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Refugees Fear Return to Afghanistan
The following is from the article written by Ashfaq Yusufzai, published by the Inter Press Service News Agency:
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.
Read the entire story here.
