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.