Focus on Afghan repatriation numbers

Muhammad Ibrahim, a 20-year-old Afghan refugee, checks his luggage before jumping aboard a colourful truck as he prepares to leave the Takhtabaig voluntary repatriation centre (VRC) near Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), for the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. As the year draws to a close and winter sets in, returnee numbers have tailed off. But some families are still deciding that there's no time like the present to make the move from Pakistan. "I have never lived in Afghanistan, but I am optimistic about surviving there," he told IRIN. Ibrahim’s family is one of the few visiting this Takhtabaig VRC to get help with the move back home to Afghanistan. A huge drop in repatriation has emptied the corridors of this centre. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told IRIN about ten families a day were currently crossing, compared with thousands just a few months ago. The harsh Afghan winter is the major reason for the decline in repatriations, in conjunction with uncertain security conditions, unemployment, lack of infrastructure and a lack of health and education services. "Now a very small number of people are going back. Winter is holding back refugees here," Ali Gohar Khan, an official with Pakistan's Commissionarte for Afghan Refugees, a UNHCR partner in repatriation, told IRIN in Takhtabaig. "Everything was crowded but now you can see its all empty," he said. But today's trickle should not mask the fact that it has been a monumental year for UNHCR and other refugee assistance agencies - more than 1.5 million Afghans returned to their country earlier this year following the fall of the Taliban and the emergence of the interim government. According to UNHCR, as of 28 November it assisted 1,562,862 returnees. This far exceeded the 400,000 from Pakistan whose resettlement UNHCR had initially planned for, and resulted in a reduction in the amount of assistance available for the returnees inside Afghanistan. The mostly lower income urban refugees crossed into Afghanistan from the Pakistani cities of Peshawar, Quetta in the southwest, the southern seaport of Karachi and the national capital Islamabad. Kabul, the central Afghan province, remained their favourite destination followed by the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. Despite this encouraging development, nearly two million Afghans remain in Pakistan. Islamabad is pressing for a long-term solution to their presence. As the Afghan minister for refugees and repatriation concluded a five-day visit to Pakistan over the weekend, the two countries were soon expected to sign a tripartite agreement, together with UNHCR, on a framework for the voluntary repatriation over a three-year period of the remaining Afghans still living in Pakistan. But refugees are concerned that the agreement could lead to them being pushed out of Pakistan prematurely. Such considerations were voiced by some Afghan refugee elders at a meeting with the Afghan minister, Enayatollah Nazeri, in Peshawar during his visit. "We don’t believe in promises, we want action [on reconstruction and developmnet] now," Lajbar Khan, one of the elders who attended the meeting, told IRIN. "We will never refuse to go back to our homeland, but we will only do so when we have the assurance that we will never be forced to come to Pakistan again," he said. Returning to Afghanistan remains a long-standing dream for many. Ibrahim visited Jalalabad last month to assess the prospects for the return of his eight-member family, whom he has been supporting since his father's death recently. "I know it will be difficult, but one day we will have to go to our homeland," he said. "I will have a shop and will work again in my fields." But many Afghans in Pakistan do not share such optimism. And the winter has seen the inevitable return across the 2400-km-long porous border of some of those who packed their bags for Kabul earlier this year. Sharifa, a 28-year-old Afghan schoolteacher, is back in Peshawar after struggling for survival in the populous Afghan capital, Kabul, for 10 months. "There was no security, and my salary was not sufficient even for heating," she told IRIN. Earning some US $40 a month, Sharifa had been unable to adequately support her four children and unemployed husband. "[Afghan President] Hamid Karzai promised us many things, but failed to deliver," she said, adding that many families she knew were regretting their decision to go back to Afghanistan. Sharifa now shares a two-roomed run-down rented house with her mother and three brothers in a squalid narrow street of a crowded Peshawar suburb. "It’s still better here, because its warm, you can work and you are safe," she said. Local businessmen in Peshawar confirmed the trend. Muhammadi Khan, a property agent in the city's fashionable Hayatabad area, told IRIN that although rents had not risen, most of the houses in the locality remained occupied, whereas Hayatabad had been half deserted immediately after the refugee exodus. "I have again seen many people who went to Afghanistan and are now back looking for accommodation here," he said. UNHCR closed its three repatriation centres towards the end of September as returnee levels dropped. But when winter turns to spring numbers are expected to rapidly rise, and there is a hope that people like Sharifa will have the resources to stay this time. "We will go back if it's safe and we have something to live on," she said. The agency is now undertaking a survey to assess the numbers of Afghans willing to return next year. "It's intended to identify those who want to go back, and their needs for successful reintegration," a UNHCR spokesman, Jack Redden, told IRIN in Peshawar.