Azhar Hassan

Origin of the Afghan influx

The Afghan refugee crisis dates back more than 28 years. Since 1978, as many as, one third of Afghanistan's 26 million inhabitants have been forced to flee their homes, temporarily or permanently. The first wave of Afghan refugees came in April of that year (1978), when the country's new communist regime introduced a massive agricultural reform program that the rural population deeply resented and resisted. In December 1979 the Soviet Union, concerned that the communist government in Kabul was losing ground, occupied Afghanistan and installed a puppet regime. After the occupying forces unleashed a wave of terror on the civilian population, hundreds of thousands of refugees poured out of Afghanistan. Within two years of the invasion, some 1.5 million Afghans were refugees, mostly in Pakistan.
By 1986, the number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran had grown to nearly 5 million. The US and other Western countries were by now supporting the Islamist resistance movement known as the mujahideen in their struggle against the Soviet-led government. At the same time, the West poured money into the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, many of which served as bases for the mujahideen. The international community did not provide similar assistance to Afghan refugees in Iran, where the 1979 revolution had put an anti-Western regime in power. In the decade after the revolution, Iran did not actively seek aid from the international community, although the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) consistently kept a presence, albeit a poorly funded one, in the country.
When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, they left in power another communist regime, which the mujahideen defeated in April 1992. Afghan refugees welcomed the mujahideen victory, and over the course of 1992 more than 1.4 million refugees returned home. But far from bringing peace to Afghanistan, the mujahideen conquest only opened a new chapter in the conflict, as warlords fought one another for small pieces of territory.

Emergence of Taliban

In 1994, the Taliban emerged as a significant military force, capturing Kabul two years later. A Taliban offensive in the Northern Plains in 1999 forced some 150,000 people to flee their homes. Although many of the displaced returned home in 2000, some 60,000 remained displaced, and a late July 2000 Taliban campaign displaced more tens of thousands of people, both internally and to Pakistan. Among the displaced were some 10,000 persons who became stranded on several islands in a river along the Afghan-Tajik border. Pushed back from the Tajik border by Russian patrols, the group suffered periodic attacks by the Taliban and went largely without UNHCR aid, since they were displaced persons and (technically) not refugees.
The Taliban, who controlled between 90 and 95 percent of Afghanistan, functioned as a repressive police state. They forced both women and men to adhere to strict behavioral codes that prevented women and girls from working, receiving necessary health care and getting education. Since consolidating its grip on power in most of Afghanistan, the Taliban also tried to impose their policies on Afghan refugees in Pakistan, warning refugees not to send girls over the age of eight to schools and ordering teachers in refugee schools to limit lessons for girls under age eight to verses from the Quran. In some areas, despite the hunger and grinding poverty fueled by the drought, the Taliban obstructed international relief efforts. The Taliban's ban on the cultivation of poppies (used to make heroin), while welcomed by the international community, left thousands of farmers who grew the crop without any livelihood, and forced many landless laborers to migrate to camps for internally displaced persons, or to Pakistan.
Over the past years, Afghanistan's refugee crisis has been exacerbated by the worst drought in 30 years. After inadequate rain and snowfall led to poor crops, tens of thousands of Afghans abandoned their homes in search of food beginning in June 2000. By year's end, some 350,000 Afghans had become newly displaced, many of them due to the drought, others due to the war. Another 172,000 had fled to Pakistan. In early 2001, tens of thousands more Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan or became displaced within Afghanistan, and by August 2001, an estimated 900,000 Afghans had been internally displaced, most living with friends or relatives in Afghanistan's larger towns and cities.

Fatigue on the Hosts
   
In recent years, Pakistan has displayed a hardening attitude toward its 3 million plus Afghan refugees, reflected in periodic border closings and attempts to close long-term camps. Refugees have experienced harassment and violence, while the government has deported, and possibly returned to persecution, thousands of Afghan refugees.
From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, the international community lavished substantial assistance on Pakistan, the refugees and the Mujahideen. The refugee camps were "places to which the Mujahideen (guerrillas) could return for rest and to see their families", writes Brig Mohammad Yousaf, the man who headed the Afghan desk of Pakistan's intelligence agency during the 1980s.
In his book, The Bear Trap, he also describes the camps as "a huge reservoir of potential recruits for jihad".
But, international interest started to fade after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and by the mid-1990s most assistance to schools and dispensaries had been phased out.  Today Pakistan's faltering economy has prompted a backlash against Afghan refugees, who the government of Pakistan says take jobs from local people. The government also blames refugees for increased crime and social problems, such as drug use and prostitution.
The government of Pakistan takes the position that since the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- which caused most "long-term" refugees to flee -- has ended, refugees should return home. Further, the government claims that the home areas of many long-term refugees are free of conflict, and that many Afghans who have entered Pakistan since mid-2000 are victims of drought, not refugees. Pakistan's changed attitude toward Afghan refugees had its most serious impact on the estimated 200,000 Afghans fleeing conflict and drought who arrived in Pakistan between mid-2000 and early 2001, particularly those who sought refuge at Jalozai transit center near Peshawar. For months, only minimal assistance was provided to the Afghans at Jalozai, and between January and June 2001, at least 95 refugees, weakened by hunger, dehydration and disease, died of exposure.
The more than 1.4 million Afghan refugees in Iran, many of whom have lived there for nearly two decades, have also faced growing hostility and intolerance from their host country. Claiming that refugees take scarce jobs away from local people, Iranian officials have made it clear that they no longer welcome Afghans. Beginning in 1997, the government set several deadlines for refugees to leave the country, declined to register new arrivals from Afghanistan as refugees, attempted to round up and confine refugees to camps, and at times summarily deported them. Hostility toward Afghan refugees reached a new high in late 1998 and early 1999, when mobs attacked and in some cases killed Afghan refugees, demanding their deportation. Iran deported about 100,000 Afghans in 1999, many of whom were repatriated after roundups in the eastern provinces and urban centers. Nonetheless, as many as 200,000 Afghans may have fled to Iran between late 2000 and August 2001. During the same period, Iran forcibly repatriated an estimated 82,000 Afghans.

Logistic Challenges

The size and speed of the refugee influx in the early days presented vast logistical challenges for the government of Pakistan and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In the beginning, assistance consisted of little more than the hospitality extended by local tribesmen who shared the same language and traditions as many of the exiles. This eventually turned into assistance from the Pakistani government and other aid agencies distributed initially by Mujahideen forces.
However, in late 1981, Islamabad, through its Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) took overall charge of the expanding network of refugee villages, mainly in areas bordering Afghanistan, registering the arrivals and supervising the distribution of international aid.
According to a UNHCR report, by 1985, there were more than 300 refugee villages, as they were referred to, with the exception of a single camp in Mianwali district of Punjab all were in either NWFP or Balochistan province. "All those (Afghans) staying at camps received monthly food rations from the WFP," the report says.
At the same time, UNHCR continued expanding non-food assistance beyond the immediate need for shelter, healthcare and bedding to areas such as education, vocational training and the provision of kerosene oil for cooking and heating.
The report goes on: “Despite all the difficulties, by the middle of the 1980s, UNHCR, together with the Pakistan government had set up a network of over 650 primary schools where Afghan children were being taught in their native languages”.

Afghanistan Crisis: Impacts on Pakistan

Afghan refugee phenomenon that has been with Pakistan now for nearly three decades has large dimensions, some of them extremely painful for the host nation. The huge refugee influx put immense pressure on the host nation's meager resources. Complaints of falling wages for labour, rising rents in urban areas and damage to the environment also emerged.
In the summer of 1980, the UN refugee agency estimated a million lambs were born to the livestock of Afghan refugees who had arrived with their animals, producing a severe strain on scarce pastures. Refugees were accused of stripping the arid land of its limited wood supply, one of the reasons why UNHCR began providing kerosene in camps.
However, shared culture, the common bond of Islam and several other reasons contributed to a lack of any real conflict between the refugees and the host community. "All things considered, relations between Afghans and their hosts over the years have been remarkably peaceful. Conflict over natural resources has occurred but is relatively minor," concluded a consultant's report for the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC) in 1995.
Towards the mid-1980s, some attempts to repair environmental damage caused by refugees were made under a joint venture between the World Bank and ten donor countries, eventually disbursing some $85.5 million in income-creating projects in reforestation, watershed management, irrigation works and road construction.

Regional Implications and Impact on Pakistan's Polity

The Afghanistan issue came as a blessing in disguise for Gen. Zia-ul-Haq who opted to go all out against Moscow playing the card of Islamic solidarity and terming Pakistan as the front-line state. He used the Afghanistan situation to legitimize his martial law regime and it is often felt that Zia's government would not have lasted so long without the war in Afghanistan and the generous military and economic assistance it received from the US which totaled more than 7.2 billion dollars. Pakistan provided sanctuary to the mujahideen to launch their military operations. Zia was overnight catapulted into a leader of world fame and importance and for almost a decade Pakistan was on the center stage of world politics. But the eclipse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War saw it pushed into the wings.
There have been some very ruinous effects of Pakistan's Afghan policy on its domestic scene. The conflict in Afghanistan has resulted in the world's greatest refugee migration to Pakistan and the population pressures have generated potentially explosive situation in Pakistan. While they are themselves victims of the Afghan crisis, Afghan refugees constitute a potentially destabilizing nation within Pakistan. Historically, great refugee movements have been destabilizing to countries and regions. It is likely that the nearly 4 million displaced Afghans in Pakistan will cling to their ethnic and cultural character and increasingly assert themselves as a powerful political force. Added to this potential are the pressures that millions of refugees place on the services and resources there.
Well over 5 million Afghans have fled their country since the 1979 Soviet invasion. These refugees have settled in India (4,700) and Iran (5, 60,000) but the majority (estimated at upto 3.5 million) has settled in Pakistan, most living in 340 settlement camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border. To assist Pakistan in preventing conflict by keeping the refugees separate from the local population, the UNHCR placed restrictions on disbursements of food and other goods in its refugee camps in the North-West Frontier Province and in Balochistan. Since the 1989 end of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, the UNHCR, the Pakistan government, and an array of NGOs have encouraged the refugees to return home, but until internecine fighting in Afghanistan stops, many will choose to remain in Pakistan. In early 1994, the number of Afghan refugees still residing in Pakistan was estimated at 1.4 million, according to Amnesty International. More than 2 million Afghan refugees also remained in Iran.

The Afghan War and its Socio-Cultural Impact on Pakistan

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was a major cause of worldwide anxiety and this event had grave implications for the internal and external security of Pakistan. It was the major player in the game and was the principal channel through which assistance was provided to Afghan freedom fighters. This crisis dominated the international relations of Pakistan and also its domestic affairs, due to the influx of the Afghan refugees whose number had reached approximately 3.2 million, one fourth of the entire Afghan population, and the largest refugee concentration in any single country. Thus, the consequences of the Afghan crisis have been grave for Pakistan and conflict has become enmeshed within Pakistan's domestic politics. The influx of Afghan refugees in Pakistan created destabilization in society and in many areas of country the presence of refugees has destroyed the ecological balance, causing desertification and consequent soil erosion. The social and cultural impact of the Afghan refugees on Pakistan are grave and devastating because Afghan refugees have promoted drug trafficking, Kalashnikov culture, sectarianism, ethnicity and terrorism, and have created endless law and order problems. These refugees are a considerable drain on our economy. They make a substantial contribution to weapons proliferation in Pakistan. They exacerbate sectarian differences within the country and are in many ways the shock troops for religious parties in the country.
 Refugees have acquired property, businesses and jobs, putting an economic squeeze on the permanent residents. The crime rate and violence have soared, including social evils like prostitution and drug addiction. In short, the Afghan war corrupted Pakistani elites, administration and society and its social impacts on Pakistan, for number of reasons, have given birth to many complex problems which are perhaps less obvious but quite disturbing.
These Afghan refugees have played havoc with Pakistani society, environment and economy. They have literally displaced the local population causing acute problems to commoners and the poor most of whom are living under poverty line, drink unsafe water which is killing them and their children are inhaling air that is full of toxic gases.
It is mainly due to these social, cultural and economic impacts that the local tribes recently strongly resisted and opposed the government’s move to relocate the refugees of the four camps slated for closure in 2007 to other areas of NWFP and Balochistan. They argued the relocated refugees would spoil the environment of their areas and cause a surge in the crimes. Tribal elders belonging to Isakhel tribe of Mohammad agency also protested against NADRA and political administration for issuing Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) and passports to Hazarbaz Afghan refugees by declaring them Pakistani nationals of the sub-tribe Totakhel of the agency and thus legitimizing their stay in the country. They threatened to continue protests if CNICs and passports were not cancelled. Also, Ghulam Muhammad Sadiq- a lawmaker from Mohammad Agency- disclosed at a press conference that the members of the Afghan tribe Hazarbaz Kuchi have taken the domiciles, passports and CNICs, declaring them the members of Khwezai tribe of the Mohammad Agency, by illegal means,   He demanded of the government to deal with them with an iron hand and cancel the documents. He alleged they were involved in anti-state and terrorist activities. He also accused some tribal Maliks and the corrupt elements of the political administration of the agency of taking bribes and being involved in this heinous act of forgery and fakery. Majeed Khan Achakzai, a member of the Baloch provincial assembly, told IRIN that the camps had become a haven for terrorists working in the area, adding that Jungle Pir Alizai had become a base for drug traffickers, smugglers and thieves.

Impact on Pak Demography

The presence of large numbers Afghan refugees has had a weighty impact on the demographics of Pakistan. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, refugees began streaming over the borders into Pakistan. By 1990 approximately 3.2 million refugees had settled there, a decrease of about 90,000 from 1989. Previously uninhabited areas of the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan had been settled by refugees during the 1980s. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that in 1990 there were 345 Afghan refugee villages. Of these, 68.5 percent were in the North-West Frontier Province, 26.0 percent in Balochistan, and 5.5 percent in Punjab. Each village housed an average of 10,000 people, and women and children accounted for 75 percent of the refugee population.
The influx of refugees has had profound social consequences, and the population of desert areas has also had an effect on the environment. Initially, Pakistanis wanted to help their neighbors in a time of need, but difficulties slowly led many to think that their friendship had gone far enough. Among the problems were inflation, a dearth of low-paying jobs because these were taken by refugees, and a proliferation of weapons, especially in urban areas. The escalation of animosity between refugees and Pakistanis, particularly in Punjab, caused the government to restrict the refugees' free movement in the country in the mid1980s.

Impact on Natural Resources of Pakistan

Driven from their homes with little food and few possessions, refugees commonly turn to the environment as a means of support. Many are unaware that their actions are, in fact, exploiting natural resources to an extent that may have severe environmental repercussions. Even if they do know that their practices aren’t sustainable over an extended period, they have no choice - they need to survive.
This huge influx of recent migrations has resulted in extensive environmental damage in Pakistan, much of which is probably irreversible. The impact of these refugees on renewable natural resources is of particular concern as it can have a drastic long-term effect. At most of these refugee camps, trees are cut down to provide support for shelter while branches are collected for firewood and charcoal. Foliage is cut to feed livestock. Ground vegetation is cleared to make way for farming; even tree roots are dug up in extreme conditions and used as firewood. Eventually the land becomes unfit for even the most basic forms of agriculture. The resulting rapid and uncontrolled deforestation since the 1980s has left the area with only about 12% of its original forest cover. According to a UNHCR research report, since the influx of Afghan refugees started in the 80’s, Tameric Forest of Gird-e-Jungle in the Chagai district has been completely depleted and there has been no rehabilitation in the area at all. Other forests in the district share its plight. 

UNHCR Pakistan: Solving the Afghan Refugee Problem

Afghans started pouring into Pakistan in the late 1970s when fighting between the leftist government in Kabul and Islamic traditionalists increased and well before the Soviet Union intervened to shore up the flagging communist government.
By the spring of 1979, the government of Pakistan was sufficiently concerned that they asked UNHCR to help with the influx, following a couple of brief assessment missions by the UN refugee agency.
UNHCR signed the first assistance agreement in November 1979. However, just a month later, with the Soviet's invasion on 26 December 1979, the entire operation took a completely different turn.
What might have been a short-lived refugee problem turned into one lasting decades. "I don't think that anybody saw how long this might last. There was no planning horizon possible. At the time, we were just dealing with lifesaving strategies," Utkan Hasim, who laid the foundations of UNHCR assistance programme for Afghans in Pakistan back in 1979 and later, acted as country director, recalled.
By the end of 1979, 400,000 Afghans had crossed the border and with continued instability and conflict, the total of registered refugees rose to 2.4 million by 1981. According to a UNHCR report, “Though the rate of influx was slowed after that, the registered population peaked at nearly 3.3 million in 1990”.
However, the population outside the camps who drifted to Pakistani cities in search of work was not registered and they subsequently were not entitled to receive any assistance from aid agencies. The Pakistan government estimated there to be some 500,000 Afghans in urban areas in 1990 but there was never any attempt to record the number of out-of-camp Afghans before a comprehensive census conducted in 2005.
Over the course of the 25 years, until the close of the 2004 programme budget, UNHCR spent more than US $1.1 billion on assisting refugees in Pakistan. "The annual programme budget of the refugee agency peaked in the second full year of operation, 1981, when $109 million was spent coping with the creation and upgrading of camps as the influx continued," the UNHCR report said. But the report notes the conditions for most Afghan refugees in Pakistan did not show any real improvement until after 1985. By then, the tents provided by UNHCR began to be replaced by mud-houses as hopes for an early return to Afghanistan faded.
"Where once clusters of tents in barren landscapes housed refugees totally dependent on emergency aid, new refugee villages with mud-walled houses are the norm, with basic amenities established within reasonable reach," observed a joint food assessment mission of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and UNHCR in 1986.

Refugees and Repatriation

Afghan refugees in Pakistan are not a homogeneous group. They fled to Pakistan in several waves starting with the Soviet invasion of their country in 1979. They came from different parts of Afghanistan and have various ethnic backgrounds. The last refugee wave - nearly 300,000 Afghans -- reached Pakistan after the attacks of 11 September 2001.
Conditions for Afghan refugees in Pakistan differ greatly. Some still live in tents, others in mud house settlements that look like the villages they left behind. Those in the camps established after the 11 September attacks receive food assistance through the World Food Programme while all the camps receive medical and education support. In urban areas, few Afghan refugees are fully integrated and well-off. The majority of urban refugees are in slum areas of Pakistan's major cities, barely surviving on casual labor.
Eighteen years after the 1978 coup by the PDPA, the refugee problem remained a significant issue for Afghanistan and its neighbors. The refugee flow began as a trickle in April 1978, reaching a peak during the first half of 1981 when an estimated 4,700 crossed the Pakistan border daily. The flow ebbed and surged in response to Soviet offenses, so that by the fall of 1989, the number of Afghan refugees was estimated at 3.2 million in Pakistan, 2.2 million in Iran, and several hundred thousands resettled in scattered communities throughout the world. Afghans represented the largest single concentration of refugees in the world on whom an estimated $1 million a day was expended in 1988.
Following the fall of the PDPA regime in 1992, a new wave of refugees entered Pakistan; the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 set in motion a lesser flow which continued in 1997 although refugee assistance, other than to those most vulnerable, was cut back drastically in October 1995. Only emergency assistance is available in hastily reconstituted camps for new arrivals around Peshawar.
Following Taliban takeovers of Jalalabad and Kabul in September 1996, the flow of returnees decreased dramatically - on some days none crossed the border - while the number of families crossing into Pakistan once again rose, despite the fact that they were officially discouraged from entering and that only minimum emergency assistance was available.
The background and origins of the refugees has changed over the years. The first to come in 1978 were members of the extended Afghan royal family, their associates, and political allies. Almost all resettled in third countries. By the mid-1980s, most refugees in Pakistan were rural, illiterate pastoralists and farmers. The refugees who fled from Kabul in the 1990s included educated urban bureaucrats, uneducated laborers and high profile officials. Most of the latter were immediately given asylum in third countries. By 1996 the majority of arrivals were highly urbanized, skilled professionals and technocrats. In Pakistan they sit idle, representing a tragic waste of scarce human resources at the very moment in the nation's history when their skills are so desperately needed for reconstruction.
In the early years most refugees, with the exception of those from urban areas who chose to live in cities, lived in tented villages in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), in Baluchistan Province, and in southwest Punjab. Over the years many of these villages became permanent settlements, with mud-brick dwellings and walled compounds replicating the rural villages inside Afghanistan. Pakistan government policies concerning refugees have all along been most liberal. No barbed-wire fences confine camps, and refugees are free to move anywhere to seek employment. Additionally, management of supplies and services provided by the Pakistan government, UNHCR and numbers of NGOs was exemplary. Remarkably, there were no epidemics, little malnutrition because of delayed or insufficient food, and no major outbreaks of violence between refugee and local populations.
The return of several million Afghans, in the years following the complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, was one of the largest refugee repatriations in history. Refugees are a unique category of international migrants, protected and assisted by the UNHCR.
In 1992, after the Mujahideen ousted the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, UNHCR did indeed facilitate the return of massive numbers of Afghans. "In a week alone, more than 100,000 Afghans headed home, with overall, some 1.3 million refugees returning to Afghanistan during the year 1992," the UNHCR recorded.
However, the subsequent bloody civil war and the rise of the hard-line Taliban caused many to flee again seeking safety in Pakistan, along with a whole new generation of the displaced and dispossessed.

Voluntary Repatriation Programme

With the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, with Western intervention in the wake of 9/11, the UN refugee agency started its voluntary repatriation programme in March 2002 under which so far, more than 2.8 million have been helped to return to their homeland.
Initially, the repatriation package proposed by UNHCR for each returning refugee offered $4 to $37 depending on the distance to his/her destination inside Afghanistan. In addition to that, an amount of $12 was also given per person to facilitate repatriating Afghans’ reintegration back into their country. However, realizing that its so far adopted assistance package was unattractive and insufficient for the refugees to cope adequately with the basic needs back at home, the UNHCR enhanced its assistance package in 2007 making it &100 per individual.
The repatriation movement that followed the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 was spontaneous and overwhelming. In order to assist the returnees, UNHCR launched its repatriation operation on 1 March 2002. The number seeking to go home outstripped all predictions. The flow, though at a reduced level, continued through 2003 when more than 340,000 individuals went home.
Refugees decide on their own if and when they want to return. They then approach UNHCR for assistance. Returning families are entitled to a grant covering their travel expenses and a package of household necessities on arrival at their destination in Afghanistan.
UNHCR verifies those seeking assistance intend to settle back in their homeland. While the vast majority of those seeking to return are sincere, there were some - especially during 2003 -- who attempted to receive assistance a second time.
Measures to ensure that assistance went only to those genuinely returning were steadily refined and in October 2002 iris recognition technology was introduced.  By the end of 2003, more than 200,000 returning refugees - everyone over the age of six under rules in effect since July 2003 -- had been checked. Since it recognizes anyone who has already been checked, it is a foolproof guarantee that assistance is not given to the same person twice. Other anti-fraud measures taken at the VRCs include thorough interviews, fingerprint biometrics and the use of election ink to prevent recycling. People found abusing the system are to be arrested.
The flood of Afghan refugees from Pakistan was the largest and swiftest return movement since the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, and even the reduced flow in 2003 was the highest anywhere in the world that year for UNHCR
For more than two decades Pakistan hosted the largest single refugee population in the world. It was estimated that 1.1 million refugees remained in refugee camps at the start of 2003, after more than 1.5 million repatriated the previous year. In addition, an unknown but substantial number of Afghans were known to live in Pakistan's urban areas.
Statistical overview of returned Afghan refugees from Pakistan from Mar 2002 – 28 Feb 2007
The figures given below have been taken from a report of the UNHCR. The report refers to assisted Return Refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan since UNHCR commenced its voluntary Repatriation Programme in March 2002 to February 28, 2007. There were no returns in 2007 till Feb.28 because of the ongoing registration of the afghan refugees living in the country since 1979.

Assisted Voluntary Repatriation:

Year:               2002              2003         2004          2005          2006            2007
Total
Returns:    1,565,066       332,183     383,321     449,391     133,338    2,863,299

The report indicates that 1.56million refugees returned in 2002, 332,183 in 2003, 383,321 in 2004, 449,391 in 2005, and133, 383 in 2006 while no returns could be carried out till 28Feb. 2007 as the government was engaged in the registration of the refugees. In total, 2.86million refugees returned from Pakistan in the period March 2002 to Feb.28, 2007.

Census of Afghan Refugees

Despite providing shelter to the largest population of refugees across the world, neither the government of Pakistan  nor the UNHCR could gather any sort of data of Afghan refugees living in the country until the government of Pakistan and UNHCR decided to conduct a census of the refugees living in Pakistan since 1979.
 The first phase of census of Afghan refugees began in Nov.2004 across Pakistan. According to the officials of the Population and Census Organization of the federal Ministry of Population it was an identification process of Afghan families, residing in all the four provinces and FATA. In fact, this initial phase called ‘delimitation process’ was a part of the government plan to conduct a complete census of refugees in Feb-March 2005.
 Census Organization assigned the task of identifying refugee families to the district governments for which Performas were distributed among councilors to identify refugees living in their areas.  In Fata, the organization entrusted the task to the revenue and tribal Maliks.
The government of Pakistan and the UNHCR signed an MoU on Dec.17, 2004 to carry out actual census of the afghan refugees living in Pakistan since December1, 1979. The agreement was formally endorsed at a meeting on January 11, 2005 between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, and the Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind under which the actual census was conducted from February 25 to March 11, 2005, with financial and technical assistance from the UN refugee agency, by 3,000 enumerators from Pakistan's Population and Census Organisation (PCO). It was a comprehensive survey and the first of its kind to ask a broad range of questions covering issues such as present residence, place of origin in Afghanistan, length of stay in Pakistan, source of livelihood, ethnicity and intention to repatriate.
The results of the census, which was not for only refugees but for all Afghans, were unveiled on May, 2 2005 at a joint government-UNHCR news conference in Islamabad. The census recorded a total of 3,047,225(3.04 million) Afghans who had arrived after December 1, 1979. According to a UNHCR report: "The census of Afghans, undertaken in all locations in Pakistan, shows that 548,105 Afghan families, constituting 3,049,268 individuals, currently reside in Pakistan”.
The six-million dollar census found that 62% of afghans in Pakistan belonged to six border provinces of Afghanistan with 1,861,412(57%) living in North West Frontier Province, 783,545(25%) in Balochistan, 207,754(7%) in Punjab, 136,780(4%) in Sindh, 44,637 in Islamabad and 13,097 in Pakistani-administered Kashmir or the Northern Areas.
Under the census statistics, more than half of the Afghans were found to be laborers working on daily wages while the largest ethnic group (82%) was that of Pashtun.

According to the report of UNHCR, the census showed ‘a young population’ as most of the Afghans covered in the census fell between 5 and 17 years of age. According to the report, "Some 19 percent of Afghans in Pakistan are under the age of five, compared to about 14.8 percent of Pakistan's population in this age group."
The census was deemed to be providing vital information for shaping policies for those who remained after March 2006- a time when the Tripartite Agreement between UNHCR, Pakistan and Afghanistan, under which UNHCR assisted voluntarily repatriation of Afghans, was to expire.

Registration Process

As a follow-up of the census conducted in January-February2005, the Pakistani government and the United Nations signed an agreement to issue registration cards to the remaining 2.5 million Afghan refugees sheltering in Pakistan. Qamar Zaman Chaudhary, additional secretary at the Interior Ministry, Sajid Hussain Chattha, secretary at the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), and Guenet Guebre-Christos, UNHCR representative in Pakistan, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in this regard in Islamabad.  Under the agreement, the UNHCR was to accept the figures the Pakistani government would give it at the end of registration. The SAFRON Ministry was tasked with overseeing the registration process.
Due to this registration process, which began on October15 2006 and continued till Feb.12, 2007, Pakistan and UNHCR had to temporarily suspend the assisted repatriation of the refugees in October2006. The Only Afghans who were counted in the census conducted by Pakistani government from February to March 2005 were eligible to be registered in this registration exercise. The criteria fixed for registration made it mandatory on the Afghans to register in the presence of their family heads and from the district where they had been counted in the census.
Funded by UNHCR, the registration process which cost virtually &6million was conducted by NADRA. The exercise, during which the afghans were asked a range of questions-when each refugee arrived in Pakistan, his area of origin, ethnic background, obstacles in his return to Afghanistan and his profile in Pakistan- was, in fact, meant to document and manage the Afghan population in Pakistan and compile refugees’ database so that, later on, an effective policy could be evolved for a sustainable repatriation of all the refugees by Dec 2009.According to some officials, the registration exercise was designed to achieve much bigger goals as the data would be used to keep an eye on the refugees’ activities in the country and on their cross border movement.
According to the census 2005, there were 3.048 million Afghans in Pakistan but the registration exercise was for the remaining an estimated 2.5 million as more than 580,000 had already been repatriated after the census2005 and before the registration exercise in 2006-07. The registration data revealed that over 63 per cent of the registered refugees were in the NWFP, over 17 per cent in Balochistan, 12 per cent in Punjab, seven per cent in Sindh and less than one per cent in Azad Kashmir.
After the registration process, all registered Afghans above the age of five received Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, to be invalidated upon their repatriation, recognizing them as afghan citizens temporarily living in Pakistan. These cards are valid for three years, until Dec.2009.As for non-registered refugees; they were granted a six-week grace period, from March1 to April, 15 2007 to voluntarily repatriate with enhanced assistance package of &100 per individual.

Resumption of voluntary Repatriation:

Because of traditionally low returns during winter and the registration exercise, assisted return from Pakistan was suspended from 15th Oct 06 through 28th Feb 07. Introducing new modalities, UNHCR resumed its repatriation season in March 2007 with an enhanced package of $100 per individual as a transportation and reintegration grant. The enhanced package is meant to help returnees with initial reintegration in their country of origin.
While the first phase of repatriation, from March1 2007 to April 15 2007, was for the non-registered refugees, the UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation of registered Afghans with PoR cards in Pakistan started on April 19 and will continue until November 2007.
Registered Afghans who choose to voluntarily repatriate with UNHCR assistance must go to UNHCR pre-scheduling centers in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta, where they will be given a departure date before they can approach the Voluntary Repatriation Centers (VRCs). Afghans approaching the pre-scheduling centers must bring their own and family members' PoR cards.
They must also bring visible color photographs of the family. UNHCR will not process Afghans without PoR cards.  PoR-holding Afghans in the Pakistani provinces of the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan must go through pre-scheduling and will not be processed if they approach the VRCs directly. Those from other provinces of Sindh, Punjab and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir can approach the VRCs directly.
Registered Afghans returning to Afghanistan with UNHCR assistance will get an average of 100 U.S. dollars per individual as a transport and re-integration grant to help them settle in Afghanistan. Iris verification for returnees aged five years and above is mandatory for UNHCR assistance. PoR cards will be de-registered at the VRCs by Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) before their departure for Afghanistan.
While enhancing the voluntary repatriation assistance package to $100 per individual, UNHCR made it clear that this enhanced assistance would only be given to Afghans returning with Proof of Registration (PoR) cards that were issued to them after the registration exercise(Oct.2006 to Feb.2007) to validate their three year stay in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan, in the process, issued some 2.2 million PORs to the afghan people and those not getting these cards were asked to leave the country before April 15, 2007 otherwise they would be considered illegal immigrants and face action under the Foreigners Act.
Before the government set deadline of April, 15 2007, which gave Afghans without the PoR cards an opportunity to repatriate with an enhanced return package of $ 100, ended, more than 200,000 unregistered Afghans voluntarily repatriated from Pakistan with UNHCR assistance. Starting from March 1, Pakistan gave a six-week grace period for Afghans who had not taken part in the registration exercise of October 2006 to February 2007 and thus do not have PoR cards. According to the government, announced deadline April 15 was the last day for unregistered Afghans to repatriate with UNHCR assistance. After the deadline, Pakistan has announced that Afghans living without the PoR cards will be considered as illegal, subject to the national laws of the country including the application of the Foreigner's Act against them.
On the last day of the announced deadline around 1,215 Afghan families with 9,007individuals left Pakistan from the three UNHCR Voluntary Repatriation Centers (VRC): two in NWFP and one in Quetta. The total figure of 205,997 that left Pakistan in six weeks included 168,395 from NWFP; 31,390 from Balochistan; 3,941 from Punjab and 2,271 from Sind.
It was a challenging task for UNHCR to assist more than 200,000 Afghans return home in the given six weeks, but according to Kilian Kleinschmidt, Assistant Representative of UNHCR in Pakistan, the staff worked seven days a week to process everyone that had approached repatriation centers. Up to 15,000 Afghans approached repatriation centers every day that were processed by UNHCR. Strict physical verification measures were in place along with the Iris scanning of individuals above the age of five to make sure that only deserving Afghans received UNHCR assistance in Afghanistan. There was a sizeable number that tried to abuse the system and got rejected, said Kleinschmidt.
Anti-fraud measures taken by UNHCR at the VRCs included thorough interviews, fingerprint biometrics, iris verification and the use of election ink to prevent recycling.
UNHCR will start processing registered Afghans with PoR cards for voluntary repatriation on April 19 through its two VRCs - Hayatabad, Peshawar and Baleli Quetta - which will continue till the end of the year. The PoR cards are valid for three years and provide temporary protection for Afghans living in Pakistan, till the end of 2009.
Kleinschm further said that Afghans with PoR cards intending to repatriate would need to pre-schedule their departure with UNHCR scheduling centres in Peshawar and Quetta before approaching the voluntary repatriation centers.
 A total of 3,009,484 Afghans have voluntarily repatriated from Pakistan with UNHCR assistance since the UN refugee Agency started assisting returns to the post-Taliban Afghanistan in March 2002, making it the largest such operation in the UN refugee agency's history. The number (3,009,484) includes more than 1.56 million in 2002; 343,074 in 2003; 383,598 in 2004; 449,520 in 2005; 133,015 in 2006 and 135,182 so far in 2007. Over the six-year period, 61 percent of the returnees left from North West Frontier Province, 17 percent from Balochistan, 14 percent from Punjab/Islamabad and 9 percent from Sindh province. About 2.6 million Afghans are still living in Pakistan.

Government’s New Repatriation Plan

On the basis of the results achieved through registration exercise, the government has now approved a comprehensive plan to repatriate an estimated 3 million afghan refugees and close all refugee camps by Dec.2009 2009. The plan, of course, is a follow-up on the successful refugee registration exercise that the Musharaf government undertook from Oct.2006 to Feb.2007, and the census it conducted of the refugee population in 2005. The plan based on a two-pronged approach, has been worked out by an inter-ministerial committee headed by interior minister. The committee, involving Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Baber Ghauri and Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions Sardar Yar Mohammed Rind, in its maiden meeting held on May 25(2006) resolved to send the refugees back to Afghanistan in a dignified manner.

According to sources, the plan urges the government to apply, as a first step, gradual and increasing pressure on the refugees to go back to their country. Under the next phase, the government has been asked to provide incentives to the refugees who are ready to return to their homeland and help the afghan government to create conducive environment for the returning refugees.
The plan makes registration of refugees mandatory and suggests forcible repatriation of those avoiding it. However, it suggests encouraging cross-border visits of locals and afghan elders. The plan rules out integration of Afghans into Pakistan’s population and urges the government to demonstrate greater political will to repatriate them. It seeks enforcement of strict border control and suggests promoting and encouraging group repatriation especially of the refugees living in the urban areas of the country.
According to the plan, the success of the repatriation policy will depend on the willingness of the Afghanistan government and restoration of peace and security in Afghanistan.

Camps slated for Closure in 2007

In order to materialize its plan of gradually closing down all refugee camps in the country by Dec.2009, the four camps that Pakistani government plans to shut in 2007 include the Katcha Garhi and Jalozai camps in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Girdi Jungle and Jungle Pir Alizai in Balochistan. Two camps-Katcha Garhi and Jungle Pir Alizai- were scheduled to be closed by June 15, while the other two are to be closed by the end of August. Together, the four camps host over 220,000 people. Let us have a quick look at some of the details about these camps:

Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle

Jungle Pir Alizai camp is one of four camps scheduled for closure in 2007, as agreed at the 12th Tripartite Commission meeting between the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan and UNHCR.
Home to some 35,000 Afghan refugees, 63km away from Quetta in Qila Abdullah district of Balochistan, Jungle Pir Alizai was set up soon after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Nearly 30 years later and Afghanistan is still at war, but Pakistan is now determined to close the camp, and other similar settlements, saying they have become sanctuaries for Taliban battling the Afghan government and US and NATO troops across the border. The deadline of June, 15 2007 was set for the closure of the camp but, due to reasons mentioned later in the paper, the deadline was missed and the camp could not be closed.
Many of the inhabitants of the camp claim to be from the local tribes in Pakistan. Afghans affected by the closure of the camp have been given two choices: to voluntarily repatriate with UNHCR assistance, or to relocate to Mohammad Khel Camp(in 2005-2006) and now in Gahzgai Minara Camp in Balochistan's Loralai district, where they can benefit from primary education, basic healthcare, water and sanitation facilities.
"The majority of the refugees here come from the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand province where the Taliban are strongest," Shamsaddin Shams, a shopkeeper at the Jungle Pir Alizai refugee camp 62 km west of Quetta, Balochistan's provincial capital, told IRIN.
A government of Pakistan and UNHCR conducted census in 2005 counted some 35,479 Afghans living in the camp. Only 17,844 opted to be registered in a countrywide registration campaign from October 2006 to February 2007. It means that more than 17000 afghan refugees, sheltering in Jungle Pir Alizai refugee camp have not registered with the Pakistani government and the UNHCR. Currently, there are 113,655 unregistered afghan refugees in Balochistan.
Skirmishes between afghan refugees and Pakistani security forces broke out in May, 2007 over the government’s attempt to bulldoze the refugees’ houses in which four people were killed. Where have 17151 refugees gone from Jungle Pir Alizai since those clashes?
The six-million dollar census conducted in February and March2005 counted 769,268(25.2% of the total) Afghan refugees living in Balochistan. According to the census, the number of refugees taking shelter in Jungle Pir Alizai was as high as 35,000. However, when the government and the UNHCR decided to register Afghan refugees living in Balochistan, as they had done in other parts of the country, a sharp decline was witnessed in the number of refugees. The registration process, which began on October15, 2006 and went on till February12, 2007, counted only 17,848 people in a camp of 2569 households.
According to a report of Daily Times- a Pakistani English daily- when an official of the UNHCR was asked why enough Afghans had not turned up for the registration process, he said: “Many of them had gone to Iran, Afghanistan, UAE or to other countries for business. Interestingly, others had gone to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj”.
When the said newspaper asked another official of the UNHCR the questions like: Who granted permission to these Afghan refugees to move out of Pakistan? Who gave them valid traveling documents? How had they managed to obtain fake NICs and Pakistani passports?, he replied: “You had better put these questions to the government”. “Obviously, some government department is overtly or covertly involved in this fraud”, he said.
The government extended the date for Jungle Pir Alizai Camp thrice, from June2005 to July 31,2005,  from then to April30,2006 and then June 2006 were fixed as deadlines but to no avail. And, now the new deadline of June15, 2007 has also been missed reinforcing the perception that closing all refugee camps by 2009 is not a plain sailing.
A second Baloch camp facing closure by August 31, 2007 is the Girdi Jungle camp, where another 40,000 Afghans live. It is 400 km from Quetta and close to the Iranian border. Residents there raised similar concerns as they did over the closure -attempt of Jungle Pir Alizai- that it was impossible for them to leave the camp overnight as they had been living there for the last 30 years. Some nationalist political parties also backed their viewpoint demanding of the government that the deadline for the closure of the camp be extended.
"I am very sad. I will not go. It's better for the government to kill us," Agha Janan, a banana seller from Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, said.
Abdul Ghafoor, a school teacher at the camp, had a question for Balochistan's government and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR): "How can you willingly ask us to return to places like Helmand and Kandahar knowing how bad the security is there?"
The total number of refugee camps in Balochistan is 12, of which two camps, Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle are still in place despite the government’s decision to close them down since June20, 2005.  “The recent clash between the security forces and the Afghan refugees indicates that the task of eliminating these camps is not a bed of roses for the government”, said an observer.

Kacha Garhi and Jalozai

Katcha Garhi is also among the four camps the government plans to close down by Sep.2007. It is situated close to the University of Peshawar and is one of the first Afghan refugee camps established in Pakistan. Katcha Garhi, set up months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, is home to almost 100,000 refugees and is one of the largest camps inside Pakistan. Escaping more than two decades of war, both civil and international, has been no easy feat for the Afghan people. More than one million Afghans were killed, millions more maimed and crippled by carpet bombing operations and landmines (an estimated 15 million of which were planted under Afghan earth), and approximately six million people – one fifth of the pre-war population – were turned into refugees. In the 1980s it was said that one out of every two displaced people in the world was an Afghan.
Roughly four million Afghans came to Pakistan in search of refuge, half of them living in the many camps that were set up along the fringes of our cities. According to the 2005 census, the majority of the afghan refugees (57%) live in NWFP. This year, the four camps that Pakistani government plans to close also include Katcha Garhi refugee camp. June, 15 2007 was fixed as the deadline for the camp but, due to strong resistance put up by the refugees against the closure of the camp, it was missed.
The residents of Katcha Garhi are not new to Pakistan, they are second or third generation refugees. They may not have intended to settle in Pakistan, but every passing year brought only more conflict and warfare to their country, so they stayed. Each house in Katcha Garhi holds approximately 18-20 people.
Initially, April 30, 2006 was fixed as the deadline for the closure of Katcha Garhi camp but when the refugees did not comply with this deadline, government extended the closure date to July 31, 2006. However, that date too passed without any success.
Insiders say that the refugees’ leaders, enjoying strong bonds with the Pakistani establishment, played their cards well and ‘successfully’ managed to keep the official plan at bay. The majority of the 9,740 families living there as of April 2006 paid attention to the officials’ deadline only to the extent of making their leaders to put brakes on the official plan. “The refugees had their reservations about the April 30 deadline, so they were given a one-year extension,” says Sahibzada. The refugees defied the deadline because of their high economic stakes in and around Peshawar. Those with economic stakes were of the view that the government should give them at least one more year so that they could have ample time to wind up their businesses and dispose of their vehicles.
After being issued notices in January 2006 for vacating the camp in a span of just three months, many believed that the move would make the refugees suffer huge financial losses.
According to a conservative estimate by the refugees’ leaders, the market value of Kacha Ghari refugees’ assets comes to about 740 million rupees as hundreds of them have established businesses here. Some 2,000 own transport vehicles, more than 2,500 have shops in various markets and some 2,000 have auto-rickshaws.
 The one-year extension period has ended but the majority of refugee families are reluctant to leave the camps. They neither want to vacate their mud houses nor Peshawar -- home to more than two million refugees for well over two decades. Many refugees are reluctant to leave the camps because they say they have no place to go to in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Some are not ready because of their ‘old enmities’ back home. Others feel the financial benefits being offered by the UNHCR under its voluntary repatriation programme are not attractive enough.
The other camp in NWFP, scheduled to be closed by August, 31 this year, is Jalozai that houses some 120,000 refugees. At first, tents were the predominant mode of shelter in the two camps- Katca Garhi and Jalozai. But by 2001, when Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers were ousted from power by U.S.-led coalition forces, Katcha Garhi was an intricate village of attached adobe homes where people had settled to live, not to await their return home.
In 2001, some 75,000 Afghans were crammed into Katcha Garhi and 72,000 in Jalozai. By 2004, with the UNHCR overseeing the repatriation of refugees, numbers in the former had fallen to 50,000. Pakistan has been trying to shut the camps since 2002.
To accomplish the goal of closing all refugee camps by 2010, official agencies, i.e. the ARC, the Federal Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) and the NWFP government had been assigned to clear the Kacha Ghari camp in May 2006 and the Jallozai camp in June 2006. But the repeatedly issued notices to the refugees living in Kachaghari  Jallozai camps, went unheeded.
In accordance with the tripartite commission agreement, Pakistan cannot force the refugees to repatriate. Therefore, the refugees have options like getting relocated to any other similar facility elsewhere in the country or return to Afghanistan.
It was in this context that the authorities issued notices to Kacha Ghari and Jallozai camps to move to any other facility or repatriate. But they failed in their bid.
Official sources say that the option of getting them relocated to any other camp is aimed at keeping the refugees away from Peshawar. While the refugees showed no intentions to comply with the notices, the officials concerned kept posturing that the refugees have no other option but to leave. The authorities’ efforts to close down the camps ended without achieving any results.
Islamabad’s sudden focus on refugees’ repatriation is being seen by some independent observers as an attempt to intimidate Kabul, adding to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s woes. The policy shift has come at a time when Pakistan does not enjoy cordial relations with Afghanistan, making observers believe that Islamabad’s move is actually meant to create more problems for the Afghan government.
With the ever-increasing tensions with Kabul, this time round Islamabad appears to be relentless as it is showing no signs of giving up its plan like 2003 when it abandoned a similar plan after being moved by the Afghan government. No less than 75,000 inmates of the Kacha Garhi refugee camp vacated their abodes allowing them to be razed to the ground in 2003 when Pakistan undertook a move to close down the camp and the nearby Nasir Bagh refugee camp. But the move was abandoned after, what the official circles say, Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a personal request to his Pakistani counterpart at one of their meetings.
According to a UNHCR spokesperson, the move was delayed on humanitarian grounds upon the request of the refugees who had asked for an extension to let them wind up their extensive businesses and other dealings.
It's a no-win situation. Pakistan cannot afford to shelter millions of refugees for much longer and Afghanistan is not able to care for its existing citizens, let alone its exiled citizenry. Undoubtedly, Pakistan has been infinitely kinder to its population of Afghan refugees than Iran was.

Camp destruction stirs resentment among Afghan refugees

As mentioned above, the government of Pakistan plans to close four camps- Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle in Balochistan and Katcha Garhi and Jalozai in NWFP- in 2007. For this, a month-long awareness campaign was launched to sensitize the camp residents on the two options available -- voluntary repatriation with an enhanced package averaging 100 U.S. dollars per person, or relocation to any other government-identified camp in the country. While the government identified 10 camps in Dir Upper and Lower, Bannu, Hangu, Kohat and Chitral for the relocation of refugees living in Kacha Garhi and Jalozai refugee camps in NWFP, it directed the refugees residing in Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle  to relocate to Mohammad Khel Camp(in 2005-2006) and now in Gahzgai Minara Camp in Loralai district, about 300km south of Quetta - and where they would continue to receive basic assistance in terms of primary education, health care and access to water and sanitation - or to repatriate to their homeland with UNHCR assistance.
Afghans registered in the country that choose the repatriation option could receive an enhanced assistance, transport and reintegration package, including a grant of approximately US $100, while those Afghans affected by camp closure who could not repatriate at the moment would receive transport to, and assistance in, the government-identified camps in Pakistan.
 The federal government had ordered the closure of these camps last year also but, later on, the deadline was extended by it for another year. New deadline for Jungle Pur Alizai and Kacha Garhi was June, 15 2007 whereas Girdi Jungle and Jalozai are scheduled to be closed by August 31, 2007. 
 
Deadline of June15 also missed

But, the deadline of June 15, 2007 for Jungle Pir Alizai and Kacha Garhi camps was also missed due to strong resistance on the part of the refugees against the closure of the camps. A violent clash between the local authorities and refugees claimed four lives in May2007 at Jungle Pir Alizai camp. According to the local authorities, they were bulldozing some walls of an uninhabited compound in the camp as a first step toward closing it on June 15, 2007 when camp residents started stoning them in protest.
 As a result of the ensuing cross-fire, four Afghan refugees were killed and nine others, including four policemen, were injured at the camp, located 62km west of Quetta-the provincial capital of Balochistan. According to the details, after the government set deadline for the closure of the camp expired, the district administration along with police, Levis and anti-terrorism force went for the demolition of the camps as per the policy of the government. In reaction to it, the refugees started pelting the vehicles of the law enforcers with stones injuring 3 police officials. In order to disperse the provoked refugees, the police fired tear gas shells on them wounding 4 refugees. At this, the neighboring tribes also joined hands with the refugees and thousands of people blocked Quetta-Chaman highway at six points. They also opened fire on the law enforcers injuring 5 officials of police and Levis. In the counter fire, 4 refugees were killed that heightened the tension in the area.

Similarly, it stirred great resentment in afghan refugees of NWFP when Pakistani authorities, on June 15, 2007, bulldozed homes at an Afghan refugee camp earmarked for closure, stirring anger among residents unwilling to return to their troubled homeland.
Police and officials supervised the destruction of about 10 houses at the Katcha Garhi camp, a warren of mud-walled houses near the northwestern city of Peshawar, on Friday morning.
The refugees eyed the work with resentment, saying eviction would wreck their already marginal existence.
"We will not go to Afghanistan. There is no peace, no water, and no place to live. Otherwise everyone loves their own country," said Sheikh Mohammed, a 60-year-old man with a long white beard and a black and white turban. "We spent 20, 30 years in Pakistan and we are happy here."
Katcha Garhi is one of four camps — together housing more than 220,000 refugees — that Pakistan aims to close by September as part of a drive to persuade Afghans to go home.
Officials initially set Friday, June 15, 2007, as the deadline for the closure of Katcha Garhi and the Jungle Pir Alizai camp near Quetta. However, after incidence of reluctance from afghan refugees to leave the place, both have been given a little more time.
Meanwhile the United Nations urged Pakistan on Tuesday not to force Afghan refugees back to their homeland when it shuts four border camps soon, saying Afghanistan was already swamped by Afghans evicted from Iran.
Afghanistan, crippled by more than 20 years of war, has millions of its people either in refugee camps or working illegally in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Many send back money, sustaining communities inside the impoverished nation.
But in April Iran stepped up evictions of Afghans classed as illegal immigrants, deporting about 100,000 Afghans since then -- equal to almost a third of all those previously evicted by Iran in 2006, the U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, said.
Now, with Pakistan planning to shut down camps holding more than 220,000 Afghan refugees by the end of August, the UNHCR urged Pakistan to tread carefully, fearful that impoverished Afghanistan could be hit from east and west by floods of people.
"It has to happen in a peaceful way," said the UNHCR's representative to Afghanistan, Salvatore Lombardo.
Pakistan, home for more than 3 million Afghan refugees, wants them to go home, saying refugee camps are fertile recruiting grounds for Afghan Taliban insurgents.

Pakistan’s Position

Pakistan’s recent sudden focus on the repatriation afghan refugees can also be viewed against the backdrop of a blame-game that has been going on between Pakistan and Afghanistan for the last few years. Afghanistan has in the past accused Pakistan of allowing militant leaders to use its territory as a base from which to recruit and plan attacks on Afghan and foreign troops. Officials from Afghanistan, United States and some of its NATO allies tend to attribute the rising violence to the presence of Taliban sanctuaries in the Pakistan’s western borderlands.
Pakistan, meanwhile, blames the large numbers of Afghan refugees for stoking violence and insecurity. "The problem of cross-border militancy is closely related to the presence of over 3 million Afghan refugees. … The Taliban militants are able to blend in with these refugees, making their detection more difficult," Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Munir Akram, said during a UN Security Council session in January. "We would like to see all Afghan refugees repatriated to Afghanistan as soon as possible."
Rebutting Afghan allegations, the government of Pakistan takes the position that it is keen for stability and integrity of Afghanistan and would like Afghan refugees to go back to their homeland and play their part in its development and progress.
Pakistani prime minister while addressing the Enabling Environment Conference on Afghanistan in Kabul said that Pakistan and Afghanistan were bound by a common faith, history, culture and traditions and were also connected through ethnic, tribal, family and linguistic ties. The people of Pakistan stood shoulder to shoulder with their Afghan brothers and sisters in their struggle for liberation from Soviet occupation. For more than 25 years, Pakistan has provided a home to over 3 million Afghan refugees and has pledged over 300 million dollars of assistance towards reconstruction projects in the country covering the fields of communication, education, and health among others.
Pakistan also attributes the constant allegations on the part of Kabul to the failure of the Karzai-administration to maintain its writ beyond presidential palace. It maintains that Afghan refugee camps are a hotbed of support for a resurgent Taliban and they should be closed. So, it is to achieve this objective that Pakistan is now working on a comprehensive policy top close down all refugee camps in the country by Dec.2009.

Afghan Refugees Reluctant to Go Home

 With Pakistan determined to send all afghan refugees back to Afghanistan till Dec.2009, many Afghan refugees are reluctant to return to Afghanistan. Many refugees, including members of various ethnic groups, and women and girls fear continuing human rights abuses inside Afghanistan.  According to a recent report on the registration of Afghans living in the country, the majority of Afghans registered (82 percent) said they had no intention of returning to their homeland in the near future, with 41 percent citing insecurity as the primary impediment to their return.
According to a detailed census report released by Pakistan and UNHCR after the census of 2005, More than 2.5 million Afghan refugees would like to continue living in Pakistan beyond 2005.The findings of the report, entitled, 'Census of Afghans in Pakistan 2005' revealed that of three million Afghans in the country, some 75 percent are not ready to repatriate, citing poor security, a lack of adequate housing, scarcity of jobs and various land issues. "The census responses underline the need for continuing development assistance inside Afghanistan," the report said.
According to a recent UNHCR report, of an estimated 2.5 million Afghan nationals currently sheltering in Pakistan, some 57 per cent are unwilling to go back to their war-ravaged homeland. More than 2.8 million Afghans have been repatriated from Pakistan with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since 2002 while some 2.5 million Afghans are still there, said a UNHCR report, citing the latest census conducted by the Pakistan government and the UNHCR.
The report said that conflict and persecution did force the Afghans into exile, but these were no longer the reasons for their continued stay in Pakistan. In fact, many of them are reluctant to get back because they are well-established here and do not want relocation. Others are frightened by the customary tribal conflicts back home, or are too poor to turn over a new leaf in a country which is still ravaged with infighting.

Hazratullah, a refugee who is a native of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province said: "I don’t have a house there and I don’t know if I will find any work”.
Mohammad Khalid, 20, has registered himself as an Afghan national with the Pakistani authorities. And this has landed him in a dilemma. The process of registration came after Pakistan declared that all Afghan refugees must return to their homes in three years' time.
But for Mr Khalid, home is the Katcha Garhi refugee camp on the western outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
"I was born and raised here. I don't have any other home to go to," he says.
“A year back, I went to Afghanistan along with my family and stayed there in a village of Baghlan for three months. Failing to find jobs there, we decided to return to Karachi,” said Saifullah Khan, a refugee employed with a carpet manufacturing factory located in Afghan Basti, Karachi.
“Now, I don’t want to go back as I and my brothers are happy here,” said Khan, 17, who grew up in Karachi and has his parents, three brothers and four sisters living here with him.
A visit to the makeshift camps established for Afghan refugees in the environs of Karachi revealed that most of the Afghan families were unwilling to return to their homeland due to uncertain law and order situation and poor economic conditions. Reasoning that there were no jobs in Afghanistan, they believe they could live with peace in Pakistan.
The metropolis has two camps providing refuge to a large number of Afghans. One of them called ‘Afghan Basti’ is located at Al Asif Square in Sohrab Goth off Super Highway and the other one in Surjani Town off the newly-constructed Northern Bypass. The two camps have more than 3,000 houses, most of which are made of mud-bricks.
Safeer Khan, an elderly refugee who came to Pakistan when the former USSR invaded Afghanistan in late 1970s, said: “The place (Afghanistan) offers no jobs, no security, no law and order and no peace of mind”.
According to the UNHCR, the percentage of voluntary repatriation in 2006 fell significantly in comparison with previous years. Only 22 per cent of the refugees described ‘security concerns’ as their reason for not returning to Afghanistan, but the latest census revealed that a majority of those originating from the border provinces were not willing to go back soon.

Why are they Reluctant?

"Forcing us into a region which is still torn by war and lawlessness, where women and children are not safe, amounts to the gravest violation of human rights I can imagine," says Abdul Hakim Khan, an elderly refugee living in Katcha Garhi camp.
According to an official of the Pakistani refugee agency, the Commissionerate of Afghan Refugees (Car), the problem of Afghans’ reluctance to go back is typical of a very large segment of the refugee population in Pakistan. “More than half of the 2.2 million refugees who have registered... so far were either born here or migrated at a very young age," he said. Most of them have never set foot inside Afghanistan, and have lost their fathers and other close relatives in the decade-long war against the invading Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the 1980s. "They have nothing to go back to in Afghanistan, and would stay on in Pakistan if given a choice," he said.
In fact, twenty-eight years of unrelenting conflict and widespread human rights abuses have created devastating humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan impeding Afghans from repatriating to their country. Over the course of Afghanistan's civil war, warring factions have repeatedly violated human rights and international humanitarian law, engaging in indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling, summary executions, rape, persecution on the basis of religion and the use of anti-personnel mines.
Afghanistan reportedly has the highest infant, child and maternal mortality rates, the lowest literacy rate and life expectancy, and one of the two or three lowest levels of per capita food availability in the world- factors that ultimately lead to the reluctance of Afghans from going back in Afghanistan. In October 2000, the UN Commission on Human Rights special reporter on Afghanistan asserted that the country was in "a state of acute crisis -- its resources depleted, its intelligentsia in exile, its people disenfranchised, its traditional political structures shattered and its human development indices among the lowest in the world."  
In May 2001, the World Food Program warned that more than 1 million Afghans were facing famine conditions, and in September reported that in some areas, people were surviving by eating grass and locusts. Although the UN and other aid agencies have for years supplied food and other assistance to the Afghan population, since the September 11 terrorist attacks, all international aid workers have withdrawn, leaving only a skeleton staff of local UN employees in place
On the other hand, although still physically restricted, women have widened their horizons and heightened their expectations in Pakistan, especially with regard to better health and education. Many women are thus reluctant to repatriate, citing unwillingness once again to undergo the traumas of displacement, the inability of the authorities to provide even minimal services to which they have become accustomed, and the absence of guaranteed economic security.
Other factors that are likely to influence the number of Afghan refugees and displaced who return home are:
Security: Prevailing nsecurity, anarchy and disorder in Afghanistan is the main stumbling block to the refugees’ return to their homeland.
Economic opportunities: Jobs and economic opportunities for Afghans wishing to return home will be sparse. Thus, lack of employment opportunities there in Afghanistan impedes refugees from returning home and they find Pakistan a land of opportunities.
Afghan Corrupt administration and its weakening writ also provide an excuse for refugees not to repatriate.
Unlikely withdrawal of foreign troops also discourages refugees from returning to their home.
Many afghan refugees deem that they would not be accepted by warlords and self-proclaimed commanders back at home. So, they are not ready to repatriate.
Economic ties in countries of asylum. Many long-term Afghan refugees are earning a livelihood in their countries of asylum and their willingness to return home has not yet been determined.
Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan are unable to decide if they should return because they lack information about the security situation and the prospect of jobs in their country. Some are reluctant to move because they do not have land in Afghanistan.

Current Repatriation Situation

Having faced strong resistance from and violent clashes with, the inmates of Jungle Pir Alizai refugee camp in Balochistan, the authorities once temporarily put off the plan to close this camp on June, 15 2007. Khalid Mahmood, commissioner for refugees in the province told Reuters on June, 13: “As for as the deadline (June 15, 2007) is concerned, we are definitely not going to meet that”. He was talking in context of the refugees’ refusal to go back or to be relocated from the camp. It seems that nature is also bent upon helping refugees stay more in Pakistan as the government was once again forced to postpone its plans to repatriate afghan refugees due to the heavy floods and torrential rains in parts of Balochistan and Sindh. According to recent reports, the government has once again resumed the voluntary repartition of the afghan refugees as envisaged by its plan to close all refugee camps in the country by Dec.2009. But, will Pakistan, which has announced many unimplemented repatriation plans and deadlines in the past also, succeed this time in sending all refugees back by 2009?
 Let it be said at the outset that there is no legal bar in sending them back to Afghanistan. This is so because if we take the Refugee Convention (that does not apply to Pakistan, as it is not a party to it) as a benchmark, only the “well-founded fear of persecution” could entitle the refugees for continuing to stay in Pakistan.
The “expanded definition” of a refugee that includes human rights violations, violence, etc., as grounds for a refugee status does not apply because of its doubtful legal validity. Once the Convention definition disappears and a “change of circumstances” in the country of origin of refugees takes place (meaning replacement of a tyrannical government with a democratic one, gradual improvement in human rights situation, introduction of legal reforms, etc.) it can bring the refugee status to an end.
In the present situation, since 42% of the Afghans cite security, 31% shelter and 24% livelihood rather than the “well-founded fear of persecution” as grounds for not returning to Afghanistan, they become no more than economic refugees. Besides, the “change of circumstances” stipulated above has taken place in Afghanistan. They are no longer legally entitled to stay in Pakistan. The problem with the refugees’ return therefore lies less with the law and more with practical difficulties.
The refugees do not want to return to Afghanistan because the conditions obtaining there are not conducive; or in the words of the UNHCR representative in Pakistan, the Afghan government simply lacks the “absorption capacity”. Keeping this in mind, the UNHCR has been counseling the Pakistan government for some time now that it should focus on refugee management rather than their repatriation. In plain language, what it is suggesting is that the latter should forget about their repatriation and instead regularize their stay in Pakistan because they will not go back to Afghanistan. The government is not amenable to this suggestion. It wants the refugees to go back at all costs.
The government’s answer to the refugee dilemma is the three-year plan for voluntary repatriation of all the remaining refugees. The government is also planning to increase strict border control to stop the Afghans from infiltrating into Pakistan. Will Pakistan and UNHCR, by offering &100 to each returning refugee, succeed in luring the remaining refugees to go back to Afghanistan for good?
The Afghan refugees will undoubtedly be happy to take the bait of $100 per person as cash reward for repatriation. Since they have large families they would net a hefty amount. But it is highly unlikely that once in Afghanistan they will want to stay put because of the poor security situation and lack of economic opportunities there. They are most likely to return to Pakistan through unfrequented routes and quietly settle here. The new plan is therefore doomed to fail.

In fact, this will be a repetition of what happened in the early 1990s when, according to UNHCR, out of 1.5 millions repatriated to Afghanistan 1 million returned to Pakistan. The same thing must have happened during 2002-05 when 3 million refugees were repatriated. Otherwise how do we explain that after the repatriation of 5 million since the 1990s against 4.9 millions who ever came here, we still have 3 million on our soil?
The new repatriation plan shows the Pakistan government has never seriously analyzed the reasons why refugees keep returning to Pakistan. The refugees will not settle in Afghanistan unless the situation there becomes conducive for their stay. Given the fact that it will not improve anytime soon signifies that they will repatriate only when the cows come home. This means the above-mentioned UNHCR advice has a lot of merit. However, if the government does not want to accept it and is determined to see the refugees back in Afghanistan at all costs then it should adopt a bold initiative. Indeed desperate situations need desperate remedies.
That bold initiative consists in forcing the West, particularly the US to immediately start a programme of reconstruction in Afghanistan, especially in the areas from where most of the refugees have come and relocate the refugees in Afghanistan. Pakistan has the clout to make it do so because it is perhaps the most critical ally in the war against terror without whose cooperation the US cannot succeed in Afghanistan.
The foreign minister’s statement last January that the government would ask the West for the refugees’ relocation to Afghanistan raised the hope that the Pakistan government would force the US into accepting the point. Instead, the government on the question of removal of refugee camps from the Pak-Afghan border to the other side of the Durand Line — as it had initially insisted — meekly agreed to their relocation to Pakistan’s hinterland.
Not surprising. Pakistan does not have the tradition of being a hard bargainer. We sold ourselves cheap in the aftermath of 9/11 even though we knew the US could not succeed in Afghanistan without our help. There is no hope the government would force the US to agree to the above proposal. As it is, the merry-go-round of refugees’ repatriation seems to be ceaseless despite the efforts being made by UNHCR, Islamabad and Kabul to ensure a positive end to this long and difficult story of refugees in Pakistan.

Looking to the future

Queries concerning the future of Afghans living in Pakistan started to emerge as early as 1982, when the conflict grinding in on Afghanistan started turning into a Cold War struggle of attrition between the Soviet Union and the United States, leaving little prospects of an early return.  
In December 1982, the US Committee for Refugees issued a pamphlet under the title of 'Afghan Refuges in Pakistan: Will they Go Home Again?'
The publication poses the question to donors of as to how many years they would want to be asked to support three million refugees and what damage might be done in the long run to an Afghan culture that puts a high value on independence and self-sufficiency.
The UNHCR report states: "Hopes were high for the early return of over three million Afghans, which failed to materialize. Instead, continued internecine conflict in Afghanistan (in the 1990s) caused more flows into Pakistan in the following years”.
Unfortunately, the situation in their (Refugees’) country of origin does not encourage them to return home. Besides the Taliban insurgency, the task of reconstruction, for which the international community pledged billions of dollars at Tokyo, has come virtually to a standstill because of anarchy and violence in the country.  Hundreds of thousands of refugees have slipped out of the refugee camps ands spread all over Pakistan. By a modest estimate, in Karachi alone their number is 300,000. The easy availability of NICs by illegal means has enabled them to acquire property, have jobs and start business. Traditionally hospitable to foreign Muslims, Pakistanis have never hesitated to welcome Afghan displaced persons (DPs) despite problems between the two governments. Terrorists cross over into Pakistan and find shelter in the refugee camps. This only exposes Pakistan to the charge that it is harboring terrorists and is not ‘doing enough’ in the war on terror.
It is time Pakistan made the world realize that the continued existence of millions of afghan refugees on Pakistan’s soil is a burden on its economy. Unless the Karzai regime puts its house in order, there is no possibility that the afghan refugees will return home.
However, a successful return program will also require boosting development activities and rehabilitation efforts to ensure greater economic opportunities for the returning refugees. The lesson learned from large-scale refugee returns in Cambodia in the early 1990s is that a partnership is needed between UNHCR and UNDP with the latter focusing on community development in regions where large numbers of refugees and displaced persons are returning to ensure that returning refugees and displaced persons receive the assistance needed for them to become economically self-sufficient.  Coordination mechanisms have to be quickly established to ensure that international agencies and donors are working together to maximize the success of all parts of the reconstruction program for Afghanistan and to avoid duplication of effort and institutional rivalries. As most of the refugees cite insecurity as the main reason for not returning to Afghanistan, it is for all- Afghan government, the US and NATO forces- to adopt measures that ensure security in the country and minimize the obtaining anarchy and disorder. To achieve this end, the US and NATO also need to give a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan so that resistance against them could be minimized which would ultimately bring peace and tranquility to the country. UNHCR has to further enhance the assistance package for the refugees so that they think hundred times before rejecting it and deciding not returning to home.
As Pakistan is not leaving any stone unturned to ensure that all the refugees are repatriated before Dec.2009, the Afghan government also needs to be reciprocating by offering greater and attractive incentives for the returnees. The numbers of Afghans who will request repatriation assistance from UNHCR cannot be predicted. If the demand for repatriation/return is larger than expected, UN agencies and donors should be prepared to respond positively with additional resources. It would be a travesty if a successful repatriation program had to be shut down due to a shortage of resources. The expansion of development and security throughout Afghanistan will be crucial to drawing refugees home.