(NBC) A wave of anxiety washed over Mohammad Farooq Niazi as the plane touched down in his homeland.
“I missed my country,” he said, recalling his mindset on the day he returned to Afghanistan after almost three years of trying to build a new life in Europe. “But I wasn’t feeling safe.”
As traffic crawled into Kabul, Niazi worried he’d be killed in one of the regular attacks carried out by militant groups including the Taliban and the Islamic State.
Niazi, 27, is one of thousands of Afghan migrants who have been paid to return home by European governments. Austria gave him $3,100 and a one-way ticket to Kabul. The rest was up to him.
More than 400,000 Afghans lodged asylum claims in Europe for the first time from 2015 through 2017, according to European Union figures.
