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Charity falters at home: Afghan refugees and the U.K.

Pakistan is at present host to a staggering 2.7 million refugees from Afghanistan according to official figures. No matter what speculation there might be as to the precise accuracy of these figures, this is certainly the largest concentration of refugees since the early 1970’s when the emergence of Bangladesh resulted in a mass exchange of populations. The 1979 movement of the Soviet army into Afghanistan, resulting in the exodus of whole tribes of Afghan peoples, is well remembered and most Western governments continue to express indignation, sympathy and concern. However, that concern is manifested to very different degrees within Western countries. During the past 2 years, many support groups have been formed in Austria, France, West Germany, Belgium, Holland and the U.S.A. Their aims are varied but generally fall within two broad categories. First, promoting and maintaining awareness of the plight of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and also of those who have gained political asylum in the West. Newsletters are distributed, meetings held and Afghan cultural events sponsored. In the U.S.A., guidelines on how to adapt to a new life are being prepared in local Afghan dialect. The second major activity is raising money for voluntary and other agencies which are providing humanitarian care for the refugees in Pakistan. Some of these solidarity groups are predominantly political, others purely humanitarian. British efforts to support this supposedly politically popular cause are, as yet, unimpressive. It is believed that the number of Afghans in the U.K. at present is small perhaps less than 500 persons and only a few of these are claiming political asylum. There is no governmentsponsored programme for refugees, and the individual has no easily identifiable channel by which he or she can present evidence and claim refugee status. Those organizations in the U.K. which generally deal with such cases are overburdened. Unlike previous events when solidarity groups quickly gathered to provide information and assistance for the individual, the Afghans are left to fare as best they can with British officialdom. There are, as always, one or two individuals in positions of some influence who have assumed a mediating role in arguing the case for asylum seekers with the British authorities. This is a task requiring time, skill and considerable patience and thus no one person can hope to follow through more than a very few cases which may require meticulous evidence and documentation. In 1980, a small group of people, mainly academics, collaborated to form the Afghan Refugee Information Network (ARIN) and began producing a newsletter. However, for want of funds, organization and perhaps committment, ARIN has been dormant for the better part of a year although there are now plans to revive it. The Afghan Support Committee (ASC), set up in 1981, has had a chequered history. Initially launched by a concerned parliamentarian, it has suffered from political inertia together with insufficient interest on the part of its coniniittee members and a consequent funding problem. But through the persistent efforts of the part time director some funds have been raised for overseas work, in particular the survival of the programme of one well-regarded medical agency in Pakistan (the Austrian Refugee Committee) is due to the ASC director’s work. On the other hand, little energy has been directed towards the two further aims of promoting public awareness and of catering for the estranged Afghans in the U.K. Other than these two groups, there are a couple of Afghan political exile groups one of which produces a political newsletter. Meanwhile, the Afghan refugees in the U.K., although polite and grateful to their British hosts, remain cautious in their optimism about the vigour and effectiveness of these as yet incipient efforts. The prospects are none too bright: at a recent evening of Afghan music it was noticeable that only two members of the ASC figured amongst the lively, predominantly Afghan, audience. Without undue cynicism, Afghan refugees may well reach certain conclusions about the commitment in the U.K. to their case, if not their cause. To begin with, the refugees appear to have far overstepped the tacit but customary one-year time limit for active public sympathy. The media television, radio, newspapers are indeed ‘mediators’ of continued public awareness, and the Afghan refugee story has largely flagged despite one or two remarkable reports of wholesale evacuations to Turkey to begin a new, but oldstyle, life. Perhaps the most remarkable story of all provides the least exciting copy for the media: despite undoubted local difficulties, a huge number of refugees have been supported in North-West Pakistan with basic services in food, clothing, shelter and medicine, and spectacular suffering through starvation and epidemic diseases has been avoided. Within Afghanistan the military engagements between Mujahidin resistance and the Soviet and national forces have by their nature fallen short of the requirements of a running media story: they have been sporadic, geographically scattered and relatively small-scale and, of course, largely hidden from journalists. It is a cruel truth that any major reawakening of interest in the U.K. in the small number of Afghan refugees there or in the possibilities for increased aid to the millions now in Pakistan depends upon a dramatic battle in Afghanistan or upon dramatic evidence of suffering in Pakistan. Political support for the Mujahidin cause rather crudely designated as antiCommunist may not have wavered in 3 years; but charitable response to the refugees has wavered considerably. Politics and charity are linked but they evidently follow very different paths.