After more than two decades of civil war and conflict, combined with the worst drought in 30 years, there is widespread suffering and massive displacement of the population inside and outside Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates that seven million people are vulnerable to famine. Afghanistan's infrastructure has been nearly destroyed, its human resource base severely depleted and its social capital eroded. Following the toppling of the Taliban regime by U.S. and opposition Northern Alliance forces, UN-brokered talks in December 2001 provided a framework for future Afghan governance, including an interim authority, elections and a multinational peacekeeping force for the capital, Kabul.

Afghanistan, a mountainous and landlocked country, has long been fought over because of its strategic location between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country for a decade before withdrawing under pressure by mujahidin forces who were supported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others. Fighting continued, however, among Afghan factions, most recently between the Taliban, a group which imposed a strict form of Islam over much of the country in 1996, and opposition Northern Alliance forces.

During the Soviet occupation, one-third of the population fled Afghanistan. Pakistan and Iran provided refuge for a combined peak of more than six million refugees. Afghanistan is the world's leading source of refugees. An estimated four million people are refugees in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Many refugees began returning to the country in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban. Afghanistan is the most heavily mined country in the world.

UNHCR, together with the Iranian and Pakistani governments, began its largest ever voluntary repatriation operation in 2002 with plans to help some 1.2 million Afghan refugees and displaced persons home this year alone.

Since 1988, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan has channeled more than $1 billion in multilateral assistance to Afghan refugees and vulnerable persons inside Afghanistan. The country is highly dependent on farming and raising livestock. But as the largest producer of opium poppies, drug trafficking provides a major source.

Links to other sources

Interactive Central Asia Resource Project

US Committee for Refugees

US State Department Background Notes