Minister says new refugee camps are a last resort

Pakistan would only consider setting up additional camps to cope with a new influx of Afghans, fleeing possible US retaliation for the 11 September suicide attacks in New York and Washington, if the numbers increased to an extreme level, a Pakistani minister told IRIN on Saturday. "Additional camps will only come into effect if we see hostilities and large scale movement of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, rather than the thousands we are seeing at the moment," Pakistan's Minister for Kashmir Affairs, Northern Areas, and States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), Abbas Sarfraz Khan, said in an interview. Rather than waiting for events to overtake it, Pakistan had officials working alongside the United Nations to identify potential refugee camp sites and trying to set up some mechanism for rapid response if the situation worsened, he said. Task forces had been set up at provincial level, comprising representatives from UN agencies and the [Pakistani] commissioners for Afghan refugees from three provinces, he added. "We will probably mark out the physical boundaries of possible sites, but what we are not going to do is set up fully fledged camps unless required. We just want to be prepared for the future," Khan told IRIN. There are said to be thousands of refugees massing on the borders of Pakistan, with an estimated one million Afghans moving to safer locations. Many of Afghanistan's cities are emptying as civilians and members of the ruling Taliban Islamic Movement fear US retaliation for the terrorist attacks on it, which killed over 6,800 people and for which Washington blames Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, to whom the Taliban has given sanctuary. In the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement, reports suggest that half the population has left. At least a quarter of the residents of the Afghan capital, Kabul, had either fled to villages or was trying to cross the border into Pakistan, according to humanitarian sources. Khan said the borders with Afghanistan were not completely closed but that only those with valid visas could cross. However, IRIN reported earlier that Afghans resident in Pakistan and who had visited Afghanistan with proper documentation were stuck this week on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP). "I am unaware of that, but if there is an Afghan that claims he has a valid visa we will certainly look into that," Minister Sarfraz Abbas Khan said on Saturday. "It could be that due to the large number of people at the border, the Afghans in question cannot get to the gate to cross. However, our policy is clear." There have also been reports that border guards have been allowing Afghans to cross if they paid a bribe, but Khan said this would not be the case. "Bribery is a matter of concern to us and I would be doubtful of this. There is a greater security presence on the border, including the Pakistani army and intelligence service," he added. Regular meetings were taking place between UN agencies and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, with regard to a plan of action on the crisis in Afghanistan, according to Khan, who said he had also held telephone discussions with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers. He explained that Pakistan's priority was to try and have any potential refugee problem addressed on the Afghan side of the border or on the border itself, but maintained that at this time there were no hostilities against Afghanistan - and that there was only a perceived threat. A contingency plan by the commissioners of three Pakistani provinces was to be submitted to the federal government on Saturday and would be considered alongside the UN's contingency plans, Khan stated. However, these would only be put into effect if there was "commencement of hostilities against Afghanistan, and a large scale human displacement," he added. Meanwhile UNHCR has been informed by the government of Pakistan of 5,000 Afghans seeking entry at the Afghan side of the border at Chaman, about 100 km northwest of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province in southwestern Pakistan. The refugee agency has asked the authorities to allow any new arrivals to be sheltered in existing camp facilities where adequate water and other facilities could be quickly established. As an emergency measure, it has also sent 2,000 tents to Quetta from its stocks in Peshawar, in NWFP. The government of Pakistan has pledged to offer assistance, in principle, to those refugees who have managed to trickle into the country over the past week, while insisting that new refugees be kept separate from existing refugee caseloads, according to the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) on Friday, 21 September. 10,000 new Afghan refugees are estimated to have arrived in Quetta, where they were staying with friends and relatives for the most part, it stated. UNHCR has ordered 20,000 tents in addition to the 9,300 already in Pakistan - enough for more than 50,000 people - and the refugee agency has appealed for US $6 million to cover the immediate emergency costs, in addition to the US $ 46.7 million 2001 budget for refugees and returnees in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The Canadian government had already donated US $1 million in view of the emerging crisis, a UN statement said. The United Nations, US Ambassador Chamberlin and Afghan Support group have all been unanimous that maximum support should be given for humanitarian relief, and there has been an overwhelming feeling that the world community would be extremely generous, according to Minister Khan. He also said it was too early to ask what measures Pakistan had taken, or might take, to safeguard lives in its North West frontier Province in the event of any attack by Taliban forces in that area, in retaliation for Pakistan's pledge of assistance to the US-led coalition against terrorism. "I think it is a bit premature. I think we would have to wait and see but, certainly, Pakistan would defend its border," he stated. On the issue of Pakistan hosting the biggest Afghan refugee community in the world, Khan said it was now time for the country to stop taking the burden. A survey conducted two months ago which found that there between two and three million Afghans in Pakistan was of great concern to the Islamabad government, he said. "If you consider the resources that three million people take up, for instance - whether its health care facilities, education, basic simple jobs, running of small shops - it creates its own dynamics in Pakistan," Khan stated. He said the Afghans had been welcomed with open arms following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 but that, after 23 years, their stay had exceeded the wildest expectations of most Pakistanis. "The Afghan war of the '80s and the desire for them to earn money has seen a rise in drugs, arms and crimes in Pakistan - and it has come with the movement of these people. Not to mention the deforestation caused by the camps," Khan said. "The problems are endless, quite frankly. It has certainly been very difficult for the local Pakistani population," he added.