Refugees Fear Return to Afghanistan
PESHAWAR - The countdown has begun for Afghan refugees to vacate the Jalozai camp, 35 km east of this border city in Pakistan.
An estimated 88,000-registered refugees, many of whom have lived here for close to three decades, have been told to leave. Pakistani authorities said bulldozers will flatten the makeshift, mud-plastered homes in Jalozai after Apr. 15, the deadline for voluntary repatriation. Last July, the largest Afghan refugee camp, Kacha Garhi, was razed to the ground after it was shut.
Those who choose not to go have the option of shifting to new refugee camps that have been established in Dir and Chitral, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), 150 km and 425 km respectively from Peshawar, which will remain open up to 2009.
With the security situation worsening, and the failure of the Karzai government to tackle joblessness, most refugees fear a return to hopelessness in Afghanistan.
“We are better off here. I earn roughly 35 US dollars a day, which is quite enough money,” said Abdul Waheed, a fruit seller at the camp who arrived in Jalozai 16 years ago. His three sons and three daughters do not want to go back either. “Back home there are no jobs, no schools, no business, no health facilities. Everything there (in Afghanistan) is in shambles,” he added.
Another refugee, Rasool Mohammad who has lived in Jalozai for 13 years is preparing to leave. “We have packed our belongings,” he said. “My two sons have gone to Kabul to register at a camp there, and locate a house for our 12-member family.”
Commissioner Afghan Refugees (CAR), Nasir Azam, has ruled out any further extensions. According to Haji Dost Mohammad, a camp elder, refugee representatives had pleaded for a few more weeks in order to enable thousands of children to complete the school year by end-April.
Ghazal Gul, a final year student of a school in Jalozai, was categorical his family will not leave. “We cannot go. We will stay with relatives if we are forced to leave. The situation in Afghanistan isn’t worth living,” she said.
A veiled Afghan woman in a sky-blue burqa, her baby in her arms, waits in front of the camp of the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to register. She identifies herself as Raeesa Bibi. Originally from Jalalabad, on the road from Kabul to Peshawar, she does not want to return to her country. “My husband died of cancer three years ago,” the 39-year-old said. “I work in the houses of local people who feed my three children and meet other requirements.”
In Afghanistan, she fears her children would starve to death, and she would be reduced to begging for a living.
Pakistani authorities have begun cracking down. Some 250 shops owned by Afghan refugees in Jalozai were demolished on Mar. 5.
Camp residents will be sent back in two phases. All those belonging to eastern Nangarhar province and areas adjacent to the Pakistan border will be repatriated followed by those from the northern parts of Afghanistan.
The UNHCR claims 2.8 million Afghans have returned home from Pakistan since 2002. An estimated 1.2 million Afghans may be living illegally in the country, according to the police. Tahir Khan, a police officer, told IPS: “Every day, some 50 illegal Afghans are arrested and deported.”
The decision to shut down Jalozai was taken at a jirga (tribal assembly) called by CAR and 50 Afghan elders from the camp on Sep. 5, 2007. The refugees agreed to voluntarily vacate the camp before it is shut down on Apr. 30, 2008.
Maulvi Mohammad Qayyum, one of the participants at the jirga, told IPS that they had pinned their hopes on the UNHCR and Afghan government establishing camps for the returning refugees. But nothing has so far happened.
Jalozai camp was set up in the early 1980s by the United Nations as a temporary haven for Afghan refugees. Their country has been in turmoil since the Cold War years of rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Army. When the Soviet army rode into Kabul in 1979 at the invitation of the then communist-regime, Washington retaliated by arming and financing Afghan mujahiddin groups based in Pakistan.
Millions of Afghans have crossed into Pakistan and Iran fleeing successive years of war, famine and drought.
Since the Hamid Karzai government was installed in Afghanistan after U.S.-led troops ousted the Taliban regime in end-2001, Pakistan has been urging the refugees to return. Nine of the 24 refugee camps in NWFP and FATA, the centrally administered tribal areas on the Afghan border, have closed.
More than 2 million Afghans recently registered with the government under a UNHCR programme that grants them temporary resident status in Pakistan for three years.
The UNHCR has supervised the voluntary repatriation of Afghans but the process has slowed down with the re-emergence of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan triggering another wave of displacements. Some 350,000 refugees were repatriated in 2007. Each was paid approximately 100 dollars — a transport and reintegration grant.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has urged the government not to violate refugees’ rights and international norms on the protection of refugees. Pakistan is not a signatory to the U.N.’s 1951 Refugee Convention.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
Is this ongoing tragedy ever going to end?
Pakistan is the source of the conflict. They support the Taliban and then they turn around and say they won’t support the Afghan refugees who are forced to flee and reside in Pakistan. They treat Afghan legal permanent residents in their country like shit also. My husband was once one of them before he came to the states. He vowed never to visit Pakistan again. I don’t blame him or any Afghan for being furious with Pakistan.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm
I truly feel for the Afghanis who have been betrayed by the world for 3 decades now… It’s either crazy fundamentalists or ruthless warlord drug dealers, CIA sponsored militants, or western imperialists. The Afghan people haven’t had self-determination for a very long time and won’t until they free themselves from the US/Russia/Pakistan and the warlords. What’s the solution? Well, in my opinon, it would this:
1) Complete withdrawl of all NATO forces.
2) Implementation of a UN (NOT US run) stabilization force.
3) Arrest and incarceration of all the warlords.
4) Implementation of a extensive human rights program
5) MASSIVE reparations by all the western powers & russia
Not our problem.
they are joining the most underreported situation directly caused by illegal and inhumane actions of the good ol’ US of A - along with the Iraqi and Palestinian and somali - and you name’em refugees living in squalor and unassisted, millions of them.
As the Bushies say - huh?
The Commissioner on Afghan Refugees, Nasir Azam, can’t wait fifteen days to allow the thousands of Afghan children to finish the school year on April, 30th?
With the billions of our tax dollars going to Pakistan, our “no child left behind” guy should be able to get the government to allow the children to finish their year of school.
But I really don’t believe Bush gives a hoot about the Afghani children, or anyone else for that matter.
With Laura being a liberrian (yes I know I’ve misspelled the word) and all and so concerned for the women and children of Afghanistan, she could intercede on their behalf.
I suppose we have reached the depths of such dark-sided awe our government helps to create that there are no words — only the disgusted language of the heart. There is no bottom to the low-life depths of the policies and practices of the Bush White House. I am starting to really believe that when it comes to anything human — Bush, Cheney and all the gang are simply aliens. Just black-hearted aliens.
I write in reply to a completely false comment by user “WTF”
who said:
“#
WTF March 24th, 2008 12:47 pm
… I believe OBL is alive and very well, gleefully watching the US bleed, as was ALWAYS his desire. He is revered by much of Islam as a hero-warrior, up there with the great Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub (aka Saladin). As such, he will be protected from stool pigeons. He will probably go down in Arabic history as the most famous muslim in recent times.”
OBL is NOT a hero nor is he “revered by much of islam”. On the contrary , repeatedly the major sheikhs and imams have condemned him and his actions; the old and young generations of Arabs have repeatedly renounced him and recognized him for nothing but an unmitigated disaster on the arab world (a reason that makes most intellectuals - american arab and european - question whether he isn’t a manufactured casus belli to rape the arabs)
I don’t know where WTF gets his information (misinformation more like it) but this is the kind of lie that inflames americans against muslims and arabs.
It is unfair to spew such lies when arabs have done much to publicly renounce those crminals and pursue and imprison them, yet american media turns a blind eye to those efforts
Muslims and arabs recognize OBL for the dangerous criminal that he is. He has no mandate, no holiness, no religious formal training, no authority , and certainly no right to commit any crime, and no right to pretend to speak for them.
Terrorism patently violates muslim rules of war , peace and international relations. it violates the letter and precedent of muslim beliefs and jurisprudence. And many scholars have said so publicly on numerous occasions ranging from weekly sermons, TV programs to publicized letters to the popes by major muslim figures and representatives.
Arabs + muslims reject terrorism and terrorist means and OBL in no way represents arab or muslim interests or aspirations. He is a criminal and he is the creation of the US .
I hate the way the media props him up and reports his “messages” as if they matter.
Get your facts straight WTF, OBL is a low life outlaw and don’t go conflating such a low life criminal created by your government with muslim historic leaders who were on par to parlay and negotiate war and peace with Richard Lionheart .
WTF’s message is very insulting and demeaning and defamatory of muslims today.
How many countries are these so called world leaders plannng on destroying? How many lives are they planning on shattering?
“Arabs have repeatedly renounced him and recognized him for nothing but an unmitigated disaster on the arab world (a reason that makes most intellectuals - american arab and european - question whether he isn’t a manufactured casus belli to rape the arabs)”
…and question, and question. The symbiotic energy between the Bush Administration and al queda has been noted by many.
natneroc while I was reading that piece above I was wondering about so many productive Afghans unwilling to return home. Were they fleeing a broken country or following the Taliban? Are they Taliban adherents? (not fighters, but believers)
Vince majority of Afghans are anti-Taliban and recognize the Taliban for what they are Pakistani ISI proxies. However, Afghans do not like the war lords either. My husband is Afghan and I know the community well and this is the sentiment. Afghans are also mad at the Arabs for intervening in their country’s affairs also particularily the Saudis.
Vince this is a good survey on Afghan opinion by the Asia Foundation:
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/AG-survey06.pdf
It’s the same story everywhere Bush goes to bring Democracy! A unmitigated disaster! I was against the Afghan war too. The Russian’s tried it in the 80’s and it bankrupt them. What made Bush think he was going to be any different with us? It’s going to bankrupt us to. When are our leaders going to learn to leave people like this alone? You can’t democratize someone who doesn’t have clue what it is, let alone the energy to fight for it!
dcbeltway: thanks for the info and recognizing my question as serious. And now to go a-linking.
there are no words to convey my grief, and my deep sympathy with the people of Afghanistan. Attacking this poor, defenseless, war ravaged country was always inexcusable madness. but this is what the u.s. did and apparently will not stop. However, seeing now the consequences of what we have done, it might just cross the minds of some of the people in washington that we now have the moral responsibility to spend as much money and energy to help the good people of Afghanistan in any way they wish.