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EDITORIAL: Afghanistan case highlights need for resilient societies

Saturday August 28 2021
Afghan people

Afghan people walk inside a fenced corridor as they enter Pakistan at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman on August 25, 2021 following the Taliban's stunning military takeover of Afghanistan.PHOTO | AFP

By The EastAfrican

On Wednesday, August 25, the first four dozen of an eventual 2,000 Afghan refugees expected to transit through Uganda, arrived in the country. The news of their arrival generated a degree of agitation as government officials fell over each other, trying to justify the decision to host them. It was not lost on the public that their government had not articulated any plan for the repatriation of its own citizens believed to be trapped in Afghanistan. Neither are the numbers of those there known with any degree of certainty.

Already host to more than a million refugees, Uganda is one of those countries that are used to strangers. Yet the emerging gap of privilege between host and guest is generating a gradual wave of resentment. The swelling numbers of foreigners fleeing conflict also accentuate the internal fissures and vulnerabilities within host countries.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a refugee as “any uprooted, homeless, involuntary migrant who has crossed a frontier and no longer possesses the protection of his or her former government.” In modern times, mass movements of people, are often triggered by a failure to resolve internal political differences. The partition of India which in 1947, is still believed to have been the largest transfer of people in history, resulted in the movement of 18 million people between India and the newly created Pakistan.

It is not known how many people will eventually flee Afghanistan, but the need for anyone to abandon a place they have known as home all their life and their entire life’s investment is instructive. Without stable politics, order eventually collapses and it is ordinary folk, like the many Afghans who will now have to endure the yoke of Taliban rule, who bear the brunt of implosion.

It is indeed noble that amid its own myriad demands, Uganda has found room to take in a few Afghans in need of settlement. Yet, as they settle foreigners, the politicians need to reflect on their own record of nation-building and try to create durable structures for democratic governance.

Afghanistan has failed to build internal consensus. Dissent is criminalised as are many individual liberties. Those conditions are pretty much alive elsewhere. Governing parties are spending more resources on regime protection than social services. The proceeds of ballooning military budgets are often deployed against citizens than external adversaries.

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Without addressing those fundamentals, today’s refugee-hosting nations might themselves become refugee generators. That is the context within which the seeming opposition to taking in refugees must be seen. Citizens want a degree of assurance about their own future before they can care about others. Otherwise refugees should be welcome because they contribute to the cross-pollination of values and innovation across the human race. And given rights and the freedom to engage in the pursuit of their enterprise, they can be more of an asset than a liability.

That is what the fortunes of the Asian evacuees from Uganda to the UK and Canada during the early 1970s, or even the many economic migrants who continue to leave Africa for greener pastures, teach us.

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