Interview with refugee activist on returns

The Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of Human Rights and Prisoners' Aid (SHARP) has been providing legal assistance to refugees and asylum seekers since 1999. With the start of Afghan repatriation in 2002, SHARP has been running the Advice and Legal Aid Centres (ALACs) in the province of Punjab to help returnees with legal and protection issues. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (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. This week, Islamabad announced it would launch a comprehensive census of all Afghans in the country later in February. Some refugees and activists view the census as the prelude to the start of the forced return of Afghans, as Pakistan tries to find a long-term solution for the more than a million Afghans on its soil. In an interview with IRIN, Syed Liaquat Banori, chairman of SHARP, stressed the need to encourage "sustainable repatriation" of Afghans, instead of coercing them into returning early to a country that, he said, cannot sustain large numbers of returnees at present. QUESTION: Three years after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Islamabad now feels it is time for the more than one million Afghans left in the country to start going home. Should the government of Pakistan go beyond the support of voluntary repatriation? ANSWER: I don't think so. Afghanistan's administrative, physical, social and legal structure collapsed during the last two decades of conflict. No country damaged to this extent could recover overnight. If it took 25 years to destroy the country then it will require decades to rehabilitate it completely along with huge investment and funding. Given these circumstances, if Afghan refugees were repatriated forcefully, then the massive influx could create unrest and a big problem of law and order inside the country. The country is simply not at a stage of development where it can support a big return. It has enough to worry about trying to cope with the large number of IDPs [internally displaced people] that it is trying to help return to where they used to live. Q: You work extensively with Afghan refugees. What are they telling you about repatriation? A: I can say that most are very much willing to go back [to Afghanistan] provided they get respectable earning opportunities and shelter over there. Most are very poor and do not have much resources to build houses and start life again immediately after repatriating. The international community should address these concerns at the earliest. Secondly, Afghans are very concerned about the security situation inside Afghanistan. The Afghan government is still struggling to establish its authority beyond the capital. While this is happening, warlords, private militias, ordinary criminals, armed religious extremists and others opposed to [president Hamid] Karzai, make the country a very dangerous place. Q: Islamabad says the forthcoming Afghan census will help it formulate a humane repatriation policy. Do you agree? A: There is no formal data or statistics about the actual number of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, so the UNHCR [the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and the government of Pakistan have jointly decided to have a census later this month. But the census mechanism needs improvement. Accurate data is very much in the interest of Pakistan, the UNHCR and the international community. What is needed, is to ensure that whatever statistics we get at the end of the day, they should be reliable and helpful in formulating future policies. Q: Is there a need for greater international support in assisting with returns? A: The international community must help refugees living in Pakistan and also accelerate reconstruction efforts inside Afghanistan. Pakistan is a developing country. International donors and other agencies should help public service institutions in collaboration with the Pakistani government so once the Afghans repatriate back to their homeland, institutions can be utilised by our own poor communities. This two-pronged strategy would benefit refugees as well as local communities. Q: What can be done to boost repatriation numbers in 2005? A: Before making any effort to send refugees back, they should be prepared for future challenges. They should be properly trained in skills to help them to rebuild their country and reintegrate into Afghan society. This aspect has [so far] been missing in the strategies of UNHCR and the Pakistani government. We need to keep in mind that this repatriation is not happening for the first time. It happened in 1992 as well, but due to civil war inside Afghanistan, people came back. But this time we have to ensure a sustainable repatriation even if it is at a low pace, for one simple reason. If it is not successful, then Pakistan will be the ultimate loser as no doubt they would all just come back into Pakistan. As a human rights activist, I believe the time is not right for forced or coerced returns and that Pakistan has extended hospitality to such a large refugee population for over two decades and we can sustain them for three more years - or until Afghanistan is more developed and stable.