Afghans on the Move

Most of the news out of Afghanistan is about Taliban-inspired violence. In the midst of the chaos, however, are real people trying to stay out of harm's way. That means that a lot of Afghans are on the move. I mentioned this a few days ago, albeit largely from the Pakistani point of view. The Humanitarian Information Unit of the U.S. State Department has just published an infographic with lots of useful details from the Afghan point of view. I have copied it below, but you should go to the original to see it more clearly.

Afghanistan has an estimated 33 million people, and although they are sandwiched in between Pakistan and Iran, the demographics look much more like Africa than either South Asia (in which both Pakistan and Afghanistan are located) and West Asia (where geographers put Iran). For a long time, Afghanistan has had high fertility, high infant and child mortality, and high maternal mortality. A quick glance at the age structure of returnees (which is not unlike the age structure for all of Afghanistan) tells you how disruptive the future demographics are likely to be.