We are shifting to a rented house in nearby Cherat village after being here for 20 years. We have to leave because my shop has been demolished,” said an agitated Afghan refugee, Gul Wali, in the sprawling Jalozai refugee camp, 35 km east of the border city of Peshawar in Pakistan. Wali, 42, a butcher, lost his small, makeshift wooden shop when bulldozers razed the ‘Muhajir Bazar’ (refugee market) of 900 shops in Jalozai.

Pakistani officials had set an April 15 deadline for the voluntary repatriation of Afghan families from Jalozai. But most are reluctant to leave, citing lawlessness, joblessness, poor education and health facilities at home as reasons. Last July, the Pakistan government had demolished the largest Afghan refugee camp, Kacha Garhi, in Peshawar. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says only 99 families (6,397 persons) have left for Afghanistan from Jalozai camp, since Mar. 15, under its voluntary repatriation plan.

But in Jalozai, at least 5,000 families (35,000 persons) seem to have vacated their mud-plastered homes. Authorities have demolished 5,000 of the total 17,000 houses in the camp and plan to level the rest by May 20. It appears that a majority of camp residents who have left Jalozai have moved, like Gul Wali, to rented houses in nearby localities. Jalozai, set up in the early 1980s by the UN, was home to an estimated 88,000 refugees from Afghanistan. Millions of Afghans, fleeing successive years of war, famine and drought, crossed into Pakistan and Iran. More than two million Afghans recently registered with the government under a UNHCR programme that grants them temporary resident status in Pakistan for three years. The UN’s agency for refugees has urged Pakistan to rethink a plan to repatriate 2.4 million Afghans by end-2009.

Nine of the 24 refugee camps in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which share a border with Afghanistan, have closed. “We had a very good business of carpets (in Jalozai), but now we are left with nothing,” said Noor Jamal, 56. After 14 years in the camp, he is moving to Peshawar. “We have already got a shop in the Pawaka locality,” he confided. Jamal’s two sons are doing well in school and he would like to raise them here. If he were to go back it would destroy their future, he said.

According to an UNHCR official, each person who voluntarily returns to Afghanistan is paid $100 on arrival in their country. An estimated 29,800 refugees — including Afghans from Jalozai and two camps in Balochistan province — have repatriated since March 15. The decision to shut down Jalozai was taken at a jirga (tribal assembly) called by the Commissioner Afghan Refugees and 50 Afghan elders from the camp on Sept 5, 2007. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has urged the government not to violate refugees’ rights and international norms on the protection of refugees. Pakistan is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. — IPS