Refugee return drops due to security concerns

Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan have delayed their repatriation after the assassination of Afghanistan's transitional vice-president, Haji Qadir, last week.

Afghan civil society representatives told IRIN on Wednesday that the Afghans were also concerned about rampant violence in northern Afghanistan, coupled with a fear of errant American bombs, such as those which killed dozens of civilians a week ago.

"Security is the first concern of the refugees, and they are worried for their lives," Muhammad Hassan Taimuri, head of the Afghan National Shura [council] told IRIN from Quetta, capital of the southwestern Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan.

He added that incidents such as Haji Qadir’s assassination and the US bombing raid on a wedding party in the central province of Oruzgan prompted many people to reconsider their decision to go home. Some 3,000 families in the Surkhab refugee camp, about 80 km north of Quetta, had suspended their journey home this week, he said.

A similar situation seemingly prevails in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, which has accommodated the largest Afghan refugee population in Pakistan over the past two decades. "The murder [of Haji Qadir] has dashed people’s hopes, and they see grim circumstances ahead," Zahir Babri, an Afghan journalist, told IRIN from Peshawar.

Babri, who had recently returned after attending Haji Qadir’s funeral in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, added that he had seen far fewer people returning to Afghanistan in comparison to the massive exodus last month. "Many people who had packed everything have postponed their journeys and are staying back," he said.

However, some did not subscribe to this grim analysis. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, the head of Afghanistan’s National Commission for Human Rights, an Afghan NGO in Peshawar, maintained that Qadir's murder would not affect the return of ordinary people. "This was a peculiar terrorism incident," he said. "The real problem is that there is no [functioning} economy in the country."

Also downplaying the issue, Jack Redden, a spokesman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN that the number of people being repatriated had dropped before the Loya Jirga in mid-June, but had then risen again. "On Sunday 7 June, 12,000 people returned to Afghanistan, which is similar to the trend last week," he said.

Asked whether the country was safe for return, Redden maintained that in general it was. "There are pockets of concern, especially in the north," he said. Many aid agencies have suspended their operations after attacks on aid workers in the north. UNHCR is also facing a funding crisis, and has already reduced the volume of its assistance to refugees.

UNHCR estimates that up to 1.2 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan so far - more than 1.1 million from Pakistan, over 90,000 from Iran and just over 9,000 from Tajikistan.