Soon, tens of thousands of Afghan refugees will have to find new homes and many countries will preventively close their doors.
Why it’s important: The United States leads what the White House calls one of the largest air bridges in history when Afghans flee Taliban rule. This exodus will quickly turn into a humanitarian crisis that will affect the United States, Europe and parts of Asia and the Middle East.
What to see: The United States is preparing to attract 50,000 Afghan refugees next year, Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies and humanitarian action for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), told Axios.
- It is more than the total number of refugees a year that the United States has resettled from around the world in the last two years.
- The IRC is one of the largest resettlement agencies in the United States and typically handles 25% of refugee arrivals, according to Kitchen. “We are now staffing up and preparing to manage 25% of the 50,000 newcomers.”
Several European countries they also want Afghans out of the country. But in the EU there is already concern about another major wave of migration.
- French President Emmanuel Macron has said Europe must “protect itself” from the influx of Afghan migrants.
- Greece has completed a border fence with Turkey, in an effort to deter Afghan migrants.
- Turkey, which hosts millions of Syrian refugees, has also bolstered its own border security with walls, ditches and barbed wire after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
- Australia has launched a campaign urging Afghans not to try to make the dangerous journey to the country by sea. The country has pledged to host only 3,000 Afghan refugees.
What to see: Afghans who do not cut back on the United States to transport them by plane are expected to flee to neighboring countries, including Iran and Pakistan.
- By the end of 2020, Pakistan already had 1.4 million Afghan refugees living in the country, according to UN data. As of this year, Iran had 780,000 Afghan refugees in addition to 2.3 million undocumented Afghans.
- The Taliban have provided conflicting messages about their willingness to allow Afghans to leave, and Pakistan currently only allows people with Pakistani visas to cross land borders, Kitchen said.
The big picture: The decades of war created a crisis of Afghan refugees long before the U.S. began withdrawing military forces. Millions of people had already fled the country or been displaced within its borders.
- “The idea of an Afghan refugee situation is nothing new. It’s been going on for four decades,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Chris Boian told Axios.