noticias.info (press release), Spain
Nov. 4, 2004

Canada offers new lease of life to Afghan refugees in Central Asia

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, Nov 4 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency and the
Canadian government have teamed up in programmes that could resettle
nearly 2,000 Afghans who had been stranded in Central Asia for years
with no hope of returning to their homeland.

Two Canadian immigration officers have just concluded weeks of
interviews in Tajikistan that are likely to lead to the resettlement of
about 1,000 Afghan refugees. At the same time, UNHCR announced in
Turkmenistan that Canada had accepted some 140 refugees interviewed
there – 64 Afghans, followed by 47 ethnic Armenians who had fled
Azerbaijan and 34 ethnic Turkmen from Iran.

Simultaneously, 511 Afghan refugees accepted by Canada earlier this
year from Kyrgyzstan – where the programme was designed and tested –
are now arriving in their new home, a few families at a time. And the
UNHCR office in Tashkent has arranged for Canadian immigration
officials to consider 360 people for interviews starting shortly: all
but three were either Afghans stranded because they were students in
the former Soviet Union or their families.

While UNHCR’s preferred “durable solution” for refugees is a return to
their homes, there are often some who cannot return. The only
alternative then is integration in the country that provided asylum, or
resettlement in a third country.

That last option was the only hope for many of the refugees scattered
in the former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union.

Many Afghan refugees were associated with the government of Najibullah,
who was overthrown in 1992, and even a peripheral link with his
pro-Soviet regime – such as studying in the former Soviet Union – could
still prove fatal to a returnee. And the host countries have been
reluctant to grant citizenship to refugees, closing off that solution
for most.

“We had problems with both the mujahideen and the Taliban,” said Bashir
Ahmad Mavlavizoda, whose family has been accepted for resettlement in
Canada from Tajikistan and hopes to be leaving early next year. “The
mujahideen plays the role of the Taliban and vice versa. They are still
there.”

Although he and his family were fasting when interviewed during the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in the view of some of the ex-mujahideen
still holding powerful positions in Afghanistan, his interpretation of
Islam made him a communist.

Currently nine governments – the United States, Canada, Australia,
Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark and the Netherlands –
receive most of the refugees who are annually resettled. Last year, of
the nearly 27,000 refugees resettled by UNHCR, 13,987 went to the
United States, 4,749 to Canada and 3,935 to Australia.

UNHCR is also working to find other states willing to accept vulnerable
people and to strengthen recently introduced programmes in places like
Chile, Benin, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Ireland, Iceland and the United
Kingdom.

In the case of Canada, its official programme of accepting immigrants
from around the world includes an annual quota of up to 7,500 refugees.
That prompted UNHCR representatives in Central Asia to invite Canadian
officials to interview their Afghan refugee population.

”We identified the need in Central Asia and thought the people would
benefit, so said ‘Let’s try,'” said Brian Casey, head of the
immigration section in the Canadian embassy in Moscow that has overseen
the programme. “We are dealing with a relatively small population – but
just a small movement makes a big impact.”

Canadian officials flew in and examined each of the cases compiled by
UNHCR offices in the capitals of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Kyrgyzstan. Although the acceptance rate was high – more than 80
percent in Kyrgyzstan – some individuals were screened out by joint
Canadian-UNHCR analysis because of security concerns or past
involvement in the notorious security services.

But the vast majority was just an unfortunate group caught in the
shifting politics of an Afghanistan that was falling apart even before
the Soviet invasion of 1979. Some were moderates who did not back the
communist rulers of the 1980s but refused to support the resistance of
the mujahideen guerrillas. Some were merely teachers, journalists or
bureaucrats who continued to work through the Najibullah era, earning
the undiminished suspicion of the anti-communist forces that eventually
triumphed.

Among the most unfortunate were scores of Afghans who had arrived as
young orphans when Central Asia was part of the Soviet Union. They have
almost no memories of Afghanistan and no family ties, but just being
the children of those associated with the Najibullah regime could be
enough to condemn them to death.

The numbers to be resettled in Canada are modest when seen in terms of
the total Afghan population still outside their borders. Despite more
than 2.3 million Afghans repatriating since the fall of the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan in late 2001, an estimated million remain in Iran
and a million just in the refugee camps of Pakistan – with perhaps
double that number of Afghans in the cities of Pakistan.

But the Afghan refugee populations in Central Asia are, in many ways,
different from the majority of those in Iran and Pakistan. They tend to
be more educated – either before their arrival or because they received
better education after reaching asylum. Their claims to refugee status
– the fear of persecution if they return to their homeland – are often
better documented.

And a resolution of their cases also has a greater effect. Compared to
Iran and Pakistan, there were relatively few Afghan refugees in the
three Central Asian countries at the start of this programme; around
2,500 in Tajikistan, 2,300 in Uzbekistan, 1,200 in Turkmenistan and 650
in Kyrgyzstan. The resettlement of such a large proportion to Canada
raises hopes that a solution is now in sight for all of these Afghan
refugees.

Of the remainder, other countries may take some for resettlement. US
officials are expected in Turkmenistan later this year and in
Tajikistan early in 2005 to interview the dwindling number of refugees
there. A few refugees might still decide that conditions inside
Afghanistan have improved enough that they can return. And a small,
manageable residual number might be accepted as citizens in their
countries of asylum since many – such as Afghan Tajiks in Tajikistan
and Afghan Turkmen in Turkmenistan – have the same ethnicity as their
hosts.

A quarter century after UNHCR began caring for Afghan refugees, hopes
are rising for an end to the problem. Increasing stability and economic
growth inside Afghanistan have drawn millions of Afghans back from Iran
and Pakistan, while cooperation between Canada and UNHCR has
demonstrated that there are solutions also for those refugees who
cannot go home.