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Pakistan planning new refugee camps in dangerous areas


While Pakistan, already the home of approximately two million Afghan refugees, has not yet opened its borders to a potential new wave of Afghans, it has begun planning the placement of additional refugees in new camps in its Northwest Frontier Province, an area that could be hostile to both refugees and the relief workers.
The government of Pakistan has designated dozens of potential refugee camp sites in the tribal areas near the borders with Afghanistan, both north and south of the city of Peshawar. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now preparing the camp sites with a goal of having twenty sites with a capacity of 200,000 refugees ready for habitation in two weeks. Although the border of Pakistan remains closed to new Afghan refugees, planning and preparation for a refugee influx continues.

However, the aid agencies are encountering severe security problems as they attempt to prepare the sites. In the last several days, three NGOs have been robbed and vandalized and UNHCR had its access to camp sites blocked by anti-refugee demonstrators from the local population.

Since the days of Kipling, the storied NWFP has been an unruly, dangerous region that outsiders enter only at considerable risk. In addition, along the border, the Pashtun tribal areas of the NWFP enjoy a large degree of autonomy. Smuggling, gun-running, and tribal feuds take place with little interference from the central government. The government has decreed that all new refugee camps to house Afghan refugees will be located within 18 kilometers of the border, smack within the tribal areas.

This region and many of the same sites were used as refugee camps in the 1980s. The difference is that the local population in the 1980s was friendly to the refugees and the relief agencies. After years of housing refugees, that good will seems to have dried up. Not only are the proposed camps potentially dangerous, but many are also difficult to reach and lack a water supply.

Moreover, there are fears among relief workers that many of the local people are -- and many of the potential refugees will be -- Taliban supporters, hostile to relief agencies and possibly armed. In the tribal areas, disarming refugees and policing refugee camps will be a hazardous and difficult task.

Thus far, there is no evidence that U.S. and UK military strikes in Afghanistan have caused large numbers of Afghans to flee for safety toward the border of Pakistan. Nevertheless, it is prudent to prepare for a refugee crisis, which might also be generated by hunger in Afghanistan, if suspended international food deliveries cannot be resumed in sufficient quantities. The potential number of Afghans who might seek safety in Pakistan could amount to as many as one million, according to UNHCR's "worst case" scenario.

The security problems facing the relief agencies raise doubts that refugees and relief workers can live and work safely in the tribal areas of the NWFP. If refugees suffer as they seek and gain refuge in Pakistan, international support for the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism will dissipate and refugee lives will be at risk.

RI, therefore recommends that:

  • The Government of Pakistan immediately designate potential sites for refugees further from the Afghan border and outside the tribal areas. Access, safety for refugees, and security for relief workers should be important considerations. Although recognizing that Pakistan already bears a huge refugee burden, the selection and preparation of viable sites for refugee camps is a pre-requisite for addressing successfully a potential a flight to the border by hundreds of thousands of hungry or terrified Afghans.
  • The international community, led by the U.S., urge Pakistan to select more suitable sites for potential refugees and help the government foster the acceptance of refugees and refugee camps by the local population in the NWFP of Pakistan. For example, wells, roads and other infrastructure improvements to prepare refugee camps might also be useful to local communities, and turned over to them when the refugee crisis is over, thus achieved both humanitarian and economic development objectives. The projects also would generate jobs for Pakistani workers.
  • The UNHCR and its donors make it clear that they will help Pakistan bear the burden of additional refugees.


RI's Larry Thompson is presently in Pakistan.

Contact:

Larry Thompson
202.828.0110 ri@refintl.org