The Exiles Return.(Afghanistan)

Fawad Muslim knows how tough a life in exile can be. In 1984, at the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he fled his homeland on horseback with his mother and older brother. The group traveled at night and hid by day, surviving mostly on green tea and bread. From Pakistan they eventually made their way to America, where Muslim faced the equally daunting challenge of being a teenager in America. He took a job at Roy Rogers and played videogames on his home computer. He also went to mosque on Fridays, didn't date and dreamed of returning to Afghanistan. "It was tough fasting [during Ramadan] at Roy Rogers," says the 28-year-old. "It was really hot in the kitchen, and I would get dehydrated."

Going home may prove even tougher. Like many of the 5 million other Afghans who abandoned their violence-racked homeland over the past two decades, Muslim returned after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban last fall. Also like a growing number of Western returnees, he landed himself a good job: with the help of Afghan connections in the Washington, D.C., area, Muslim--who earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from George Mason University--was appointed director of technology at the Foreign Ministry in Kabul. Other exiles from the West have been hired as doctors and engineers, bureaucrats and teachers. The country desperately needs such skilled professionals; most of its educated classes either were killed or fled from the Soviets, the mujahedin or the Taliban. Yet their return is breeding resentment among those Afghans who stayed behind during the country's dark years. "Local Afghans don't understand why Afghans coming from abroad, who didn't suffer all these years, should be rewarded with jobs," says Daiva Vilkelyte, a program coordinator for the International Organization for Migration.

More than 1 million Afghans have returned to their homeland since March, shattering the United Nations' 12-month projection in only four months. The Ministry of Repatriation and Refugee Affairs, dormant under the Taliban, is buzzing. Teachers, doctors and engineers were the first to heed President Hamid Karzai's call for skilled help. Many boarded planes in the United States, Germany or Australia--the top three hubs for the diaspora in the West--and came back to Kabul for the first time since the 1970s. But these Afghans are the minority, perhaps fewer than 1,000 in all. The vast majority have traveled from Pakistan over treacherous mountain passes in the back of open trucks. Many believe they have nothing to lose, leaving behind dismal refugee-camp existence and the resentment of their hosts. But their fate is decidedly different from those returning from the West: without credentials or connections, many have become Kabul's newest squatters, resorting to panhandling to make a living.

Western exiles have already amassed a remarkable degree of political power. Karzai, who himself spent most of the last decade in Pakistan, recently appointed several foreign returnees to posts in his new cabinet. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who lived most recently in Maryland, was named Finance minister, replacing Hedayat Amin Arsala, another returnee from the United States. Taj Mohammad Wardak, an American citizen and longtime resident of southern California, was named Interior minister. Sharif Fayez and Seyed Makhdoom Rahin, both returnees from Virginia, retained their positions from the interim ...