Comprehensive Afghan census to begin in February

The first comprehensive census of more than a million Afghans living in Pakistan is to begin on 20 February, authorities told IRIN on Thursday. In preparation, census staff have almost completed the mapping of areas where Afghans are believed to be residing across the country. "The census teams have finished the work of identifying locations of Afghan households in many areas, like in the provinces of Sindh and NWFP [North West Frontier Province], while in Punjab, over 95 percent of the mapping has been done," Dr Imran Zeb, director at the office of the Chief Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CCAR), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. The Pakistani government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) earlier this month announced that a census of all Afghans living in the country would soon take place. The survey will include all Afghans who arrived in Pakistan since December 1979, when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began. The proposed census, according to the CCAR official, would be the most comprehensive survey of its kind, and provide vital information to help Islamabad and UNHCR in the development of long term solutions to the issue of large numbers of Afghans still in Pakistan more than three years after the end of civil war and the Taliban regime. UNHCR has been assisting the voluntary repatriation of Afghans since 2002 under a tripartite agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the refugee agency, which runs till March 2006. In the past three years, UNHCR has assisted nearly 2.3 million Afghans to return from Pakistan and anticipates a further 400,000 will repatriate during 2005. "The basic thing is that we are not looking just at the actual number of Afghans, but we need to know when and where they came from and what they are currently doing in Pakistan. Only then can we be in a position to formulate any future policy about Afghans living here," Zeb explained. The census teams would record the gender, ethnicity, address and the source of livelihood of those Afghans surveyed. They will also record when Afghans arrived in Pakistan and whether or not they intend to return to Afghanistan by the end of the voluntary repatriation programme. UNHCR teams have distributed nearly 340,000 copies of an information leaflet to Afghans, explaining the purpose of the census. But some observers are questioning how thorough the census process is likely to be. "The teams would only count the members of a family present at home at the time of the census team's visit. And there is no way to count those absent - the Afghan refugee population is highly mobile," Nasreen Ghufran, a political analyst, told IRIN from Peshawar, capital of NWFP province, and home to the majority of Afghans in the country. "It is extremely difficult to carry out a census of such a dispersed population in just 10 days," Ghufran cautioned. Another area of concern is the fact that many Afghans have managed to obtain Pakistani passports and identity cards. "Unless there is any effective way to check the fake identities, it is not going to give a true picture of the [Afghan] refugee population in Pakistan and would be only a cosmetic exercise unable to serve the purpose," the analyst said. The Pakistani government estimates more than three million Afghans are still living in Pakistan, with more than one million living in UNHCR-administered camps mainly in the provinces of Balochisatn and NWFP.