent on revenge against those they branded traitors. “The Taliban were looking for those guys who returned from Australia. They thought that those people who returned from Australia were working with the foreigners.” A month after returning to his village, Hamid says he was captured by a Taliban posse, beaten unconscious and left for dead. The Edmund Rice Centre, a Catholic advocacy group, has tracked the fortunes of some 270 rejected asylum seekers in 22 countries, and documented several cases of Afghans hunted down and killed after their return. One case reported by the centre’s director, Phil Glendenning, is that of Mohammed Hussain, a Hazara and former mujahideen fighter in the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, who fled Afghanistan under Taliban rule. After being refused refugee status in Australia, Hussain went back to his village in Ghazni – the same province that Hamid comes from and faces returning to.

There, in late 2008, Hussain was cornered by a Taliban gang and thrown down a well in front of 35 members of his family. A grenade was thrown down after him, decapitating him. Glendenning, who met Hussain in Kabul before he died, says, “He had told people this would happen if he was sent back [to Afghanistan].” In another case cited by Glendenning, a Hazara man named Abdul Azim, who spent 18 months on Nauru before being deported, saw his six– and nine-year-old daughters killed in a grenade attack on their home in Afghanistan. Yusuf Hamid may well have met a similar fate but, on the night he was grabbed, he regained consciousness while his captors were praying and managed to escape. He fled Afghanistan again, travelling to Pakistan and Iran, where he lived for two years before being caught and deported as an illegal immigrant. Back in Pakistan he found a people smuggler and spent all of his savings – US$13,000, which he had earned while working illegally in Iran – to be spirited through Singapore, Jakarta, Kupang in West Timor, and finally to Christmas Island, where the vessel he was on washed up in April last year. As fate would have it, Hamid’s boat sailed into a new political storm over a fresh spike in so-called “irregular maritime arrivals”. A record 134 boats carrying 6879 people arrived last year, according to figures compiled by the Australian Parliamentary Library. Almost 3000 of them were Afghans. It’s little wonder. The United Nations says 2010 was the deadliest year in the decade-long Afghan conflict with a record 2412 civilians killed.

The number of Afghans seeking asylum worldwide jumped by 45% to almost 27,000. Also among those who arrived in Australia was 28-year-old Taqi, a father of four who had fled his village in the province of Bamiyan. He says he was lucky to get out alive after escaping from the jail where he’d been held without charge as a political prisoner for four years. In the murky internecine world of Afghan politics, Taqi says his tormentors were not the Taliban but the local leaders of a major political party, Hezb-e-Wahdat, which targeted his family and killed his father because of their involvement in a rival party, Shura-i-Itifaq, which was once aligned with the Taliban. In an email sent via an intermediary from the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre, Taqi told me: “I was physically tortured as well as being woken continuously, and by having to stay in a cell with water on the floor. I was tortured for most of the first year. I remained imprisoned for four years [without] any charges.” Eventually he escaped and made his way from Kabul to Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia, where he bought a one-way ticket to Australia on a smuggler’s boat. Taqi arrived on Christmas Island on or around 23 May 2010. Yusuf Hamid’s boat had landed the month before. Their timing could not have been worse. The then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had just announced a six month freeze on the processing of all new Afghan asylum claims. Hamid, Taqi and hundreds of others were stuck in limbo until the freeze was lifted last October. According to the Hazara Foundation’s Hassan Varasi – again, the government won’t release the figures – 85% of Afghans who arrived during that six month period have had their claims rejected, compared to a 95% acceptance rate before that. “Nothing makes sense, but this is the reality,” says Varasi. “It’s based on [the policy of] the time and conditions in Australia, not on the ground in Afghanistan.” Hamid was rejected because the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade judges that Hazaras are now safe in Afghanistan.

A DFAT directive from February last year, which is relied upon for refugee assessments, states: “Hazaras do not live in fear of violence or systemic persecution as they did under [the] Taliban.” It cites UNHCR guidelines from 2009 that advised, “Hazaras were not being persecuted on any consistent basis,” although it added, “the current situation where Hazaras enjoyed freedom from fear of persecution might not last indefinitely.” Taqi, too, was rejected on the grounds that Hazaras no longer have “a well-founded fear of persecution”, as required under the UN Refugee Convention. The immigration officer who assessed him also dismissed his claims of political persecution, judging that his evidence on this was “vague, lacking in detail and inconsistent”. Hassan Varasi, himself a former refugee who also came from Bamiyan province and knew Taqi’s father, says the DIAC assessment suggests the officer who wrote it was not well informed about the political situation on the ground in central Afghanistan. However, the arcane intricacies of Afghan politics are of little interest to a federal government bogged down in a base political quarrel over demands that it ‘stop the boats’. The spectre of detention centres ablaze and detainees protesting on their rooftops hasn’t helped. In January, the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kabul, allowing for its citizens’ involuntary repatriation. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen hailed it “the most comprehensive agreement on these matters” ever reached between the two countries. But an official who was privy to the negotiations told me the Afghan government “had very, very little say” in the MoU, and Afghan officials are privately worried about the fate awaiting involuntary returnees. “The way they get treated back home in Afghanistan is a disgrace. It’s a big embarrassment. If it’s found they tried to escape, they could be killed,” the official said. Australia’s pre-eminent expert on Afghanistan, Professor William Maley, director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, agrees that Hazaras face grave peril if they are forced to return. In fact, he told me, “I think the targeting of returnees is more likely now than was the case in 2008.”

Professor Maley says Hazaras are desperate because of a pervasive fear that the Taliban will retake power after the coalition forces leave, and Afghanistan will return to “the dark days”. The Gillard government faces a stark choice: err on the side of compassion, and deal with the inevitable accusations of having gone ‘soft’ on boat people; or press on with the promised ‘tough’ approach, and quite possibly end up with the blood of Afghans on its hands. Taqi says: “If I go back to Afghanistan they kill me there. If I kill myself here, is better.”

source: http://www.themonthly.com.au

Afghanistan correspondent Sally Sara

Photo: Australia should think twice about deporting unsuccessful asylum seekers, say Afghan MPs.

Audio: Pressure grows on Afghan asylum deal (AM)

Related Story: Afghanistan denies deportation deal with Australia

Related Story: Failed asylum seekers face forced return

Related Story: Faster processing for asylum seekers

Map: Afghanistan

The Afghan government has conceded it cannot guarantee the safety of any failed asylum seekers deported from Australia to Afghanistan.

The Afghan ministry of refugees and repatriation says no-one can be held responsible for the security situation in Afghanistan and MPs want their government to scrap a deal signed with Australia last month.

Afghan MP Mohammad Ebrahim Qasemi says Australia should think twice about deporting unsuccessful asylum seekers.

“If they send them, the government of Afghanistan cannot guarantee them and we cannot guarantee them, and the ministry also,” he said.

Senior ministry adviser M Jawad Mohaqeq says he cannot give a guarantee of adequate security.

“It’s a difficult question and 40 countries plus the Afghan army can’t be responsible for security,” he said through a translator.

“For the Afghan people it is not easy, it is difficult, because no-one can be responsible for the situation.”

Outspoken parliamentarian and notorious Hazara militia leader Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq believes the asylum seekers will be in danger if returned.

“Without doubt, they will face disaster in their life,” he said through a translator.

Mr Mohaqiq says the Afghan government should block any attempt by Australia to deport failed asylum seekers.

“The situation is not good and there was not adequate attention paid to the agreement,” he said.

“He says for humanitarian reasons, the Afghan government should not put it into action.”

Hazaras make up a large proportion of asylum seekers going from Afghanistan to Australia.

Their leaders say they are at added risk of persecution because many come from the provinces where the Taliban has a strong presence.

The Federal Government is not expected to start deporting failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan until later in the year, but it is now unclear whether the Afghan government will accept them.

Photo: Mohammad Popal/IRIN

Many returnees lack drinking water and have poor education facilities in their places of origin

KABUL, 9 November 2011 (IRIN) – Resettlement challenges in Afghanistan have discouraged refugees living in neighbouring countries from going home, with 60,000 returning in the past 10 months against 100,000 during the same period last year, officials said.

“The most important [reasons] relate to lack of opportunities for livelihoods and shelter, but also due to insecurity in some parts of the country,” Nader Farhad, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, told IRIN in the capital, Kabul.

A lack of clinics, drinking water and poor education facilities in their places of origin were also among the reasons for the refugees not wanting to return, Farhad added.

Nearly three million registered Afghan refugees live across the region, including 1.7 million in Pakistan and one million in Iran. UNHCR is calling for international support to help returnees settle back in their homeland.

Since March 2002, 4.6 million Afghans have repatriated mainly from Pakistan and Iran under a UNHCR programme. This year’s returnees include 43,000 from Pakistan and about 17,000 from Iran. But some say life has been tougher back home.

Abdul Shokoor, 35, and his six-member family, for example, lived in an abandoned kindergarten building with other returnee families in the eastern part of Kabul since returning from Pakistan last year under the UNHCR repatriation programme.

He went to his place of origin in Baghlan province, about 300km northeast of Kabul, but due to insecurity and lack of employment opportunities he had to return to the capital.

“I returned with a hope that my life would be better in my own country, but I was wrong,” Shokoor told IRIN, adding that now he was standing every day near a roundabout seeking daily labour to earn enough money to buy some food for his children.

Under the UNHCR repatriation programme, which has entered its 10th year, every returnee receives US$150 upon arrival to cover their transport and some initial costs before settling back home.

Afghanistan’s capacity to absorb more returnees is limited, therefore UNHCR is working with the government to ensure sustainable reintegration for those who have returned or will be returning in the future.

“UNHCR has initiated a transition solutions initiative with the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, whereby a multi-year strategy is being established for Afghan refugees in the region,” said Farhad.

The strategy would be presented for endorsement by the international community at a high-level stakeholder conference early in 2012, he added.

“While the overall return figures have decreased markedly in comparison with the previous years of return, globally, Afghanistan remains one of the largest voluntary return operations,” said Farhad.

Ten years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban, a quarter of the population is made up of refugees returning home from Pakistan and Iran. They seek  help from the UN refugee agency, which now realises it should have taken a different approach to aiding them.

An Afghan woman (2nd R) registers her name to receive winter supplies at a UNHCR distribution centre for needy refugees on the outskirts of Kabul on December 27. AFP PHOTO / SHAH Marai

UN says its Afghan refugee strategy a ‘big mistake’

by Joe Sinclair

KABUL, Dec 27, 2011 (AFP) – The head of the UN refugee programme in Afghanistan on Tuesday described its strategy in the war-wracked country since 2002 as the “biggest mistake UNHCR ever made”.

 Almost a quarter of the population of Afghanistan is made up of refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. Many find themselves homeless, or living in slums under tarpaulin.

But Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, said the international community had failed to help returnees find a means of earning a living and therefore reintegrating into society.

 ”We made a big mistake, the biggest mistake UNHCR ever made,” he said of the strategy which was implemented in 2002.

 ”We thought if we gave humanitarian assistance then macro development would kick in.”

 Nicolaus said only now, 10 years after the US-led invasion and with 5.7 million refugees having returned to Afghanistan since 2002, was the UNHCR focusing more fully on the issue of sustainable reintegration.

An international conference involving Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the refugee agency is to be held in April to present the new long term strategy.

 ”It’s the income that counts, the livelihood. In very simple terms we need to find jobs for the people coming back,” Nicolaus said.

“You can build five roads to a village and the farmers will benefit because they can go to the next town to sell their vegetables.

  “But the returnee doesn’t benefit at all. He has nothing to sell at the market.”

 Nicolaus was speaking at a distribution centre for vulnerable returnees, who were gathered on the outskirts of Kabul to receive a package of blankets, clothing, tarpaulins, wheat and coal.

 The UNHCR is set to help 34,500 families, or 200,000 individuals, around the country as the freezing winter sets in.

 But the difficulty of working in Afghanistan was underlined when the Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Jamaher Anwary stormed out of the centre because there were UNHCR banners on display but no ministry logo.

 Hundreds queued for assistance outside the walled compound, clutching the necessary papers that proved they were designated as being in need of help.

 ”My husband is old and I don’t have money to take him to the doctor,” said Parveen Shah, 56, from beneath a blue burqa, her hands stained with dirt.

 ”We live in a mud house and during the night it’s very cold. My son is working washing cars but we don’t have enough to eat.”

 Mohammad Tahar, 30, is one of the 3.7 million who have returned from Pakistan.

 ”I’m glad to be back in my own country but we are 20 in my family and we live in two rooms without electricity or drinking water,” the shopkeeper said.

 ”This assistance is nothing for us.”

 UNHCR provides cash grants for returnees of $150. The money covers transport home and is supposed to help them survive the first few months of their new lives.

 Three million registered Afghan refugees still live in exile, but the lack of jobs, food and shelter and the volatile security situation in many parts of the country makes it difficult for those who want to return.

 Although the rate has slowed considerably, another 66,500 people came back in 2011. But the UNHCR estimates that 40 percent of all the returnees it has helped since 2002 are “not at all reintegrated”.

  “In Afghanistan a quarter of the population are returnees,” said Nicolaus.

 ”This is what the donor community constantly forgets. This has been overlooked and it’s still overlooked. Nobody has taken this seriously. It’s a tragedy.

 ”We are now — for the first time — bringing this up in the spring conference.”

 As he spoke dozens of boys lined up with their wheelbarrows. Armed guards were stationed at the gate and on the roof.

The boys hefted the coal into the barrows in a cloud of dust. They piled the package of blankets and supplies on top and wheeled their goods away.

Friday 9 December 2011, by Vikki Riley

Kirsty Needham

December 10, 2011

“Inflexible and mechanical” … Steve Karas. Photo: Mike Bowers

THE Federal Magistrates Court has ruled that a reviewer who rejected the refugee claims of many Afghan boat arrivals appeared to be biased, taking an ”inflexible and mechanical” approach to the plight of Hazara ethnic minorities fleeing persecution.

Refugee approval rates for Afghan asylum seekers fell in the first three months of this year, despite the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, as the federal government came under pressure to stem boat arrivals.

Refugee lawyers accused Steve Karas, a former senior public servant in the Howard government, of taking a ”sausage machine” approach to the Afghan cases he assessed.

 

Those rejected included an unaccompanied 15-year-old Hazara boy, who then faced deportation, despite his family no longer living in Afghanistan. An Australian National University Afghanistan expert, William Maley, disputed the facts used by Mr Karas – which included material claiming the Hazaras were experiencing a ”new golden age” in Afghanistan – as ”flatly wrong”.

The court has ruled there was a real possibility Mr Karas appeared to be biased against Hazaras fleeing persecution, and this ”infected” his decisions.

In the case of a 37-year-old Afghan man, Magistrate Rolf Driver viewed previous decisions made by Mr Karas about Hazaras between January and March and found 32 of 90 paragraphs in the rulings were identical.

Mr Karas also relied heavily on a 2007 article in The Christian Science Monitor rather than United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees advice, in deciding Afghanistan was safe.

A solicitor with Brisbane’s Refugee and Immigration Legal Service, Steven Forrest, said: ”I would strongly endorse the comment made by his honour that it is important that decision makers should not take a glib or superficial approach to the claims of persecution by Afghan Hazaras.”

”The atrocity committed on 6 December, 2011, in Kabul is an example of the kind of ethnic and religious violence that is a constant threat to Shiite Afghans, particularly Hazaras, which Department of Immigration-appointed decision makers seem so intent on refusing to acknowledge.”

Professor Maley said: ”This decision shows how important it is that one has decisions of high quality on processes that turn on life and death matters. There is no room for sausage factory decisions.”

An Immigration Department spokesman said the court ruling ”does not indicate that Afghan Hazaras have received poor and unjust treatment” in their claims.

Final approval rates for Afghans receiving visas fell to 57 per cent in the three months to March 2011, compared with 98 per cent in 2010. Afghan approvals have since risen, as many cases have been successfully appealed to the Federal Magistrates Court.

The separate system for assessing boat arrivals will be scrapped next year. Arrivals will instead have access to the mainstream Refugee Review Tribunal.

The head of the immigration department, Andrew Metcalfe, told a parliamentary inquiry yesterday the surge of boats since the government was forced to abandon offshore processing has justified his warnings on the collapse of the Malaysia plan. A boat carrying 52 people arrived yesterday, the fourth this week. A total of 1631 asylum seekers and crew have arrived since October.

❏ The radio station 2GB breached the commercial radio code of practice when the host Chris Smith held a competition inviting listeners to guess how many asylum seekers were being buried in Sydney at a funeral in February, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has found. 2GB acknowledged the competition was offensive.

source: http://www.smh.com.au