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Nasmeen is old, but she doesn’t know how old exactly.  She fled the Russian invasion in Afghanistan and came to Pakistan with her family over 20 years ago.  Along with thousands of Afghans, she settled in the Azakhel refugee village in the Nowshera District of Pakistan.  Azakhel eventually became home to 23,000 Afghans fleeing violence in their home country. But that was before the epic floods that began with the July monsoon and destroyed their village.

Nasmeen, her son, his wife and her grandchildren fled.  In only a few hours their home was completely submerged by water.

“We fled the same way as we have fled before, we couldn’t bring anything but ourselves,” Nasmeen said, sitting in a small canvas tent where the entire family sleeps for the night.

Almost all of the refugees in Azakhel had to flee, as the floods destroyed the village completely.  They are now living in tents given to them by aid organizations, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and are not sure where they will be able to move next.  Three months after the floods they are still homeless.  According to UNHCR Head Antonio Guterres, the position of the provincial government is that the village site is flood-prone and not suitable to build on. A new site needs to be found where the refugees can reconstruct their homes.

The refugees in Azakhel were well established.  The village was not made up of tents and make-shift houses.  There were bustling shops made out of wood and brick. Nasmeen’s son’s home was a proper house with two bedrooms. Now, all that is left of the village are broken planks of wood and piles of brick soaked through with flood water.  People walk through the rubble to see if any of their belongings can be salvaged. Almost nothing can.  People literally have nothing.

There are 1.7 million Afghans in Pakistan, and these people are arguably some of the most neglected.  This new disaster is a double loss. For many people in Azakhel, the possibility of returning to Afghanistan is a distant one given the security situation. Pakistan is the place they now call home even though they are always seen as outsiders. 

At the moment, the Pakistan government has many more issues like this to deal with. They must also help the seven million Pakistanis who lost their homes and contend with the difficulties of giving people enough money for rebuilding from an insufficient pot of funds.  And then there is the seemingly inevitable second wave of the tragedy to prepare for in the form of a food crisis and drought.  As the waters subside, it becomes more difficult to make the world aware that they need to give generously, because people are still desperately in need.

“We have lost our home here,” said Nasmeen.  “We have lost our homes the same way.  We don’t have any place to live in Afghanistan. We don’t have any accommodation there, we don’t have any place.”