Joyful Afghan refugees fly home

Joyful Afghan refugees fly home

Agencies, Jakarta

Janna (above) plays with her toy guns as her family and other
Afghan refugees wait to board a charter flight taking them home
to Afghanistan.

Under a voluntary repatriation program organized by the
International Organization of Migration (IOM), 36 Afghans
stranded in Indonesia for a number of years after fleeing the
Taliban, hugged and kissed as they boarded the Gulf Air aircraft
to Dubai en route to Kabul.

"We are very excited to go back to our country, our now
peaceful country," Doctor Abdul Rasyid told Reuters, as he waited
in the rain with his wife and four children.

Rasyid, 37, plans to return to his old job working for a UN
medical program in Kabul.

Rasyid, who survived when a wooden boat attempting to smuggle
him into Australia capsized, said he'd left Afghanistan because
the Taliban government had threatened to kidnap and kill his
family.

Thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Afghanistan and the
Middle East, have arrived in Indonesia in recent years before
embarking on perilous sea voyages in attempts to slip into
Australia. Most that made it have ended up in desert detention
camps in Australia. Hundreds of others have drowned when their
rickety boats sunk.

Repatriation from Indonesia is part of a worldwide attempt to
return millions of Afghan refugees back to their devastated
country after the fall of the hard-line Taliban.

The IOM will pay the travel costs for the returnees as well as
assisting them once they arrive home.

"Everybody will get a one-time repatriation package to help
them to start their life again," said Richard Danziger, head of
the IOM office in Indonesia, adding the organization had also
found jobs for some of the returnees.

Danziger said the IOM was confident more migrants would sign
up for repatriation once the first batch had returned home.

"Next week we have about 70 more," he said.