Repatriation through Milak remains suspended

Efforts to repatriate Afghan refugees through the southern Iranian border crossing of Milak remain suspended pending security concerns arising from a recent shooting incident, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Iran has confirmed. Meanwhile, those scheduled to be repatriated through Milak will instead return through the main border crossing at Dogharun in the northeastern province of Khorasan, where operations continue unaffected. "Operations at Milak will resume when security is ensured and adequate logistical arrangements are put in place," the UNHCR chief of mission, Philippe Lavanchy, told IRIN from the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Thursday. UNHCR suspended its operations on Sunday afternoon after an Iranian border guard tried to prevent a group of people entering Iran by firing a warning shot into the air and giving chase in an area known as Zero Point along the border. At the time of the incident, agency staff were in the immediate vicinity supervising the return of a convoy of Afghan returnees from Milak to the western Afghan city of Zaranj - all of whom were obliged to dive for cover when the group the border guard was chasing ran straight into the UNHCR operation. While no one was injured in the incident, the refugee agency maintains it cannot operate under conditions where the lives of refugees and staff members are put in danger, and has called on the Iranian authorities to remedy the situation. Since the start of the UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation programme in Iran on 9 April, of the 240,209 Afghans who have gone home from Iran, 183,918 have received assistance from UNHCR - about three-quarters of the total. UNHCR said 95 percent of the returnees were using the Dogharun crossing point. Repatriation from Iran has continued at a steady pace over the past week, with almost 20,000 returning as part of the UNHCR programme. Meanwhile, in a related development this week, UNHCR confirmed that more than 1.6 million Afghans have returned home since March constituting the largest single refugee repatriation in 30 years. In a statement on Tuesday, agency spokesman, Ron Redmond said more than 1.63 million people have returned to Afghanistan over the past six months. By adding the estimates of spontaneous or unassisted returns since late 2001, more than 1.9 million Afghans have repatriated to the war-torn country. In 1972, more than 9.8 million Bengalis who had fled earlier returned to Bangladesh. He noted, however, that in spite of the fact that there had been a rapid decline in the number of Afghans being repatriated from Pakistan, thousands were still continuing to go home daily. "There has, however, been an increase in returns from Iran," Redmond said. "Considering the state of Afghanistan's infrastructure and the security problems that still affect many areas, this is an astonishing number." Although the number of refugees and other Afghans still outside the country is difficult to assess due to the large number of migrant workers in countries like Pakistan and Iran, UNHCR estimates that two million will go home this year.