Afghan refugees overrun border posts
Afghan refugees overrun border posts
Luke Hunt, Agence France-Presse, Chaman, Pakistan
Pakistan's efforts to stop Afghans crossing the border appear on the verge of collapse with huge numbers now fleeing United States airstrikes on their devastated country.
The number of people crossing the southwestern Pakistani border post at Chaman alone has risen from 1,000 a day to 5,000 over the past week, according to the United Nations. Officially the border is closed.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 10,000 refugees were massed on the other side of the border.
The United States bombing of Afghanistan, years of drought and a looming tough winter is expected to propel 300,000 Afghans towards the Pakistan border in the next few weeks, half of them through Chaman.
The UN sees that number touching 1.5 million -- in a country already burdened by three million refugees and a chronic water shortage -- if U.S. reprisals for the Sept. 11 destruction in New York and Washington continue.
"We are concerned that thousands of people are approaching the border," UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler said.
"We haven't seen a refugee flood yet but all the ingredients are there."
And Kessler said there were most likely millions of Afghans in remote areas of Afghanistan who were too poor, sick and hungry to travel to Pakistan or another neighboring country.
Those that have already made it to the 200-meter no man's land on the Durand Line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan at Chaman have become prey to human smugglers and corrupt guards.
Border officials have claimed those who crossed were Pakistanis returning home but one foreign aid worker said: "Everyone we spoke to said they were Afghan and said they were fleeing American bombs."
The UNHCR has said security guards are taking bribes and giving preferential treatment to ethnic Pashtuns, who dominate southwest Pakistan, over other ethnic groups.
According to the UNHCR, Chaman locals are also taking Pakistan travel papers off those who made it across, smuggling them back to Afghanistan and renting the documents for others to use.
Pakistani nationals are reportedly hopping the border with their passports and returning with refugees they claim are family members.
Tearful, hungry children with overburdened mothers make-up the majority of those who have fled the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar, described by one refugee as "totally empty with no oil or food for winter." There is also no electricity.
Most of the men escorted their families and negotiated with the bandits along the 100-kilometer road from Kandahar to Chaman.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gifted 250,000 blankets to the Afghan people in the largest gesture of its kind since the start of the conflict in Afghanistan, asking (United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) to deliver them to the country's interior, a Unicef official said Sunday in Tehran.
Luc Chauvin said the blankets will be delivered by various offices of the UN Children's Fund from neighboring countries, including Iran, to those parts of Afghanistan where UN Afghan Unicef employees are still working.