Increased concern over Chaman refugees

The plight of 13,000 newly arrived Afghans at Chaman, a Pakistani border town, is raising serious concern amongst aid workers on the ground. The refugees, many of them vulnerable women and children, are receiving only limited assistance following Islamabad's adamant refusal to allow them entry into Pakistan proper. "The whole situation is inching towards crisis," UNHCR spokesman, Yusuf Hassan told IRIN on Wednesday in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. "To avert that, we are urging the Pakistani government to allow us to move these people to new camps in Baluchistan where assistance can be provided," he said. Such a move could be done quickly once the necessary permission from Islamabad was procured, he said. Hassan's comments followed this weekend's dramatic increase of 7,000 new arrivals now stranded on the desolate windswept site along the border with Afghanistan, now home to thousands since they first began arriving on 4 January. With temperatures dropping below zero, no adequate shelter, and limited assistance, their plight was now worsening by the hour, he said. "We are very concerned about the vulnerable there," Hassan said, adding the situation was deteriorating. "We need to move them quickly to alleviate their suffering and avert a crisis," he warned. Echoing this concern, Tim Baerwaldt, project coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieries (MSF) told IRIN from Chaman: "If conditions do not change, the situation could greatly deteriorate. The situation is quite poor." With temperatures sometimes below freezing at night, he warned of an increase in the number of acute respiratory infections, adding many of the new refugees were already in poor condition when they arrived, making them particularly vulnerable to such infections. MSF has succeeded in providing water to the area and has had some success in providing health assistance to some of the people, Baerwaldt said. Hassan added there was a very urgent need for the vulnerable - particularly women and children - to be allowed in so that they could receive medical care. Just days earlier, two babies had been born in the open air and cases of measles amongst the children had been found, he said. According to UNHCR, 41 percent of those surveyed at the makeshift site came from the neighbouring southern Afghan province of Kandahar, while the rest came from all over the country, as far away as the western province of Herat and the northern province of Kunduz. Forced to flee because of drought, hunger and conflict, the overwhelming majority had left their homes and come to Pakistan for the first time ever. Of the respondents, 23 percent said they had been in Pakistan before as refugees, but had returned home. Asked why they had come, most people cited drought and hunger as the main contributing factors, closely followed by an increased state of lawlessness inside the country. Another 14 percent said they had come after being made homeless by US bombings, while another 16 percent cited a combination of all these factors. Although there had been earlier speculation that the newly arrived Afghans in Chaman were Kutchis, a nomadic group of people, their numbers have proven to be very small. Some 94 percent of the arrivals were ethnic Pashtuns, while the rest were Tajiks, Baluchs, Uzbeks, and others, the survey found. Hassan said that there were 10 new camps in the southwest province of Baluchistan where they had been receiving people and where UNHCR was ready to assist those stranded in Chaman. "In the last seven weeks, we have moved 80,000 new Afghan refugee into these facilities," he said. Asked if he was hopeful a resolution could be found, Hassan said a senior UNHCR official was meeting with government officials to press the case further. "We are hoping for a breakthrough," he maintained. The UN estimates that Pakistan, like neighbouring Iran, already hosts more than two million Afghan refugees. Islamabad has long maintained it cannot shoulder the burden alone and has repeatedly called for greater international assistance.