Indonesia has been struggling to cope with a surge of Afghan asylum-seekers since the beginning of 2009, officials say. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that between January 1 and August 31 it had registered 1,371 Afghan asylum-seekers, and that in the first six months of 2009 there had been a 925 per cent increase in the number of asylum-seekers on the figure for the whole of 2008. It has also officially recognised 142 as refugee. However, Indonesian immigration officials say their actual numbers probably run into the thousands, as many slip into the country unrecorded. Afghans accounted for over 60 per cent of the 2,414 asylum-seekers and refugees currently registered by the UNHCR in Indonesia.
Most claim to come from Afghanistan’s central province of Ghazni, and 80 per cent are from the ethnic Hazara group. Most of the Afghans seen by the UNHCR have made it to Indonesia using agents, including people smugglers and traffickers, and their main destination is Australia.