NEW DELHI—It was barely noon on a hot Monday in March, but Ferhana was already exhausted. She had spent hours outside the United Nations’ refugee office in India’s capital, joining dozens of other Afghan refugees in a protest demanding resettlement in the West as well as jobs and education for their children.

Just as she moved to take a sip from her water bottle, Ferhana, who asked that her last name not be used out of fear of repercussions for her family in Afghanistan, fainted—sending surrounding protesters into a frenzy. Within moments, they helped her to a nearby bench. A friend waved a protest placard like a fan to cool Ferhana down, but in the blistering heat of India’s summer, it did little to lighten the stiflingly hot air.

Then a contingent of police officers arrived and asked the protesters to disperse. When they objected, police cited a court order that prevents gatherings around the U.N. compound. The order was issued by the Delhi High Court in October 2021 after local residents complained that the recurring demonstrations had become a nuisance.

“They don’t even let us protest,” Ferhana lamented as she made her way back to Lajpat Nagar, a New Delhi neighborhood that houses thousands of Afghan refugees who have fled the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion. That event set off a string of foreign wars and occupations that ultimately led to the Taliban’s takeover after the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021.

According to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, India hosts more than 15,000 refugees from Afghanistan. (This figure includes the children of Afghans born in India.) There are almost twice as many who are not registered with the agency, according to the Afghan Solidarity Committee, a nongovernmental organization that advocates on behalf of Afghan refugees in India. Most left home to escape violence and fled to India on tourist visas, imagining the country would be a safe haven. But India is not part of the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and thus does not legally recognize refugees—leaving migrants vulnerable to arrest and deportation.

Ferhana described Bamiyan as a serene and peaceful valley that she never imagined leaving. Even after the Taliban tore down the city’s famous Buddha statues in 2001—claiming they violated Islam’s ban on idolatry—Ferhana and her family chose to stay. “Many of our relatives and neighbors were fleeing Afghanistan because of the war, but I could never think of leaving my home,” she said.

The tipping point came when the Taliban brutally killed Ferhana’s husband in 2010. “No more!” she remembers saying. “I’m leaving.” Ferhana left Bamiyan in the middle of the night with her five children to seek a fresh start in India. In 2011, they arrived in New Delhi with very little money and no place to stay.

But seeking asylum in India—which Ferhana thought would be a relatively fast process, especially with proof she had fled violence, persecution, and death threats in Afghanistan—turned out to be an administrative tar pit that she and her family would be mired in for more than a decade.

“Once Afghans come to India, we get trapped inside a legal limbo from where it is impossible to escape,” she said, showing Foreign Policy all the documents she has amassed over the years. “I and my children have no future in India, but we are still left to rot here.” It is nearly impossible for Afghans to obtain visas for Western countries to enter an asylum process there. And even on the off chance that a visa application is successful, restarting the lengthy asylum process elsewhere is financially and logistically burdensome.

“For years, I have been begging U.N. and Indian authorities to either give us Indian citizenship or resettle us to some other country, but no one listens,” Ferhana said. Over the last 10 years, she has made countless trips to the local UNHCR office and even petitioned Indian politicians to help—with no success.

When Afghan asylum-seekers land in India, they must register with UNHCR. They then receive a document colloquially called the “blue paper,” which confirms that their status as a refugee is under consideration by UNHCR.

Acquisition of the blue paper is followed by a refugee status determination interview, a quasi-judicial process where asylum-seekers present their case to UNHCR and attempt to justify why they should be officially registered as a refugee.

However, the wait for interviews can average three years or more, according to Ahmad Zia Ghani, the head of the Afghan Solidarity Committee.

Ghani faced these problems firsthand when he moved to New Delhi from Kabul in 2012. “I used to run a successful construction company in Afghanistan. I would import asphalt from Iran for building roads,” he said. “But the Taliban accused me of collaboration with the Americans, saying the roads were aiding the movement of coalition forces.”

Ghani tried hard to negotiate with the Taliban and local mafia, but after his trucks were burned and his only son kidnapped, he finally gave up and, after securing his son’s release, moved to India, bringing his wife, son, and daughter with him. “I found out there were many problems here concerning Afghan refugees,” Ghani said.

UNHCR’s office in New Delhi grants refugee cards—a quasi-ID that affirms someone is a U.N.-recognized refugee—to petitioners who pass the lengthy application process. Although securing this form of identification might help individuals find odd jobs or accommodation, the refugee cards are not widely recognized by Indian authorities. Ghani and his family have received refugee cards, but Ferhana and her family have only the blue paper.

In 2019, Modi’s government passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which created a legal pathway to citizenship for Afghan, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani immigrants who belong to several South Asian religious groups that are minorities in those countries. But the measure pointedly excludes Islam, the faith practiced by most Afghans, and since the Taliban’s return to power, the Indian government has prioritized evacuating and naturalizing Afghan Sikhs and Hindus. Experts say the government’s move has political undertones.

Even those Afghan refugees who manage to secure refugee cards face grave challenges. Many have depression. Others have found housing to be expensive and sometimes scarce. Learning Hindi, navigating public transportation, and opening a bank account are all difficult. And even members of Afghanistan’s educated elite have had to take menial jobs, as asylum-seekers in India who lack a refugee card cannot request a work permit. Most toil in the informal sector and are vulnerable to exploitation.

Yusuf Khalil, a former banker in Kabul, now works as an accountant at a small firm in New Delhi. As an undocumented employee, he earns about one-quarter of the market-rate salary for accountants. “My family was accustomed to a nice lifestyle in Kabul, but over here, I have huddled them in a one-bedroom apartment,” Yusuf said. “My Indian colleagues who are far less qualified than me are still paid more. It is just because I don’t have a work permit.”

Khalil feels that rising xenophobia has made finding work even more difficult for Afghan refugees. He has heard of an increasing number of Afghans being turned away from jobs because of their identity.

Many Afghan children, meanwhile, cannot attend school because they have no Indian government-issued birth certificates. Most end up working at local restaurants or cellphone repair shops.

When Ferhana arrived in India, she enrolled her children at a local school that worked with UNHCR. But after they matriculated secondary school, they could not find a pre-college program that would admit them. One by one, all of Ferhana’s children were forced to give up on their education—and their dreams.

“Sometimes I wonder if leaving Afghanistan was the right choice. Even if it was fraught with risks, at least my children could complete their education there,” she said.

Between India’s lack of recognition of Afghan refugees and its anti-Muslim citizenship policies, Ghani and many other protesting Afghans feel that resettlement in refugee-friendly countries is the only solution to their plight.

“Had we taken refuge in some other country, we would have received citizenship by now. There are Afghans living in India for 40 years and yet haven’t been naturalized. So it is clear India will never give us citizenship,” Ghani said. “That’s why we are protesting and demanding UNHCR to resettle us to any other refugee-friendly country.”

Ferhana wept as she recalled her escape from Bamiyan and what she has gone through since then.

“If I were in Afghanistan, I would be dead right now,” she said. But with each passing day in India, she added, hope fades that her family will lead a good life. “I am grateful to India” for providing us shelter, she said, “but in this bargain, I’ve lost everything.”