Relocation of Jalozai refugees begins

About 500 refugees from the makeshift Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) were relocated to a camp in the Bajaur Agency in the province's Tribal Areas on Monday. "We have prioritised those in Jalozai, because facilities for new arrivals are poor and they are not being assisted here," Jan Sigismund, a field officer for the office of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN.

UNHCR has identified some 15 sites in the NWFP for new arrivals from Afghanistan fleeing the US-led air strikes. The relocation was postponed last week following security fears and a delay in preparing the camp. But Sigismund said the site was now ready and that the Pakistani authorities had undertaken to guarantee the safety of refugees.

Shirina, who has been living in Jalozai for the past six days, was among the first 500 to leave for Bajaur. She told IRIN she had left the Afghan capital, Kabul, with her five children after bombing intensified, and she feared for her family's safety. As a widow with no support, she thought the best thing for her to do was to head for Pakistan. She travelled as far as she could by car, then started walking, and eventually crossed the closed border on horseback.

After spending the few days in Jalozai and feeding her children on dry bread alone, Shirina said she realised there were no resources for those who had arrived recently from Afghanistan, and opted to move to Bajaur instead. "There is no room in Jalozai and no food," she said. "We didn't have a proper tent, so we were living under a plastic sheet."

Asked if she would return to Afghanistan now that the capital had fallen to opposition forces, Shirina said: "There is still too much fighting and too much destruction, and I don't want to go back." As she boarded the bus with her three bundles of belongings to take her on the five-hour journey to Bajaur, she remarked that the Taliban had given Islam a bad name.

Another widow, Gul Bushra, told IRIN she had come to Pakistan from the northern Afghan province of Konduz after fighting intensified in her home town. The journey had taken her six days of walking and hitch-hiking with her four children. She too had crossed the border unofficially. No stranger to Pakistan, she had fled there once before during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

On the bus, a doctor was on standby to treat any of the refugees who might fall ill on the way. On arrival in Bajaur, they would be given a hot meal, materials for shelter and kitchen utensils.

Although the refugees were happy to move, there had earlier been criticism from some NGOs which said their lives could be in danger at the Bajaur camp. Medecins sans frontieres (MSF) had welcomed last week's suspension of the relocation, saying that facilities at the camp were not ready. MSF added that refugees from Jalozai belonging to groups other than the Pashtun could come under threat from members of that ethnic group (to which most of the Taliban belong) living in the village of Kotkai near the camp site.

However, UNHCR said it would only be moving Pashtuns to the camp to avoid such problems. Asked if UNHCR was worried about Taliban recruitment from the camp, Sigismund said the agency would be monitoring the area so there would be very little chance of that happening.

The capacity of Bajaur is 20,000, and Sigismund said UNHCR teams would also be identifying refugees in urban areas to be moved to the new camps. "Two more camps in the NWFP will be completed in about two weeks' time so we can start moving more refugees so they are better assisted during the winter time," he added.

Earlier, the UN had estimated that, in a worst-case scenario, 1.5 million refugees might attempt to cross into Pakistan. To date, 150,000 have entered, of whom 75,000 are in the NWFP.

Provision for camp sites at Pakistan's southwestern border with Afghanistan is also being made. UNHCR has resettled nearly 3,200 refugees at the newly established Roghani camp, some 16 km from the Chaman border crossing. Pakistan, along with all the other countries neighbouring Afghanistan, has closed its border in fear of a huge influx of refugees.