Taliban fighters’ advance towards Kabul is gaining pace. Capital cities in 10 provinces have been ‘liberated’ after fierce fighting in some places and unopposed in others. On Thursday, the Taliban took control of Ghazni, 80 miles southwest of Kabul. Their territorial gains are making headlines in global media, leaving little space for the plight of millions of displaced Afghans.

As per UN estimates, four million Afghan people have been displaced since the Taliban onslaught against the government led by President Ashraf Ghani and Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

Non-combatant Afghan citizens are trapped in many places between the National Defence Forces (NDS) and the Taliban fighters. International news media outlets are reporting that distressed Afghan families are trying to cross into Iran, Turkey and Greece in a bid to reach Europe. According to the UN refugee agency, around four million Afghans have been displaced since the fighting broke out.

Pakistan provide refuge to approximately three million Afghan refugees following the exodus in the 1980s. The security forces and civilian establishment of the country have conveyed said that Pakistan is not in a position to take in more refugees.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that most of the refugees in Pakistan sympathise with the Taliban and there is no way of telling those among the approximately 30,000 daily commuters who might join the fighting.

Speaking to a group of Afghan journalists in Islamabad, Khan said that the three million refugees in Pakistan were mostly Pashtuns.

Sources say the Punjab government has decided to start monitoring Afghan refugees living in the province. For this purpose, the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), the Punjab Police, the NADRA, and the Revenue Department have been asked to work together.

The decision to check the data on Afghan refugees in the province has been taken in view of the changing situation in Afghanistan. DIG Sajid Kiyani says that the data of Afghan refugees will be collected and sent to the NADRA.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Commissioner for Afghan Refugees Abbas Khan, tells TNS, “There are around 2.7 million Afghan refugees carrying Proof of Reference (PoR) cards issued by the NADRA, Afghan citizens and undocumented Afghan refugees. There are 54 refugee camps in Pakistan (43 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 10 in Balochistan and one in Punjab’s Mianwali district). Only about 30 per cent of the Afghan refugees live in these camps. The majority now live in various urban centres. Most of the funds for schooling of their children come from the UNHCR, Japan, the European Union and Germany.”

Khan says Pakistan has been advising the Afghan government to settle the refugees within the country with the help of international aid and a settlement plan.”

Khan says the war has hit the social fabric of the Afghan society hard and disturbed everything, resulting in a flight of capital, joblessness and a dysfunctional economy.

He says, “In the 1980s, the country was not prepared for the sudden influx of refugees. Now the leadership has cautioned about the spillover effect of a possible exodus of people from war-torn Afghanistan into Pakistan. The country’s borders are closed from time to time. Taking in more refugees is something Pakistan cannot afford at this time.”

A source close to the government says the authorities considering setting up camps close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the event of a larger refugee influx than predicted.

The situation is also challenging for the Afghan refugees already living in Pakistan. Haji Asal Khan, a tribal elder of the registered Afghan refugees in Lahore, tells this scribe that war has intensified in northern provinces in Afghanistan. Given the situation, he says, no Afghan refugees can now consider going back.

Haji Asal Khan hails from Kunduz, the large city in northern Afghanistan that Taliban fighters took last week. He says nothing has changed since he fled from Afghanistan after the Soviets bombed the city in the 1980s.

According to a government source, the UNHCR is offering $200 to every refugee leaving the country voluntarily, but the repatriation has stopped presumably due to war and the Covid-19.

The United States State Department has urged Pakistan to keep its borders with Afghanistan open to accommodate the refugees.

National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf told a briefing in Washington last week that arrangements should be made to keep the displaced Afghans within their country instead of pushing them into Pakistan.

The Turkish government has already criticised the US plan to use third countries to resettle Afghans. Ankara is alarmed that the US move could cause a “great migration crisis” in the region.

Pakistan has made the point clear. Its stance is pragmatic and realistic. But a humanitarian crisis is knocking at the borders of the country. To prevent that and in the interest of a just settlement of Afghan refugees, the international community led by the United States, the United Nations, European powers and Pakistan must sit together and chalk out the future course of action.

The legend goes that every war is a war against a child and that only the dead have seen the end of the war. The children, the youth and the elderly citizens of Afghanistan need peace at the earliest. Another displacement from Afghan cities can lead to the biggest humanitarian crisis of this century.

The writer is a journalist based in Lahore