Afghans repatriate from Baluchistan

A group of 39 Afghan refugee families living in southwestern Pakistan left for their homeland on Tuesday, restarting the UN’s repatriation programme, after it was stalled last year due to a lack of funding. “The refugees were very excited about going back,” Peter Kessler, UNHCR spokesman in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN. He added that many refugees had been waiting anxiously to return since the programme was halted in 2000. The 158 Afghans had been living in the Saranan and Loralai refugee settlements in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan. Many had been in Pakistan for more than 15 years, and took most of their belongings with them. “This is a voluntary operation. The refugees came forward, and we are happy to take them,” Kessler said. Escorted by UNHCR, the refugees returned to the town of Buldak in the southwestern Afghan province of Kandahar. They were moved in a 10-truck convoy on a journey which lasted up to seven hours. Kessler said on arrival in the area, unaffaected by war, each Afghan family was given US $90, shelter material and 150 kg of food aid from WFP to help them resettle. UN staff in the war-torn nation would also be monitoring to help stabilise the returnees in their places of origin. He said that although the number of Afghans repatriated on Tuesday was lower than previous attempts last year, there was still “huge interest” from refugees wanting to go home. Last year up to 1,000 refugees at a time were escorted back from Quetta. Before UNHCR halted the programme last November, 76,800 Afghan refugees voluntarily returned home from Pakistan and another 134,000 from Iran. Kessler could not determine the total number of refugees in Pakistan wanting to return, but said there had been “more interest” from those in Quetta. He added they would gauge interest for voluntary repatriation from refugees in other Pakistani regions. Pakistan hosts 2 million Afghan refugees, of whom 1.2 million live in 203 villages grouped into 127 key refugee clusters - 105 in the North-West Frontier Province, 21 in Baluchistan and one in Punjab Province. Pakistan has long contended that it cannot continue to house the huge influx of refugees, and has called on the UN to facilitate their return. Kessler said there was no frequency or time frame in place on the programme, and that it depended on the response from the refugees themselves. He added that the next batch of a similar number of returnees would be moved from Quetta over the next few days. “We will continue repatriation as long as there is a demand,” he added.