Afghan refugees asked to leave capital

Afghan refugees living in informal settlements in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, have been asked to leave and relocate to refugee camps situated in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) because of security concerns, according to a minister. “That is one of the reasons. Also, they should be settled in our camps, where we can look after them better,” Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the minister for water and power and whose ministry is also mandated to deal with refugees, told IRIN in Islamabad on Tuesday. According to some estimates, there are roughly 35,000 Afghans living in informal settlements, known locally as “kachi abadis” (makeshift settlements), within Islamabad’s city limits. “These are people who have come here and settled over a long time. It’s a mobile, transient population, so it’s difficult to figure out [just how many refugees there are in informal settlements],” Indrika Rattawate, a repatriation coordinator with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN in Islamabad. Security is a key issue in Pakistan, following a spate of terror attacks on foreign nationals and installations in the past two-and-a-half years, following the 11 September attacks on the United States. The most recent one occurred on Monday in the under-construction port of Gwadar, a state-of-the-art multi-billion dollar facility. The port is roughly 500 km west of the southern port city of Karachi, it is being built with Chinese money. A car bomb exploded as a bus carrying Chinese engineers drove past, killing three of the foreign workforce and injuring another 11, two of them Pakistanis. Closer to home, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped two assassination attempts on his life in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which lies adjacent to Islamabad, late last year with remote-controlled devices and suicide car-bombs being used in the attacks which occurred within two weeks of each other. Investigations by authorities suggested the involvement of foreign militants, thought to have taken shelter in remote tribal regions in the NWFP, for whom movement in and around the capital might have been easier under the guise of refugees. But Sherpao said that there was no concerted move to force the Afghans to leave Pakistan, despite what he called “concerns” expressed by the Afghan government that some of the refugees had been in jails and that they didn’t have identity papers, leading to an increase in crime. “We have a tripartite accord with UNHCR and Afghanistan. And, naturally, the accord says the repatriation has to be voluntary and gradual, so that’s how it is going,” he explained.