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From Our Own Correspondent: Starting again: The lives of refugees in their new home

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Starting again: The lives of refugees in their new home

09/10/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Starting again: The lives of refugees in their new home

What is it like to leave everything behind and begin life afresh?

There are more than 80 million displaced people around the world. We hear from one who fled Afghanistan with just half an hour to pack his bags, as he adjusts to life in the UK.

Stories from Afghanistan and the UK, Lebanon, Mozambique and The Canary Islands

What is it like to re-start your life from scratch – to lose your home, your possessions, the familiar comfort of your friends, relatives and neighbours? There are more than 80 million displaced people around the world, the most recent wave coming from Afghanistan, after the Taliban took over. Karim Haidari had fled The Taliban the last time they ran the country, and now he has had to do so again. He describes what it was like to leave with just 30 minutes notice, and adapt to a new life in the UK.

Anna Foster chose to begin life afresh. She has just been appointed as one of the BBC’s Middle East reporters, based in Beirut. She had of course read about the current problems in Lebanon: shortages of food, medicine and power. But that did not prepare her for life in a city where even the traffic lights can’t function properly, and where power cuts are so regular that people simply factor them into their everyday lives.

Lebanon and the wider Middle East have long played host to Islamist groups, jostling for power by means both political and military. In Africa, however, modern Islamist violence is a relatively new phenomenon. Mozambique has suffered an Islamist insurgency since 2017, one which has ended up killing thousands of people. The country’s government called on Rwanda’s army to help tackle these armed groups, an intervention which Rwanda claims has been successful. Anne Soy visited the affected area, and met the troops who have been fighting there. 

Nature can send people fleeing, as much as any war or economic catastrophe. A volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma has been erupting since last month, sending molten lava streaming down onto the villages below. Dan Johnson had studied volcanoes at university, but found it was a whole new experience when he arrived at the site of the disaster, and watched as people packed their possessions into cars and pickup trucks and fled for their lives.

(Image: Afghan refugees arrive at Royal Air Force Brize Norton escorted by UK Armed Forces. Credit: MoD/Crown Copyright 2021)

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