Afghans go home


	March 15, 2002	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Afghans go home
By Nadeem Yaqub

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Trucks, pickups and vans loaded with people carrying all sorts of belongings, including goats and chickens, start arriving early in the morning at Takhtabaig at the outskirts of this town near the Afghan border. Women clad in the burqa and young ones remain sitting in the systematically parked vehicles as the men disappear behind a high mud wall nearby, where they get their families registered.

Once through with the process, the vehicles are ready to move toward the Torkham border post and cross into Afghanistan.

This is the first registration center for Afghan refugees, set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the rugged Takhtabaig in Khyber Agency, 35 kilometers from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

On March 7, more than 350 vehicles carrying some 9,000 Afghans went there. Seeing the rush of people, a couple of vendors selling edibles from the nearby markets also moved into the area.

Earlier, when the UNHCR set up the repatriation center for Afghan refugees, fewer than 200 individuals took benefit of the facility. Since then, the number of returnees has been increasing day by day, ready to go back into Afghanistan four months after the defeat of the Taliban.

"I'd say a lot depends on the situation inside Afghanistan. If the situation remains stable, the number of returnees will swell. For the next few weeks the rush will remain like this," said Roque Raymundo, the UNHCR's repatriation officer at Takhtabaig center. He said the UNHCR plans to repatriate 400,000 refugees this year.

Each returning family gets US$100 as transportation expenses, an assistance package of 150 kilograms of wheat, five kg of soap, plastic sheeting, bedding, quilts and a kitchen set.

Afghans are coming from all over the country, including the southern port city of Karachi and Punjab, to return to their country. "We have seen groups of people from Karachi, Islamabad and other parts of the country," said Mohammad Ibrahim, another staffer of the refugee agency.

To facilitate the return of refugees, the UNHCR plans to set up six more registration centers all over the country in the next few months.

Carrying his 4-year-old daughter, Noorul Amin, who is returning to Kabul, said he came from the Pakistani city of Lahore. "Now that there is stability, I want to return to my homeland. Besides, it gets very hot in Lahore during summer," quipped the 36-year-old auto mechanic, who is going back with his wife and two children after six years in Pakistan. He said he would rent accommodation in the Afghan capital because his own house was damaged during the decades of conflict.

Most Afghans are choosing to return to Kabul because the security situation is much better in the capital than in rest of the country. Most of those going back are Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras and Turkmens. It seems Pashtuns are still reluctant to go back because of hostile attitudes of other ethnic groups toward them. In fact, recent reports said a few thousand Pashtuns had to flee to Pakistan from several areas in Afghanistan due to the hostility of ethnic commanders.

Still, the devastated country has not much to offer the returning Afghans. Food shortages, little economic activity, a lack of infrastructure and educational facilities, political instability and the warlord culture are not elements that will attract many of the 3.5 million refugees living in Pakistan and Iran. However, many Afghans who have been living a miserable life in Pakistan say they are now ready to go back. After all, they say, Afghanistan is their homeland and that is where they belong.

Mohammad Maroof Khan lived in Peshawar for more than six years and fed his wife and two children by working as a daily-wage laborer. "I am returning to my motherland. It's liberated now. We left because we couldn't get along with the Taliban," said the young man from Laghman province of Afghanistan.

Throwing a glance toward the loaded pickup where his family sat, he said they would have to reconstruct their house that was destroyed during fighting between Taliban and Northern Alliance forces last year, as the United States led a bombing campaign in the country. He said he hopes his relatives there will help him.

Hundreds of Afghans who are not aware of the UNHCR repatriation program or do not need assistance are also returning to Afghanistan on their own. The number of Afghans returning to their country in the past two months has gradually been increasing. Officials at Torkham said that by the end of February, some 4,000 refugees were going back daily.

All of this is certainly what the government of Pakistan wants to see. In recent years, it has been conveying in clear-cut terms that the country can no longer look after the refugees on its own, because of lack of resources and harsh economic conditions at home.

In several parts of Afghanistan, particularly in the north, thousands of displaced people live in camps in squalid conditions after they fled drought conditions elsewhere. Aid agencies there are encouraging them to return to their homes because it is easier to give assistance there.

At a conference here on the reconstruction of Afghanistan organized by a local non-governmental organization (NGO), Sungi Development Foundation, on February 28, speakers called on Afghans living outside Afghanistan to return to their homeland for other reasons. Only with the return of educated Afghans would reconstruction of their fractured society take place in the real sense. "It's not the construction of buildings only, but their participation is needed in the reconstruction of society, politics, institutions, economy, culture and religion," one activist said.

(Inter Press Service)