May 10, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia Afghan refugees in diplomatic impasse By Nadeem Yaqub PESHAWAR - The head of the Irish delegation blushed when a Pakistani official with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) asked him during a recent meeting here how many Afghan refugees Ireland would take if asked to do so. "Around a hundred," was his reluctant reply. The Irish team is one of the scores of foreign delegations and Western diplomats to visit Afghan refugee camps in this city just across the border from Afghanistan in recent months. Among these officials are UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in March and UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Kenzo Oshima. No other refugee-related issue has raised as much media hype in recent months as the makeshift Jallozai camp, 25 kilometers southeast of Peshawar. The reason: the miserable and inhuman conditions in which around 60,000 or more displaced Afghans have been living since September. But as they continue to suffer from unsanitary conditions and lack of adequate shelter against the weather, the government of Pakistan and the UNHCR continue to lock horns on key issues that remained unresolved even during the UN chief's visit. Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who arrived here last week after visiting Afghanistan, faced a daunting task in dealing with the Pakistani government and trying to get Islamabad, which is tiring of its role as host to Afghan refugees, to be "softer" on the issue. Because of its promixity to Afghanistan, Pakistan is the major recipient of Afghans fleeing war and drought. As interest from the international community declines over the years, the Pakistani government asserts that it cannot afford to look after these refugees alone. This is why it has closed its border to fresh arrivals, shown reluctance to register new refugees, and deported those who do not possess valid documents. Unofficial estimates say there are 700,000 Afghans living in and around the city and in camps. Estimates include refugees registered and unregistered in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. Peshawar's population stands at 1.7 million, so the number of its refugees makes it the city with possibly the highest concentration of refugees in the world. But Lubbers, prime minister of Holland for 12 years, was not able to convince Pakistani authorities on at least two issues of immediate concern to the UNHCR last week. The first issue involves the moving of around 60,000 Afghans from Jallozai to a better place where they can be registered and given assistance by the UN refugee agency. "We have to find a way back; either to give more space here or to find other places for shifting them," Lubbers said at Jallozai. "We are looking to give quality protection - and this [Jallozai] is not quality protection." The second issue concerns finding an alternative site to house around 100,000 refugees ordered to vacate Nasirbagh camp, one of the oldest camps in the area where refugees have long since built mud houses. "We want the cooperation of Pakistan's government to give minimum quality standards of protection of people who simply are refugees and cannot go back," Lubbers said. After meeting ON Monday with Pakistan's leader, Gen Pervez Musharraf, the disappointed commissioner said: "Unfortunately, I can't say that I have been successful. Whoever I went to speak with says they have their own priorities." A few days earlier, Musharraf also met with the man who brought about the U-turn in the Pakistani military regime's refugee policy - Northwest Frontier Province Governor Syed Iftekhar Hussain Shah. Soon after the meeting, Lubbers said both sides presented their points of view in a fairly good manner. However, he did not indicate whether Shah is changing his stand on the ban on fresh refugees or the shifting of thousands of refugees from the Jallozai camp. Governor Shah simply wants "the economic refugees" to be repatriated, officials say. "As soon as they are shifted from Jallozai, the same number of Afghans would fill in," said a government official dealing with the refugees. As for Islamabad's repeated insistence that camps be set up in Afghanistan and assistance be provided there and not in Pakistan, Lubbers commented: "I am not here to create camps in Afghanistan." In clear-cut terms, he pointed out that making camps on the other side of the border in Afghanistan was not the solution. These outstanding issues with Pakistan are but some of the problems the UNHCR has been facing in efforts to match the humanitarian crisis with relief assistance. The agency requested US$43 million this year for operations in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, and received $32 million. Out of this amount, $5.7 million was for repatriating Afghan refugees, including amounts for the administrative set-up of the agency. The repatriation process was halted when a fresh influx of refugees began by the end of last year. Normally, the repatriation season begins in April, but this year even that has not yet taken off. In 2002, UNHCR plans to increase the budget for Afghan operations to $53.6 million. For the fresh Afghan influx that began in September and boosted refugee numbers, UNHCR requested $4 million in needed funds and received $3 million. While problems with repatriation and funding requirements persist, what could yet turn out to be Lubbers' achievement during his visit to the region is squeezing out a concession from the Taliban, which rules much of Afghanistan, to allow women to work. A representative of Medicins Sans Frontiers at the Jallozai camp said: "I think there is a breakthrough possible with Taliban authorities. And they might accept women workers in the health sector." He said the United Nations could push the puritan Islamists - who have barred women from work under their strict religion - step by step. Eventually, women could be brought into fields like education. (Inter Press Service)

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