13 countries agree to temporarily host Afghans
13 countries agreed to temporarily host Afghans: Blinken (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/ via Getty Images)
WASHANGTON: The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that 13 countries have agreed to host Afghans temporarily. He said that 12 countries have agreed to act as transit points for those leaving Afghanistan.
He said that Afghans who did not get clearance in the United States would be temporarily residing in 13 countries. Temporary host countries included Albania, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Mexico, Poland, Qatar, Rwanda, Ukraine, and Uganda.
Transit countries
The US Secretary of State said that the transit countries included Bahrain, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan, Turkey, the UAE and Uzbekistan.
According to American media reports Almost 3 million Afghan refugees, half of them unregistered, have been living in Pakistan since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and subsequent waves of violence and later a civil war, according to the U.N.
By the beginning of 1981, some 3.7 million refugees had fled to Iran and Pakistan.
After a year-long siege, the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, and had gained control of most of the country by 1998. many Afghans, especially the educated, fled.
A final wave of refugees numbering 200,000 to 300,000 left Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion of October 2001.
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