Gandhara blog (RFE/RL), 4 November 2014
Our former colleague and author Seyyed Reza Kazemi quoted again in this heart-breaking article about the an Afghan asylum seeker deported by Australia and hiding in Kabul now, with a link to his latest AAN dispatch:
Sayed Reza Kazemi, an Afghan scholar at Heidelberg University in Germany, says his recent research shows Afghan youth leave because of poverty and joblessness. Kazmi’s [sic] studied the predominantly Shi’a Hazaras and Sayyeds in the western province of Herat. He found that almost all the young people leaving Afghanistan are saddled with debt because they needed at least $20,000 to pay human smugglers to reach Europe or Australia. He sees desperate young people such as Naseri repeatedly attempting to flee their miseries in Afghanistan.
“I think the situation of these individuals will be very difficult in Afghanistan.” he told RFE/RL’s Gandhara website. “They pay huge sums to get out of Afghanistan. Then they cannot return because shame and disgrace awaits them if they fail in their goal.”
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
