Afghan refugees repatriation begins this month

ISLAMABAD (NNI): Repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan may begin later this month as was decided in the last month Tripartite Commission meeting in Kabul, UN sources said Sunday.

The Kabul meeting attended by Pakistan, UNHCR and Taliban officials had drawn a plan for the phase-vise repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and decided to annually repatriate one hundred thousand refugees from Pakistan.

The UN High Commission for Refugees says Afghan refugees still constitute the world single largest refugees, with around 1.6 million living only in Pakistan.

Pakistan officials had shown disappointment over the decision by the tripartite commission especially repatriation of only one hundred thousand refugees in one year. It will take some 20 years to repatriate Afghan refuges from Pakistan even if the repatriation was continued under the plan, chalked out in the Kabul moot.

The tripartite commission has been meeting time to time since its establishment in 1990, however, continued hostilities in some parts of Afghanistan as well as lack of employment and presence of landmines affect the refugees repatriation, mainly from Pakistan and Iran.

Afghan authorities insist on the construction of houses, employment as well as clearance of landmines before a large-scale repatriation is started. "Afghan refugees would be happy to return to their homeland if they get these things," says a Taliban diplomat.

United Nations only provide three hundred kilograms of wheat and five thousand Pakistani rupees each to the returning Afghan family. It also facilitates Afghan refugees in term of transportation.

20 years after the 1979 Soviet invasion in Afghanistan and 10 years after the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops in 1989, Afghanistan is still a country in which an armed conflict over power between opposing political factions continues. Afghanistan has in the process been devastated, producing the worlds largest ever-single refugee caseload, at times as high as 6.2 million persons.

Nevertheless, by January 1st 1999 a decade after repatriation to Afghanistan began a total of 4.2 million Afghan refugees had returned home. Of these, well over 3 million have either been assisted by UNHCR (2.6 million) or individually counted while crossing the border with their household belongings.

Repatriation peaked in 1992, after the communist regime finally fell, with 1.6 million refugees returning home from Pakistan and Iran in the space of 8 months. Throughout the following years while a bitter struggle over power between the various Mujahideen groups ensued refugees have been returning in large numbers, mainly to safe rural areas of Afghanistan. In 1998, UNHCR assisted about 107,000 refugees to return to Afghanistan, of whom 93,000 returned from Pakistan and 14,000 from Iran.

While this is probably the largest ever repatriation of a single group, more than 2.6 million refugees still live in exile, giving the Afghans also the unfortunate distinction of remaining the largest single refugee group in the world, for the 19th year in succession.

In late 1997, UNHCR instituted a new strategy known as targeted group repatriation, from Pakistan, which runs parallel to the continuing standard repatriation assistance (transportation assistance, grants of cash and wheat) for individual families returning home to Afghanistan. The new scheme involves identifying refugee groups in Pakistan (sometimes from a single village, sometimes an entire district) who are keen to return home to relatively peaceful areas, but who are prevented from doing so by specific obstacles such as mines, destroyed houses, lack of irrigation systems and employment opportunities.

Early in 1998, UNHCR launched a new returnee monitoring system that aims to evaluate systematically the situation of returnees inside Afghanistan by means of interviews with heads of returnee families. The monitoring surveys now form the basis for UNHCRs interventions both to protect returnees and their human rights, and to assist them during the initial reintegration phase.

UNHCR was very encouraged to find that 84% of returnees reported feeling safe, and had not experienced problems either with landmines or other personal security issues. Equally positive is the fact that a majority of returnees were able to recover their land and/or houses without difficulty. This is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that 59% of the returnees interviewed had returned after more then 10 years of exile in Pakistan or Iran, and 30% had spent between 16 and 20 years abroad.