Days of Flight

While the persecution of the Taraki- and Amin-era PDPA (and the more modest repression of the prior Daoud regime) had driven hundreds of thousands of Afghans into refugee status in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, it was only after the December 1979 Soviet invasion that Afghanistan turned into perhaps the most symptomatic refugee crisis of the late 20th century. Between 1979 and 1989, almost three million people walked across the borders of Pakistan and Iran - themselves countries governed by hardline Shi`a and Sunni dictatorships, but which came to interface with international organizations and NGOs to manage the refugee crisis. How did this crisis change the demographics of this region?

This section seeks to answer this question by making use of new data sources and GIS techniques to explore how, exactly, the demography of Afghanistan was altered by the Soviet invasion. In many cases the changes were dramatic: more than half of the population of several provinces simply walked across the border into Pakistan. In doing so, the original dream of the PDPA - and earlier Afghan politicians - of 'Pashtunistan' was, if not destroyed, then severely problematized by the migration of so many Pashtuns into the territory of arch-rival Pakistan. But how exactly? This chapter seeks to explain.

Days of Flight