Afghan refugees return to a devastated land

He wonders if going to Afghanistan from a dismal refugee camp in Pakistan will be deliverance from fear and hunger, or if he will have to struggle like millions of others to survive in a land parched by drought and devastated by war.

Khan, now living in Quetta in southwestern Pakistan, said he had agonised for days before making up his mind to go to Afghanistan.

He is one of the thousands of refugees who each year accept meagre aid from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, about 20 and a bag of wheat per person, to go home.

Pakistan and Iran were home to several million Afghan refugees in the 1980s and 1990s.

But their hospitality is now wearing thin, partly because they have their own domestic problems to deal with but also because there appears no end in sight to Afghanistan8217;s woes.

There are now 2.1 million Afghan refugees, both registered and unregistered, in Pakistan and 1.4 million others in Iran.

Pakistan is encouraging them to return; UN officials and Afghans say Iran was simply forcing them out.

Donor fatigue with a problem more than two decades old is making it difficult for the numerous UN organisations involved with Afghans to collect funds to look after the largest group of refugees in the world.

Khan, like others in the Quetta transit camp who have decided to go home, is aware his hardship is unlikely to end in Afghanistan.

But he seems oblivious to the extent of the devastation and poverty the 20 years of war has wreaked on his country.

The UNHCR says about 100,000 refugees were going home very year. The refugees understand what they are doing and there is nothing the agency can do to stop people from going to Afghanistan when their lives in exile are so difficult.

8220;They are very poverty-stricken, living in a very harsh environment and they themselves are telling us they want to come,8221; said Ahmed Said Farah, Chief of the UNHCR mission in Afghanistan.

8220;We are not repatriating at the moment, we are facilitating repatriation. They come to us, there is lot of pressure on their side to come back and we are assisting them to come back.8221;

8220;It is very clear to them where are they coming from and where they are going. They are making the choices,8221; he said.

The Taliban say they welcome the returning refugees, and even allow a 30-day grace period for men to grow beards, as required under their strict Islamic rule.

Another UN official, in the western Afghan town of Herat, said the returning refugees would face problems in obtaining basic social services and education as well as in getting access to potable water.

It is of no comfort to the returning refugees, but the list of hardships they face was the same virtually everyone has to grapple with.

8220;The difficulties that returnees face are the same which Afghans generally face,8221; the UN official said.

Where there was once at least some infrastructure for water, schools, health, irrigation, electricity, roads and trade, barely any exists now.

War, first due to the Soviet occupation in 1980s and then between feuding Afghan factions, has left most towns destroyed and people confused about loyalties.

Some order has come to most of the country since the Taliban burst onto the scene in 1994 and swept over Kabul and most of the country in the next two years.

But life remains cheerless, with war continuing in the far northeast, and the strict religious and social edicts of the Taliban banning even basic entertainment such as television.

8220;Life is just hardship,8221; said a returnee in Qala Pisak, a mud village 20 km 12 miles east of Herat.

8220;We are familiar with hunger and hardship,8221; he said as he stood at the head of a long line of bearded men assembled to greet UNHCR chief Sadako Ogata on a recent visit.

8220;If we were able to find a piece of bread it would be sufficient for us,8221; the Afghan elder told Ogata.

As he spoke under a blazing sun in a cloudless sky, barefoot children with solemn faces peaked from behind mud walls. 8212; REUTERS