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Pakistan shuts its borders to Afghan refugees

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November 11, 2000 

ISLAMABAD, NOV 10 (AP) - Left largely alone to clothe and feed one of the world's largest refugee populations, Pakistan on Friday said "no more" and closed its borders to the flow of people from neighboring Afghanistan.

The decision came after a monthlong deluge that saw 30,000 new refugees cross into Pakistan, swelling the Afghan refugee population here to more than 2.1 million.

The latest refugee exodus is blamed on a devastating three-year drought and a bitter and protracted civil war that pits Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who control 95 percent of the country, against a northern-based opposition, which rules the remaining 5 percent.

Tens of thousands more refugees were expected to try to cross into Pakistan during the bitter winter months ahead, said Hasim Utkan, Pakistani representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.

Pakistani officials say they simply could not handle the influx.

"We have no choice," said Abdullah Jan, an official in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan. "Our economic situation is bad and we are trying improve the conditions of our own people. We just can't handle any more refugees. We don't have the money or the resources."

In Geneva the UNHCR said the decision to close the border was understandable, but a "matter of regret".

"We are discussing this reported closure with Pakistani officials, While we understand the reasons for it, it is still a matter for regret," said Kris Janowski, a UNHCR spokesman in Geneva.

Pakistan - a country of 140 million, mostly poor, people - has been single-handedly housing and feeding the 2.1 million Afghan refugees living here since 1995, when the U.N. stopped its food and housing aid.

Some of the refugees date back to the 1980s invasion by the former Soviet Union, when an estimated 5 million refugees fled to Pakistan. Other refugees came after the 1992 takeover of Afghanistan by Western-backed Islamic groups, who immediately turned their guns on each other, killing an estimated 50,000 people and destroying much of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Peace came to Kabul and much of Afghanistan in 1996 when the hard-line Taliban took power. Since then, fighting has been largely restricted to pockets of northern Afghanistan. Many of the newest refugees are fleeing fighting there.

In 1995, faced with a tightening budget, the United Nations stopped its food and shelter aid and funneled its limited funds into helping with health and education for the Afghan refugees.

Last month, the UNHCR received an emergency $960,000 to house the latest influx. But when that runs out, Pakistan will again be left alone to find food for the refugees, Utkan said.

The Pakistani decision to close the borders "conveys a very clear signal to the Taliban and to the international community," Utkan said. "It reflects I think a frustration on the Pakistani side. They know our budget constraints."

In addition to the war in Afghanistan, large swaths of the country have been ravaged by a three-year drought. Entire herds have died, crops have withered, and entire villages have been forced to relocate, U.N. workers say.

The World Food Program has predicted that as many as 1 million Afghans could face starvation over the bitter winter.

"Without international support to resolve problems in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, there is obviously little the UNHCR can do," said Janowski.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Children's Fund bemoaned the lack of international sympathy for Afghanistan.

Georges-Louis Arsenault, the UNICEF rep in Afghanistan, bewailed the lack of international sympathy for the plight of Afghans.

"Since Afghanistan has been an emergency for the past 25 years, we have a tendency to forget about it," said Georges-Louis Arsenault, Afghanistan's UNICEF representative. "The level of suffering is comparable or worse than Kosovo or East Timor, but it is unspoken. It's not on the map. That's the real drama."