Afghan refugees, humanitarian interventionism and the global cold war in the 1980s

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan 1979, more than 3 million people fled to Pakistan, another 2.3 million Afghans fled into the Islamic Republic of Iran. Through the end of the 1980s and beyond, the Middle East had become an area with one of the largest refugee populations worldwide. With a focus on Afghan refugees and based on archival research, the paper investigates the structures, actors and practices of the global refugee regime since the 1980s against the backdrop of Cold War History. First, the broad international context as well as the politicisation, ‘Islamisation’ and militarisation of Afghan refugee society will be outlined. Second, actors and practices of humanitarian aid in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands will be analysed. The main focus here will be on the work of the UNHCR and European NGOs, especially West German organisations, their links with Afghan diaspora networks as well as their cooperation with French and Swedish partners. Their strategies for transnational networking, cooperation and competition will be examined, along with their attitude towards attempts to exercise political and ideological influence. Third, the paper will look at how individual actors and personal and institutional networks have sought to channel the lessons learned from their work in the refugee camps into the global discourse surrounding the root causes of refugee movements, prevention strategies and internationally binding rules governing the deployment of aid organisations in war zones. My paper concludes with the proposition that the history of humanitarian interventionism, was moved on significantly, both politically and legally, as a result of this.