Children play in a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept 13. The United Nations said millions of Afghans are facing a growing humanitarian crisis. (FELIPE DANA / AP)

Without adequate aid and assistance from the international community, war-ravaged Afghanistan could trigger a large-scale refugee crisis that will leave its neighbors, as well as the world at large, overwhelmed, experts warn.

Thousands of Afghans have flocked to border control points in a desperate bid to leave and many have already made the getaway. 

Nagapushpa Devendra, a West Asia researcher at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, or MP-IDSA, in New Delhi, believes the Afghan refugees situation may escalate, with neighboring countries hesitant to take in migrants fearing the potential burden on their pandemic-hit economies. 

“There is an additional pressure on the regional countries to take the responsibilities of Afghan refugees. However, Pakistan and Turkey have refused to host a new wave of Afghan refugees,” Devendra noted.

She added that Central Asian countries’ “underwhelming response to Afghan refugees” is also a cause of concern for the United Nations. 

Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Pakistan, said there has been a big challenge to Afghanistan’s neighbors, who are worried about a possible “spillover of the conflict” and refugees. 

Further, he said, some people are worried that refugees who enter the borders “may also carry the COVID-19 virus with them”.

“It has been double jeopardy for Pakistan. The country has to deal with the (Afghan) refugee issue ... (while at the same time) it has to find effective ways of dealing with the Delta variant,” Gul said. 

According to the UN Refugee Agency, Pakistan hosts more than 1.4 million registered Afghans who have been forced to flee their homes. Turkey, meanwhile, hosts the largest number of refugees, with nearly 3.7 million people. An estimated 130,000 Afghans are said to be seeking asylum in Turkey. 

The UN earlier envisaged a worst-case scenario of 500,000 Afghan refugees arriving in neighboring countries by the end of the year and had sought almost US$300 million to preposition aid. 

Kelly Clements, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, had emphasized that significant movements across borders are not yet taking place and that the greatest needs remain inside Afghanistan, where the impacts of the conflict have been compounded by a severe drought and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The UN’s World Food Programme estimates more than 90 percent of Afghan families are struggling to find enough to eat.

Pakistani officials have said that there has been no fresh inflow of Afghans into Pakistan so far. The country’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad said recently that Pakistan is not setting up any camp to accommodate a new wave of Afghan refugees on its territory.

Ahmad said that his country is allowing Afghan nationals holding Pakistani visas and other documents to enter the country, but there is no other policy so far for refugees. 

MP-IDSA’s Devendra thinks a new wave of refugee flow will cause fresh instability in West Asia, a region where many countries have suffered war, conflict and instability. 

She said a new wave of refugee flow may have a cascading effect as they intersect with pre-existing, or worse, unanticipated risks in the receiving country. It can stir up sectarian tensions and disturb the fragile political alliances that exist within the region, Devendra said.

On Sept 13, the UN secured what it called a “quantum leap” after receiving a financial commitment of more than US$1.2 billion from the international community to support the Afghan people. The funding will throw a lifeline to Afghans, said Martin Griffiths, Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

At the first high-level conference on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power a month ago, Western governments and big donors announced pledges that went beyond the US$606 million that the UN was seeking to cover costs through the end of the year for protecting Afghans from a looming humanitarian disaster.

UN humanitarian chief Griffiths, in announcing the pledges at the close of a ministerial meeting in Geneva, said the figure included the amount sought in a “flash appeal” that was also a regional response to the Afghan crisis that UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi spoke about after arriving in Kabul on a previously unannounced visit.

Griffiths wrote on Twitter that he would assess the humanitarian needs of the 3.5 million displaced Afghans, including more than 500,000 forced to move this year alone.

He urged donors to turn pledges into cash contributions as fast as possible, saying “the funding will throw a lifeline to Afghans” who lack food, healthcare and protection. 

“Afghanistan faces a long and hard road ahead” and this “is far from the end of the journey”, Griffiths said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the opening of the Geneva meeting that “after decades of war, suffering and insecurity, they (Afghans) face perhaps their most perilous hour. Now is the time for the international community to stand with them. And let us be clear, this conference is not simply about what we will give to the people of Afghanistan. It is about what we owe.”

MP-IDSA’s Devendra welcomed the pledges made by international donors, but said more needs to be done. 

“Though it is a positive development, it is not sufficient given the fact that around 80 percent of Afghanistan’s budget (has been) financed by the US and other international donors. Now that it has been halted, Afghanistan is at the brink of total economic collapse which would exacerbate the crisis of displaced within the country,” she said. 

There is a need for the UN and global community to scale up humanitarian aid and support to both Afghanistan and its neighbors, the analyst said, adding that priority must be given to investing more on Afghan youth and helping them gain education and skills to rebuild their country when peace and stability finally come. 

Chen Xu, head of the Chinese Mission to the UN at Geneva, said on Sept 13 that China will donate an initial batch of 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Afghanistan, with more emergency supplies to follow.

China has decided to urgently provide food and materials for the winter, COVID-19 vaccines, and medicines worth 200 million yuan (US$31 million) to Afghanistan, he said.

China has always respected the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan as its close neighbor, adhered to noninterference in its internal affairs and pursued a friendly policy toward all Afghan people, Chen said.

He also said that China supports the UN in playing a bigger role in alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and helping Afghanistan achieve a smooth transition and embark on the path of peaceful development at an early date.

“China welcomes the UN’s flash appeal for humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan, supports the UN to strengthen cooperation with other multilateral mechanisms related to the Afghanistan issue and form synergy by complementing each other,” he said.

He told the meeting that under the current circumstances, the international community needs to step up assistance to Afghanistan.

The US and its allies were more obligated than others to provide economic and humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, he said.

“China is willing to provide vaccines, humanitarian supplies and other assistance to Afghanistan, and work with the international community to help Afghanistan fight terrorism and realize national stability and economic development at an early date,” China’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, told Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting foreign minister in the Afghan caretaker government, in a meeting on Sept 14. 

In Kabul, the Taliban acting foreign minister expressed appreciation to the countries that pledged humanitarian support to Afghanistan and said the Taliban will coordinate with the donors.

Addressing reporters on Sept 14, Muttaqi said the Taliban want to have good relations with all countries, including the US, and called for continuing aid from international organizations.

“We want to have good relations with the world’s countries, but want them to not pressure Afghanistan, because pressure does not work and does not benefit Afghanistan or world countries,” he said at a press conference.

Farhan Mujahid Chak, an associate professor of political science and Gulf studies at Qatar University, said with adequate foresight, planning and “sincerity”, the Afghan issue is “manageable”.

“The key would be for the US and coalition forces to not tie humanitarian aid to political decisions in Afghanistan,” Chak told China Daily.

“I think so far the refugee issue has been contained but the worry is that the international community led by the US will punish the new Afghan government which may precipitate a new refugee exodus,” said Chak.

On Aug 15, the Taliban, a hard-line Islamist group that emerged in the 1990s, swept back to power two weeks before the US troops’ Aug 31 exit deadline, ending two decades of American occupation in Afghanistan. 

Heng Weili in New York, Xinhua, CGTN and agencies contributed to the story.

Contact the writers at jan@chinadailyapac.com