All events · After the Wall

Afghan Civil War and Taliban-Era Displacement

1992–2001 · South & Central Asia

Displacement Mass Killing

Displaced

700,000

At least 700,000 internally displaced and 3.6 million Afghans still refugees by October 2001 (Forced Migration Review); over 100,000 displaced into the Panjshir valley and about 40,000 into Kabul within two weeks during the Taliban's Shomali offensive in August 1999, and over 172,000 crossing into Pakistan in 2000 (UN figures cited by Human Rights Watch).

Share of the population affected

4.7%

of the population of Afghanistan at the start of the factional civil war in 1992, 1992

Killed

25,000–50,000

conflict deaths incl. combatants

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What happened

The mujahidin capture of Kabul in April 1992 prompted the return of some 900,000 refugees, the largest and fastest repatriation UNHCR had then assisted, but factional fighting for control of the capital destroyed a third of the city by 1995 and killed an estimated 50,000 people, about 25,000 of them in 1994 alone. The Taliban's advance, taking Kabul in 1996 and Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, produced fresh exoduses of professionals and of ethnic minorities, particularly Hazaras. During the August 1999 Shomali offensive the Taliban forced civilians from their homes and then burned houses, crops, wells and irrigation canals to prevent return; the UN estimated some 40,000 people reached Kabul in two weeks and over 100,000 were displaced into the Panjshir valley, while about a thousand Tajik men were separated from their families and detained. Human Rights Watch recorded the killing of at least 2,000 people, mostly Hazara civilians, at Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998 and at least 178 civilians at Yakaolang in January 2001, after which Taliban forces burned the town and surrounding villages. By October 2001 at least 700,000 Afghans were internally displaced and 3.6 million remained refugees.

Parties

Rival mujahidin factions destroyed much of Kabul in factional fighting, and Taliban forces later expelled and burned out civilian populations in the Shomali plain and massacred civilians in Hazara and Tajik areas

Disputed

Responsibility for the destruction of Kabul in 1992-96 is disputed among the mujahidin factions involved, and no agreed nationwide death or displacement total for the period exists; drought from 1999 onwards compounded conflict displacement in ways sources separate differently.

The denominator

UN estimates put Afghanistan's resident population at roughly 14-16 million in 1992; no census had been completed since the partial count of 1979, and the figure excludes the several million Afghans already living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran after the Soviet war.

Displacement in this period layered on top of the Soviet-war exodus that had already sent some 6 million Afghans abroad, and large numbers moved back and forth across the Pakistani border more than once, so the figure is not a clean count of newly uprooted individuals.

Where the baseline comes from

World Population Prospects — UN Population Divisionofficial
Afghan refugees — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Both figures relate to Kabul only: Human Rights Watch estimated about 25,000 killed in Kabul in 1994 alone, mostly civilians hit by rocket and artillery fire, while Forced Migration Review gives roughly 50,000 deaths in the fight for the capital between 1992 and 1996. Countrywide deaths for the decade, including the Mazar-i-Sharif and Yakaolang massacres and the drought years, have never been credibly aggregated.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionDestruction of PropertyArbitrary Detention

Human Rights Watch documented the massacres at Mazar-i-Sharif and Yakaolang, the shooting and arrest of men during the Shomali expulsions, the burning of homes, crops and wells, and the detention of about a thousand Tajik men.