Pakistani refugees flee to (?) Afghanistan
By the BBC
BBC map of the region.
The UN’s refugee agency says 20,000 people have fled Pakistan’s tribal area of Bajaur for Afghanistan amid fighting between troops and militants.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says almost 4,000 families have crossed into Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
Some 300,000 others have been displaced by fighting, although Pakistan says many have found shelter in the region.
The country’s military has launched an offensive in Bajaur and says it has killed more than 2,000 militants.
However, the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, believes that the majority of those who have left will return home after fighting stops in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
Cross border attacks
Announcing its estimates of the numbers of people who have crossed the border into Afghanistan, the UNHCR in Afghanistan said more than 600 families had left Pakistan for Kunar in recent weeks.
A spokesman said the organisation would look out for the welfare of the displaced if they were unable to return home before winter sets in.
“It’s very difficult to predict the security situation on the other side of the border but what we hope is that the security gets better and people will be able to go back,” Nadir Farhad told Reuters news agency.
Refugees fleeing Bajaur. AFP Photo.
“But if it continues, we will definitely provide them with… assistance… so we can get them through the winter months.”
The UNHCR says most of the 20,000 who have fled over the border are Pakistanis, but a few thousand are Afghans who have been living in Pakistan.
Recently the UNHCR asked donors for more than $17m (39.4m) in aid to help about 250,000 people displaced by fighting and floods in north-western Pakistan.
They said money was needed to provide relief items like tents, blankets and plastic sheets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7642015.stm
For more on this story, here’s a report by Reuters’ Jonathon Burch.
By Jonathon Burch,
KABUL (Reuters) – Some 20,000 people from Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region of Bajaur have fled to Afghanistan this summer due to intense fighting between government forces and militants, the United Nations said on Monday.
The Pakistani military launched an offensive in August for control over the strategically key region of Bajaur and have been involved in heavy fighting since then.
“More than 3,900 families, or around 20,000 individuals, have fled fighting in Bajaur … into Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan,” said the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan.
http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-35713020080929
When do refugees return home?
This is the lead-in for the background story:
KHOST, 28 February 2008 (IRIN) – Most of the Pakistani families that had fled sectarian violence in Pakistan by seeking refuge across the border in southeastern Afghanistan earlier this year have returned to their homeland.
“When peace is restored, we too will return,” said Khan Malik, who along with 16 other family members arrived two months ago from the village of Bakzai across the border in Kurram Agency, in Pakistan’s increasingly volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He is currently in Afghanistan’s Khost Province.
“There is a peace agreement, but it’s not clear whether it will hold,” the 30-year-old said, referring to ongoing clashes between Shia and Sunni extremists just weeks earlier.
Most of the nearly 5,000 Pakistanis that had initially sought refuge in Afghanistan in early January have since returned. “Of the old caseload of Pakistanis, the vast majority have since returned,” Nadir Farhad, information officer for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kabul, told IRIN on 27 February.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/pakistan/2008/ pakistan-080228-irin01.htm
For background on this issue, click to Global Security…
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