Afghan refugee returns top 100,000 in 2004

The number of Afghan refugees returning home to their war-ravaged country from neighbouring Pakistan in 2004 touched the 100,000 mark on Monday, with officials of the office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) terming the surge in volume as significant. "The rate of return is much faster than we had initially anticipated because last year we didn't reach the 100,000 mark for the 2003 campaign until the end of May," Jack Redden, a spokesman for the agency, told IRIN at a ceremony arranged specially to commemorate the occasion in the capital, Islamabad. The increase in the number of refugees returning to Afghanistan could be attributed to two factors, Redden said. "One is that the voluntary repatriation programme itself will end in March 2006, so I think people have this target in mind, that they are going to make up their minds to return inside these two years," he explained. Also, most refugees had said that, according to their information, there were job opportunities in Afghanistan and that they considered the security situation to have improved, Redden said. "As you know, security is patchy in Afghanistan, but clearly the people who are going back - which is more than we expected - have concluded it is safe to return to Afghanistan," he added. Guenet Guebre-Christos, the UNHCR resident representative for Pakistan, told IRIN she was "pleasantly surprised" at the impressive rate of returns, calling it "significant". "[We are] ... more than satisfied. It's a pleasant surprise, because we just started on 3 March and to reach within a period of two months the 100,000 figure mark is quite significant," she asserted, as UNHCR staff scurried about the makeshift marquee in preparation for the impending arrival of Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the Pakistani minister for refugees, who was going to personally wish the departing refugees farewell. Just a short distance from the tent, where a convoy of buses and trucks stood parked in anticipation of the minister's arrival, a group of women and children sat in the shade provided by the massive bulk of a nearby truck, while a man with a small child in his arms paced to and from a bus. "I have been here in Pakistan for 11 years," Mohammed Hafeez, the Afghan refugee with the child, told IRIN. An electrician in his native Kabul, he said he fled his country after seeing the first signs of the Taliban's aggressive intent. "I feared for my family's lives, my children. I didn't want them to suffer as I saw other people suffering. Pakistan provided us [with] a home and comfort for so long, but now it's time to go back and pick up the pieces," Hafeez said, in hesitant Urdu. Once the minister arrived, the refugees - all men, since the women and children were already ensconced in the buses - crowded around the little tent to hear him speak in Pushto, before Sherpao personally handed repatriation certificates to some of them. "Today, we have reached the mark of 2 million people repatriated from Pakistan since the commencement of the voluntary repatriation process in 2002," Indrika Rattawate, a UNHCR senior repatriation coordinator, told the assemblage. "It is also a significant day today because it marks the 100,000th return for the year 2004, as well," he added. Packed into buses, with personal belongings stacked at the back, women and small children waited patiently for their journey to begin, as the ceremony went on in the background. One small child had decided she had had enough of sitting and tried to escape from her mother's firm grasp, earning an immediate rebuke - and a bottle of water, which appeared to placate her. Sherpao spoke in Pushto for the benefit of the assembled refugees, all of whom listened intently to his speech. Afterwards, he translated a short synopsis of what he had said for the benefit of the foreigners present. "I have said that we are very grateful to UNHCR and all the donor agencies for helping these poor Afghans who have been through a lot of hardship. And it's been two decades," he said. "Whatever has happened, we have all been through the difficulties with them. And, we will remain steadfast in our resolve to have the Afghan refugees on our soil till such time conditions improve in Afghanistan - and they are improving," he stressed. The fact that the 100,000 refugee return milestone had been achieved so quickly this year was an indication that things were improving in Afghanistan, Sherpao said. "We would want the reconstruction in Afghanistan to go on [at] a fast pace so that our brothers can go back to their country. But we are all very grateful to UNHCR and all the donor agencies for looking after them, for sympathetically solving their problems," he said. The UNHCR repatriation process, which started in March 2002, was suspended late last year, following the brutal murder of an employee of the refugee agency in Afghanistan. It resumed in March, following assurances from both the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan - signatories, along with UNHCR, to a tripartite agreement that governs the repatriation process - about the provision of increased security. The tripartite agreement, which is due to run until early 2006, enshrines the principles of voluntary and gradual repatriation. "The fact that we started this repatriation process in 2002, and we have repatriated 2 million people is quite satisfactory. It makes this operation one of the largest ongoing repatriation processes globally," Guebre-Christos said.