*EPF309 05/08/2002
More than 500,000 Refugees Return to Afghanistan
(Aid officials concerned about their long-term future) (890)

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Refugees are returning to Afghanistan at a rate that exceeds all expectations. The number of returnees has surpassed 500,000, according to a May 8 announcement from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), nine weeks after an international assistance effort began. As international agencies scramble to provide returnees with the support they need to get home and to reintegrate into their communities, officials are also concerned about whether the returnees have a sustainable future in a land still parched by four years of drought, and still sifting through the rubble of more than 20 years of armed conflict.

"Many Afghans are returning home with next to nothing," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers May 8 in New York. "Donors must ensure that the massive repatriation underway is sustainable for the long-term. That means that rehabilitation and development aid must reach rural towns and villages immediately."

An exodus over the last two decades left more than 4 million Afghan refugees in neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. UNHCR has been working to aid this crisis population through the years, so the agency's involvement in the region is nothing new, Lubbers said.

The fall of the Taliban, the creation of an Interim Administration, and the promise of elections in the future have transformed the world's largest refugee crisis into the world's largest repatriation and rehabilitation program, according to UNHCR documents.

UNHCR opened repatriation centers in Pakistan on March 1 and in Iran on April 7 to support this human migration. At the centers, returning refugees receive wheat flour and assistance packages containing supplies such as blankets, cooking stove and pots, and hygiene items. They also receive travel grants in varying amounts, as much as $100, providing the funds for transport from the border regions to their home villages.

Those supplies may be adequate to help refugees return to long-abandoned homes, but the big question is what do they find when they get there? Some observers and humanitarian groups have raised concerns that refugees will be met with a difficult homecoming and will not find the resources to sustain them.

"People have some idea of what they're coming back to," Joyce Leader, director of the Office of Assistance for Asia and the Near East at the U.S. State Department, said in a Washington File interview. "The refugees don't come back blind." She said refugees have made contacts with family members and friends in their home regions and have made decisions to return based on the belief that they will face good prospects.

UNHCR is also mindful of these concerns, so reintegration of refugees back into their communities is a significant component of the broad mission that the agency is now performing in Afghanistan, Lubbers said at a Washington briefing May 7. "There is now a real possibility for a new Afghanistan in peace," he said. "We have an obligation to the people and to the neighboring host countries to be very creative in the process of repatriation."

Housing and water are two top priorities in the UNHCR reintegration effort. The U.N. refugee agency is providing building materials to assist the returnees in reconstructing damaged homes. Drinking water is also lacking in many areas because of the long drought, and in some cases relief workers are helping to drill wells, Lubbers said.

Another important priority, Lubber said, is to help boost the capacity of the Afghan people to help themselves. He said that's why the agency is delivering materials and support for reconstruction, urging refugees to rebuild their own homes. That's also why UNHCR has been cautious in handing out cash.

"We are not in the business of handing over money; that's too risky," Lubbers said. He said UNHCR relief workers have been careful in screening applicants for travel grants, and he's convinced that action has helped in preventing fraud and abuse of those funds.

All of this activity in Afghanistan is costing $20 million a month, and Lubbers anticipates that a funding shortfall of as much as $150 million could stymie UNHCR efforts later this year unless international donors boost contributions to the effort.

That's a common problem among the relief agencies. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced May 7 that it would be scaling back its work to return internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan because of funding shortfalls. IOM spokesperson Jean-Philippe Chauzy said in a press briefing that larger-than-expected numbers of returnees had drained the agency's resources unexpectedly. IOM is assisting with returns of IDPs in Herat, in western Afghanistan, and was hit with "vastly inflated transport costs" when a transportation cartel boosted the cost of truck rentals 17 times beyond market rates.

So while the aid agencies look to donors to sustain funding for a relief effort in Afghanistan, Leader said the international community also needs to be concerned about how prolonged the activity becomes. It's appropriate that UNHCR take an active role in the reintegration process underway, she said, but not for more than a year. At that point, reintegration will be ending, and reconstruction should be underway. She said agencies such as the World Bank and the U.N. Development Agency need to take the leading roles in that process.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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