Second exit point for Afghan returnees opened

Afghans going home from Iran can now use a second exit point along the country's 936 km frontier. The move is expected to facilitate a joint voluntary repatriation programme between the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Iranian government to assist up to 400,000 Afghans go home this year.

"This will make repatriation for thousands of Afghans in that area easier," the UNHCR spokesman, Mohammad Nouri, told IRIN from the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Tuesday. The return process for those belonging to the western Afghan province of Farah and the southwestern province of Nimruz has been substantially expedited, he explained.

"We have less security concerns now as the situation across the border has improved," he said, noting, however, that the agency's role was not to promote a large-scale return of Afghans, but to facilitate the repatriation of those who had made an informed choice to go back, and also to ensure the voluntary nature of such a return.

Nouri's comments follow the reopening on Saturday of the Milak border crossing in Sistan-Baluchestan Province in southeastern Iran. Despite Tehran's announcement making the two border exit points of Dogharun and Milak operational during the programme, all returns have so far taken place from the former - Iran's main border crossing in the country's eastern Khorasan Province.

Reports of fighting north of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz Province, resulted in UNHCR suspending a planned return of refugees to the area in April, and concentrating instead on the traditional border crossing between Dogharun and Eslam Qaleh in the western Afghan province.

However, on Saturday, 545 Afghans passed through Milak, and another 206 on Tuesday morning - the second day the exit point was open for repatriation. It is expected these numbers will increase as more Afghans in southern Iran opt to utilise this exit point rather than to travel northward to Dogharun.

Since the programme was launched on 9 April, a total of 33,657 Afghans have returned from Iran, the bulk of them from Tehran, Zahedan and Kerman provinces - comprising more than 50 percent of total returnees. In addition to transport assistance, returnees receive a small monetary grant and assistance package of food and non-food related items.

Of the Afghans returning from Iran, almost half were returning to Herat and the central provinces of Kabul and Parvan.

Asked if the planned repatriation figure would be revised upwards, Nouri said: "I'm optimistic 400,000 will be achieved. Afghans are watching the situation closely, which will undoubtedly effect their decision to leave."

UNHCR is currently exploring opening a third border crossing between Eslam Qaleh and Zaranj to expedite the repatriation process.

But while the security situation in Nimruz has improved in the past two weeks, NGOs on the ground remain cautious. "It's true the situation has settled, but risks still remain," the Medecins Sans Frontieres head of mission in Tehran, Bruno Jochum, told IRIN. "The question now is really on the operational side so that the safety of the returnees is assured," he explained. The organisation of convoys would have to take all risks into account to avert looting. "Large numbers of returnees with their belongings could become a target".

Meanwhile, almost 57,000 Afghans have spontaneously (unassisted) returned from Iran since the beginning of this year. Nouri noted, however, that as the repatriation programme gained momentum, the average number of people spontaneously returning each day had nearly halved. Prior to the repatriation programme, 1,000 had been returning daily. Now that figure was 500, he said.

The United Nations estimates there are well over two million Afghans in Iran, rendering it, alongside Pakistan, one of the countries hosting the greatest number Afghan refugees today. In a parallel repatriation programme, launched on 1 March, well over 400,000 Afghans have returned from Pakistan.