Focus on challenges facing returnees

Mohammad Hanif's dream is to return home with his family to his native town in northeastern Afghanistan, but his two attempts to go back last year ended in failure. The 44 year-old Afghan refugee told IRIN he would try again later. Living for over a decade in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province, Hanif explained why his dream of going home along with his wife and eight children is yet to materialise. "I went back along with a funeral, but saw no chances of survival," Hanif said, explaining that he returned to Konar in August to ascertain whether he would be able to bring his family back and start a new life. "I saw no chances of survival - there was no employment, no work." Hanif again returned after the rout of the Taliban from Afghanistan in early December. "I saw anarchy over there. Everybody with weapons were the rulers, and the rest were subjects," he said, deploring the return of former mujahidin commanders whose infighting after the withdrawal of Soviet forces had destroyed whatever was left of war-torn Afghanistan. Disappointed, he made his way back to Peshawar, in no hurry to try again. He said he would now wait for things to settle down in Afghanistan, where a six-month interim authority has been set up as a first step towards the formation of a broad-based multiethnic government to bring about peace and stability. Hanif is just one of many facing the same predicament, for there is growing evidence that the challenges awaiting returnees may prove too great to overcome. Apart from the economic hardships they will encounter in a country whose infrastructure has been destroyed and its economy in ruins, returnees also face a volatile security situation - their primary reason for having left home in the first place. To add to these woes, there are land mines, drought and uncertainty over whether international aid will reach them in Afghanistan. Hanif's story was broadly echoed by the other refugees living in Peshawar - some having been there for two decades now. Most of them have settled, started their own businesses, or are working. But many still depend on charities and hand-outs from the UN or nongovernmental organisations. Many Afghan refugees say they wish to go home, but find it impossible to do so because of security concerns, lack of jobs, the worst drought in living memory and overall economic impoverishment. Pakistan hosts more than two million Afghans and has officially refused to accept any more, citing lack of resources and security concerns. Some refugees have no intention of returning at all. "I have more Pakistani friends than Afghans. I don't know Afghanistan as well as I do Pakistan, I don't want to go back," said Jamshid Ibrahimkhel, a 22 year-old Afghan refugee who fled in 1988 and completed his education in Peshawar. "Going back would ruin all my future plans, but if I am able to live a life of my choice and my personal freedom is guaranteed, I may choose to go back," added Ibrahimkhel, an assistant in an NGO office. Meanwhile, Fatoumata Kaba, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Thursday that several thousand Afghans were waiting in no-man's-land to be admitted to the Killi Faizo camp in Baluchistan Province, southwestern Pakistan. She noted that this was a surprisingly large number compared with the numbers of those going home. "The majority of these new arrivals come from southern Afghanistan, while others have come from as far as Konduz and Herat, respectively in northern and western Afghanistan. Twenty-eight Konduz families explained that they had to flee their villages of Karghosi and Faryah over two weeks ago due to bombardments. They say that the bombardment was due to false suspicion of the presence of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters in their villages, where some 150 villagers were killed, prompting them to flee southwards to Pakistan," Kaba said at a news briefing. The US-led coalition launched its military campaign against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden on 7 October. Bin Laden is blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks in the US. Whereas the Taliban have been routed from Afghanistan, their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Bin Laden have not been arrested by the coalition forces. Kaba said testimony from eight other families coming from the village of Malakbarat in the Herat region, western Afghanistan, also indicated that they had fled for fear of bombardment after a village near theirs was hit nine days ago. "Although their village was not directly targeted, they felt frightened after hearing of the killing of 22 civilians in the bombardment," she said. Most of those arriving, however, were from the Spin Buldak camps for internally displaced persons, where they had been receiving very little assistance, Kaba added. An aid worker in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan Province, told IRIN that some people were returning to Pakistan from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold, because there was insufficient aid for them there. While there is growing evidence that conditions are improving in Kandahar, humanitarian needs throughout southern Afghanistan remain acute. Aid workers say they expect the situation to deteriorate unless more assistance is brought in. "One family interviewed by the refugee agency said the southern city of Kandahar they had fled was peaceful, but added they had not been able to feed their children due to the lack of humanitarian aid," a UNHCR statement issued in Islamabad on Wednesday said. According to the statement, four Pashtun families said they had fled Herat because of harassment by members of the Uzbek Northern Alliance members. "They said the soldiers were looting in the city and forcing people belonging to the Pashtun tribe to pay them money." UNHCR, now working very hard to accommodate the new Afghan refugees pouring into Pakistan, fears it may soon run out of space if the influx into Chaman, the main crossing point on the border with Baluchistan, continues at its present rate. UNHCR's camp at Roghani is full to capacity, with 17,000 refugees. The Landi Kareze camp, 15 km west of Chaman, has room for only 3,000 more people before reaching its full capacity of 10,000. The Killi Faizo staging site near Chaman, now accommodating 3,000 people, is also nearly full. Kaba said UNHCR had managed to move about 1,000 Afghans into the Landi Kareze camp on Thursday, after several thousand refugees unexpectedly arrived in the no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Some of the families have set up makeshift tents with clothing and plastic material to protect themselves at night in the no-man's-land area. Just how many of them there are remains uncertain, but at least 3,000 of them are visible, while several other thousands are reported to be farther out of site in the no-man's-land area," Kaba said. Meanwhile, UNHCR is working with its partners to find ways of accommodate these refugees in the Chaman area. "Already, we are in negotiations with the local authorities to extend our Landi Kareze camp northwards to increase its reception capacity. Due to land disputes, we are unable to extend our Roghani camp, but we are also working with the managers of the United Arab Emirates camp in the same location to see how their camp could be extended to take in more of the new refugees," Kaba said.