September 19, 2002
Life for 70-year-old, Enjeer Gul has not changed much for the better since he returned home after 20 years of exile in neighbouring Pakistan. "We are happy to be back but we have nothing to rebuild our lives again," he told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We find no work and nobody is giving us food anymore. Even getting water is hard," he said.
Gul's 20-member family, comprising of his wife, children and grandchildren live in grey threadbare tents pitched on open ground in northern Kabul. Two months back they left a refugee camp close to the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar after most of their neighbours had taken the plunge and returned to Afghanistan. More than 200 families live in tents in the capital while thousands more eke out an existence in damaged houses and buildings nearby.
Gul's story illustrates the growing concern over a potential new refugee crisis as the harsh Afghan winter approaches and the country remains in the grip of a huge humanitarian crisis. Although more than 1.6 million refugees have gone back to Afghanistan in one of the largest repatriation programmes ever, but despite the best efforts of the government and hundreds of aid agencies, little infrastructure exists in the war-torn nation to support them.
Thousands of recently returned refugees are considering a going back to Pakistan or moving to the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad - where the climate is milder - as autumn sets in.
The UN is trying to highlight the plight of people like Gul. UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters in New York on Wednesday that there was no room for complacency because the country was still facing very serious problems.
Stressing that the nation's humanitarian needs were enormous he urged neighbouring Pakistan and Iran not to encourage more Afghan refugees to return to their battered homeland ahead of winter. "There is no way we can absorb more," he said.
Brahimi added that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Kabul had placed a huge burden on a city that had few services to speak of. He cautioned that people were living in makeshift shelters, which were only habitable as long as the weather remained warm. "Winter is going to be very difficult," he warned.
A local aid worker, Haji Roohul Amin, told IRIN Afghan society had undergone tremendous changes over the past two decades and these had to be taken into account when tackling sensitive issue such as refugee return and reintegration.
"There has been a major shift from rural to an urban lifestyle while Afghans were in exile," he said. "This has burdened the ravaged Afghan cities with huge numbers even when there are hardly any livelihood opportunities available there."
Amin believes that large numbers of returnees would soon have little choice but to go back to Pakistan and Iran - the two largest host countries to Afghan refugees. "There is no education, there is no employment and even there is no shelter. How can one survive in those kind of conditions?" he asked.
The reception such people would receive is uncertain. Both countries have been eager to divest themselves of hundreds of thousands of Afghans that they say they cannot support.
He explained that during a recent visit to Kabul and the eastern Afghan provinces of Nanagarhar and Kunar he had noticed increasing eagerness for returning to Pakistan among those who had once lived there and were frustrated by the lack of similar facilities in their home country. "Most of my well off friends keep their families in Peshawar," he said.
Meanwhile aid agencies remain optimistic that with enhanced international assistance returnees will stay put. Spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Raghnild Ek told IRIN: "It's not given that they will return to Pakistan, they may stay back if given enough support."
UNHCR is working on a winterisation project providing assistance to the vulnerable during the coming cold months. It is also building 40,000 shelters across Afghanistan that would provide many with permanent houses. "Everybody is aware of the difficulties but we are doing our best," she said.
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