REFUGEES
2001: 8.4 million
2012: 2.7 million
During the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s, roughly 6 million Afghans (out of a population of 15 million) fled the country for neighboring Pakistan and Iran. And the years of civil war that followed the Soviet withdraw saw a couple million more civilians flee the country, especially in the face of systematic massacres carried out by the Taliban in northern and western Afghanistan.
With the loss of roughly half of its population over two decades, the country appeared strangely bare by 2001. Bergen describes traveling through the war-ravaged country soon after the November 2001 fall of the Taliban: "Those few visitors who traveled would find village after village empty. What were once houses now lay in fallen-down baked-mud ruins, like the remnants of some long-gone civilization."
But Afghanistan's Ozymandias moment has passed, as more than 5.7 million refugees have voluntarily returned in the last decade. Villages are filling up and Kabul is bustling with activity once again.
In this picture taken on Nov. 27, 2012, Afghan refugees arrive at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registration center on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan before departing for their homeland.
A. MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images
