Global Policy Forum

By Jeremy Page

The United Nations will start returning 4,000 refugee families in northern Afghanistan to their homes on the Shomali plain this week, its first relocation project in the country, UN officials said yesterday.

Starting Saturday, the UN will try to bring 100 Tajik families each day from the Panjshir Valley to Bagram, the area they fled since 1996 during fierce fighting between the opposition Northern Alliance and the ruling Taliban. But progress is expected to be slow. The area is still heavily mined and many homes in the area were destroyed in the fighting, the officials said.

''It will take a few months,'' said Daniel Endres, deputy chief of mission of the United Nations High Commissoner for Refugees. ''The major obstacle is the presence of mines.''

''Mine clearance is very time-consuming and the place is basically now a desert,'' he said. ''But a lot of people want to be back in time for the planting season in February.''

More than 200,000 people fled the Shomali plain, UNHCR spokeswoman Maki Shinohara said. About half of them had lived in the capital, Kabul, including around 2,500 in the Russian embassy compound. Most of the rest were from the Panjsher Valley.

There are an estimated 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 2.5 million in Iran. About 1.5 million Afghans are displaced within the country. The families will be driven in trucks provided by the International Organization for Migration and given relocation packs including jerry cans, kitchen sets, stoves, and plastic sheeting, Shinohara said. Those whose homes have been destroyed will also be provided with emergency shelters.

Separately, UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said that some 31,000 refugees have returned to southern Afghanistan through the Pakistani border town of Chaman since the start of December. More than 10,000 refugees have crossed back into Afghanistan through Chaman since Sunday alone, Bunker said at a news conference. Increasing numbers are also returning from Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, but the United Nations does not have a total figure, she said.

''People seem to be going back largely to urban areas,'' she said. ''People are going back in search of work and economic opportunities they hope to be able to find now.'' The World Food Program also dispatched a record 80,000 metric tons of food in Afghanistan in December - enough to feed 9.6 million people for one month, she said.

But a World Food Program spokesman said in Islamabad yesterday that armed militias are holding up aid trucks carrying food into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan near the city of Kandahar, demanding a toll of $100 per truck before allowing them across the border. As a result, the World Food Program said it cannot send trucks there and is instead looking for a suitable warehouse to use in Kandahar. Most warehouses were destroyed or looted during the US bombardment that drove out the Taliban.

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