Plight of Piandzh river displaced continues

Reports that thousands of Afghan internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the border with Tajikistan since last year had left the islands in the Piandzh river where they had been stranded had proved to be false, an official of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tajikistan told IRIN on Wednesday. "There remain collectively some 12,000 people on the two islands," Aurvasi Patel, the refugee agency's protection officer, said in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "It's a very fluid situation, but some 1,500 combatants have left the area." Following reports on Monday that both sites - island number 13/14 and island number nine - were empty, UNHCR sent in a verification team on Tuesday. While unable to secure access to island nine, which is close to the Afghan border, reports indicated that some 1,500 people had in fact departed, she said. These people, however, had primarily been combatants. The remaining IDPs now comprised vulnerable women, children and the elderly. Meanwhile, on the other island, close to the Tajik border, initial reports indicated there were new arrivals - eight families - to the site since fighting began, she said. According to the official, it is most likely that the IDPs remaining on the islands will remain there through the winter. "We have been assured that no woman or child will be choosing to return to Afghanistan during the winter," she said. Many of the people interviewed had said they had just completed building their mud shelters and preferred to stay where they were until the situation inside the country stabilised. Patel said UNHCR was in the process of distributing non-food items to both sites, depending on feasibility. Asked to describe the situation, she said conditions for providing relief assistance were much better now that the combatants had left. In March, UNHCR's relief operations to the displaced were suspended for fear of supporting armed fighters living within the population. The decision was based on an earlier fact-finding mission, which had concluded that combatants were present. Initial relief efforts were targeted at the most vulnerable, predominately women and children. However, UNHCR concluded that the assistance was also reaching and supporting combatants, constituting a misuse of relief supplies intended solely for civilians. UNHCR had wanted to bring this group of IDPs into Tajikistan in order to provide assistance in a more feasible environment, but was refused permission by the Tajik authorities. Meanwhile, the country administrator for the British-based medical NGO Merlin, Jane Cockerell, told IRIN she was unsure how long conditions would allow the people on the two islands to remain. "That is the big question. We have been given a very mixed response as people remained concerned over security inside the country," she said. In recent weeks, there had been reports of increased Taliban activity, including looting and burning, in Emam S'heeb, some 15 km south of island number nine, the village of origin of most of the IDPs there, she said. Cockerell added that the IDPs were facing a bitter winter. "Undoubtedly there will be an increase in respiratory infections among residents there."