Report: Afghan refugees coming home from Pakistan

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ISLAMABAD, September 5. (RIA Novosti correspondent Yevgeny Pakhomov). -- The locals have turned a column of trucks on the road near the Pakistani city of Attok into fanciful multi-color vehicles, which is a tradition here.

Caravans of trucks painted with incredible patterns and covered with clinking chains transport timber and coal, maize and mangoes from one part of Pakistan to another.

But this time the caravan has a special mission: the trucks will carry to Afghanistan the families of Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived in Pakistan for 20 to 25 years.

A crowd of men and women sits nearby: women are dressed in typical Afghan burkas (tent-like garments covering them from head to toe). There are many children around. Usually active and boisterous, they are silently drawing closer to their parents who are getting ready to leave.

Pakistani TV journalists are standing a little on the side with their cameras ready to shoot one of the first caravans taking Afghans home.

The massive operation on bringing Afghan refugees home started in September, but Pakistan had been waiting for it since the start of the 1980s.

"I've lived in Attok for 20 years, I weave carpets. I don't want to leave, I'm scared, but what can I do?" complains Khudaiberdy, a refugee. He heads a family clan of Afghan Turkmen from Shibergan.

"These are my wives and the wives of my younger brother," explains Khudaiberdy pointing at his harem: a group of silent women in white and black burkas squatting nearby. "I will weave carpets in Afghanistan. There is nothing else I can do," he says.

In the meantime a group of employees from the department of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appears in front of the trucks. Wearing blue UN caps, each carries a bundle of sheets. They start crying out the names of family heads: "Alaniyaz, Shaukat Ali..." Men come up to them in turn to pick up their documents.

"We give each of them a so-called Voluntary Repatriate Form (VRF) and travel documents, which allow them to cross the border. Everyone also has a registered photo of his whole family because most refugees simply do not have passports," explained Mr. Khanzada, an employee of the UNHCR Pakistani section to a Novosti correspondent.

He says that the UN has already given the refugees 1,500 Pakistani rupees (about $25) per family member for the journey to Kabul. Once they are in the capital, the UNHCR will provide them with more money depending on which Afghan province they are headed for.

From 100 to 110 families are expected to leave this place for Kabul every day. "Today 35 trucks will take away about 100 families, or about 800 people," explains Khanzada.

The UNHCR started its program on a voluntary return of refugees in 2002. It is believed that 2.5 million people left Pakistan and Iran for Afghanistan at that time. But later on many went back - life at home was unsafe and poor. Most refugees declined to return altogether.

Pakistan suffers from widespread unemployment and, therefore, views refugees as a heavy burden. Last March and April, the UNHCR funded a census of all refugees from Afghanistan. It transpired that there were 3,047,000 Afghans in Pakistan.

Now Islamabad has declared the beginning of a campaign on their mass repatriation. The refugees will have to leave in the next few months. The authorities of the Islamabad area adopted an even tougher approach: they ordered all Afghans on its territory to leave by September 15.

"I won't leave," says a 25 year-old guy who has refused to introduce himself. "I won't go, and that's it!" He follows journalists and UNHCR representatives, and keeps yelling that he won't leave. "My friends left once and then came back. There's nothing to do there! I won't leave at all." UN officials pretend he is not there.

The building of the Afghan center is next to the refugee departure point. Here the Afghan residents of Attok, mostly Afghan Turkmen, have been weaving carpets for twenty years. Turkmen guys go on working now, sitting in front of the carpet-weaving looms (carpet-making is a male occupation here). Next to the building are big tan-vats in which fibers are being dyed in boiling water.

Outside a local worker bitterly complains to Pakistani TV journalists: "We can't go to the market, the police catch us and tell us to leave. Nobody employs us anymore. They want us out."

All these guys were born here, in Pakistan, and their historic homeland is a foreign country for them. After 25 years of the Afghan war a second generation is growing in the refugee camps. They only know about Afghanistan what their parents told them.

"Of course, people are frightened. We'll have to start from scratch. But we won't be refugees there, we'll have passports, and we'll have rights," says Gulyam Sakhi. He told me that his family fled the Afghan province of Jawsjan in mid 1980s, when Gulyam was still a kid. His parents died here, in Pakistani Attok. Only he and his two brothers have been to Afghanistan out of his whole family of more than ten people.

Gulyam says that the refugees hire trucks themselves with the UN-provided rupees. It costs $300 to get to Kabul - a lot of money by local standards. So several families hire one truck. It takes them two or three days to reach Kabul.

After the distribution of travel documents was completed, everyone went to the trucks. Rows of women in burkas started climbing up fragile bamboo staircases to the very top. Men followed them with kids. The heads of the families occupied seats in the cabins.

The trucks signaled and started moving one by one under the flashes of cameras. An adult man sitting at the top of the first truck burst into tears. He hid his face in his hands but his shoulders were trembling with sobs. "I won't leave anywhere," I heard a familiar voice nearby. "I won't leave..."

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