Aid agencies caught off guard as Afghans flock home
21 October, 2002 13:01 GMT+08:00
By Ruth Gidley
LONDON (Reuters) - A year after the United States and its allies
launched their military
campaign in Afghanistan, more than two million Afghans who fled
the fighting -- and years of drought that preceded it -- have
come home.
The scale of the influx from the neighbouring countries of Iran,
Pakistan and central Asia caught aid agencies by surprise, as
did the fact that most the refugees headed for the towns and cities
of their war-torn homeland.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says more than 1.6 million
refugees have returned with its help since an interim government
was installed after U.S. air strikes helped topple the hardline
Islamic Taliban last year in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
"The voluntary return of so many Afghans is the largest repatriation
the U.N. refugee agency has assisted since 1972, when more than
9.8 million people who had earlier fled East Pakistan were returned
to Bangladesh," it said in a statement.
Another estimated 400,000 people have made their own way back
and more than 230,000 internally displaced people have received
UNHCR help to return to their towns and villages.
Brian White, programme officer for repatriation with the U.S.
branch of International Rescue Committee in Pakistan, said more
than 1.4 million Afghans have returned from Pakistan alone, and
most have gone to towns and cities.
"People have decided...that economic opportunities and security
might be better in urban areas," White said. "They either
went directly to Kabul, or tried to make it in their area of origin
and it just didn't work out."
Relief workers said agencies had not been ready to provide help
in cities such as Herat in the west, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north
and Jalalabad in the east, as well as the capital, which he said
has seen its population of about two million swell by up to 600,000.
"Now that winter planning has begun, it's an oversight that
needs to be corrected," he added.
GOVERNMENT PRESSURE
Aid agencies said those in Pakistan had been pressured to leave
by the government.
James Beale, chief executive of British aid agency Ockenden International,
said there had also been significant pressure from Iran.
"They have real economic problems (in Iran) at the moment,"
he told Reuters. "Having a pop at asylum-seekers always covers
up your own mistakes."
U.N. workers said in October that Iran was using strong-arm tactics
and thousands of Afghan refugees had been deported.
In Afghanistan, tribal tensions and continued fighting have added
to the woes of refugees and internally displaced people.
The UNHCR estimated that at least 920,000 people were still
internally displaced in September. Others were newly displaced,
and minority ethnic communities were vulnerable to persecution.
Beale said: "This has been a serious problem in the north
and west...It's not safe to be a Pashtun up there. It's a kind
of 'ethnic cleansing'. It's being going on since the fall of the
Taliban. They can't go back."
Humanitarian agencies said the continued insecurity had made it
difficult for them to assist returnees.
"The Americans are still fighting in Afghanistan," Beale
said. "The Afghans are still fighting each other in some
parts, so it's not in a position to accept a major population
influx. It's not in a position to sort out the problems of the
people who were there on September 11."
WINTER CHILL
In September, the UNHCR noted that the rate of return was declining
as temperatures plunge in the approach to winter, seen as a bad
time to return by agencies because residents do not have a harvest
or time to prepare their homes.
White said shelter was one of the main concerns for returnees:
"Their shelter could be destroyed -- either by fighting or
by the elements. It could be occupied by another family. It could
have been pillaged, so they might have a house but nothing in
it, no beds or blankets."
He added that approximately 24 percent of returnees to Kabul did
not have access to adequate shelter or resources to withstand
the winter, according to UN-Habitat, the U.N. Human Settlements
Programme.
Against this is a backdrop of scarce resources.
"Everyone is very stretched," said Beale, adding that
the international community created expectations about the level
of assistance that it was going to provide, which were not met.
At a meeting in Tokyo early in the year, the international community
pledged $1.8 billion for Afghanistan this year and a total of
$4.5 billion over five years. But Afghan officials said last month
that only half of this year's money had arrived.
Beale said: "The gap between needs and reality that drives
the disappointment is a serious threat to the sustainability of
the return."