United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Pakistan

Afghans Stranded on Pakistani Border Head for a new Settlement

Abdul Aziz had arrived minutes before along a desert track that was marked with white stones to indicate which areas had been checked for mines. His family, caked in dust thrown up by the tyres, had emerged from the back of a truck to see a featureless powdery surface that stretched away into the distance until it blended into the sky.

"This is wonderful," said the Afghan who had fled with his family from the northern province of Jawzjan, pumping the handle on one of the new wells installed at the desert site. "This is far better than the "waiting area."

That reaction can only be understood when you compare Zhare Dasht, the new settlement for displaced Afghans being built in the desert outside Kandahar, with the squalid "waiting area" on the Pakistani border where he had spent the last six months.

It was not just the harsh conditions in a place where the only water was brought by tanker truck and 26,000 refugees were confined to the narrow space between the actual Afghan-Pakistani border and the line that is manned by the Pakistani border police.

Pakistan closed its borders to more Afghan refugees last February and blocked UNHCR assistance that might lead to the "waiting area" becoming a permanent refugee camp. Since then UNHCR has been allowed to truck in water and provide food, but the only assistance for shelter was a small number of tents distributed to the most needy cases in June.

Medecins sans Frontieres has provided medical aid, but a case of cholera discovered in mid-August underlined the danger of having so many people jammed into one inhospitable stretch of bare earth.

In summer the temperature rises into the 40s Celsius, in winter it drops to minus seven degrees. Rain, never plentiful in this arid plain where Central Asia meets the subcontinent, has all but disappeared during a four-year drought. Dust, whipped up by an incessant wind and the constant movement of vehicles around the adjoining border tows of Chaman, Pakistan, and Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, envelopes the ragged tents.

"They have difficult conditions," said Tor-Eilif Emaus, head of UNHCR operations in the border area. "The main objective of this relocation is to offer them a safe place and better living conditions in a well-planned settlement inside Afghanistan."

"The main advantage is that Zhare Dasht is safe, there is water available and they will be able to have a big property on which to settle down temporarily as they wait for the possibility to go to their own homes."

Emaus was overseeing the loading of another of the convoys to head out on the six-hour journey along the shattered highway to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a further 15 kilometres towards the city of Herat and then 12 kilometres off into the desert.

After taking representatives of the stranded Afghans on a "look and see" visit to the site, UNHCR received requests from 340 families to relocate. After eight days 400 families had relocated and there was a waiting list for a further 200.

"We hope that when the first people move to Zhare Dasht and settle there, they will give positive feedback to the rest of the communities here," said Emaus.

On arrival at the new settlement, the displaced Afghans are assigned a tent for the night and given food for an evening meal. The next morning they are registered and given a 500 square metre building plot and the tools needed to turn it into their temporary home - a tent, buckets, equipment to build a latrine. Food will be provided for at least the next six months.

Although UNHCR is conducting further tests on the volume of water available, an initial study showed the area could eventually house 60,000 internally displaced - enough to take both those in the "waiting area" and at least 30,000 now in tents on the outskirts of neighbouring Spin Boldak. Despite the barren surface, the state-owned land had long been reserved for agricultural development.

There had been concerns that Zhare Dasht, like much of Afghanistan, was littered with land mines. De-mining crews did find 10 anti-tank mines, planted by mujahideen guerrillas in the desert track during their 1980s war with the Soviet occupation force in Afghanistan, but no anti-personnel mines. Further work is scheduled but UNHCR officials do not believe mines are a problem.

Those moving to Zhare Dasht might also be discouraged by the present difficulty in reaching a large city where they can earn day wages - one advantage of the busy border - but that concern should ease with the planned surfacing of a road across the desert.

"The living conditions we have witnessed on the other side, compared to what we are offering them here -- the gap is really very large," said Mohammad God Boudin, UNHCR head of the Zhare Dasht settlement. "Always there is some hesitation to everything new, to everything strange. But since we already have some who have tested the water, I'm sure the others will follow suit."

There will inevitably be some in the "waiting area" who never want to leave.

Many ethnic Pashtun Afghans, who say they were driven from homes in the north of their country, want to stay on the Pakistani border in hopes that they will soon be able to move directly back without an interim stay in Zhare Dasht.

There may be others now stranded in the "waiting area" who would be at risk if they returned to Afghanistan, such as vulnerable women or people fearing political persecution. UNHCR would likely screen those remaining and try to persuade Pakistan to allow that relatively small number to enter existing refugee camps.

UNHCR says it will continue to help those in the "waiting area" to the extent possible, but there is little future there for anyone. Pakistan will not allow the entry of the thousands on the border and has said it intends to clear the shanty town, which is described as an open route for smugglers.

Pushed by Pakistan and pulled by better living conditions at Zhare Dasht, UNHCR believes most Afghans stranded on the border will opt for moving to the new settlement. God Boudin, reporting a positive reaction from those who have arrived, expects the convoys of trucks hired by UNHCR to keep arriving across the desert.

"I suggest to those who do not want to leave the "waiting area" that they must come here," said Abdul Nasir, who had fled with his family from Jawzjan province to the border of Pakistan and was in the first group to relocate to Zhare Dasht. "Life there is much more difficult."

ENDS
Jack Redden