Coming Back : Diary of a Mission to Afghanistan

In March 2002, the repatriation of Afghan refugees began. It was one of the largest migrations in history, an exodus of biblical proportions, yet this time people were not fleeing, but returning to their own country, where they found demolished houses, mined fields, and no water supplies. Edoardo Albinati spent 4 months in Afghanistan working in the UNHCR centers where the tide of returnees was at its peak. He travelled around the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, the deserts and the rural areas in search of solutions for the reintegration of the refugees. This book—written with the zest of a diarist and peopled by a myriad unforgettable faces and stories—is the daily account of what he saw, heard, and did while hundreds of thousands of people struggling for survival rolled past in overcrowded trucks. It is the critical, impassioned testimony of a gigantic collective effort whose outcome is still highly uncertain.