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Latest news: "Pakistani Refugees Return to Swat's Main Town" (AP in NYT, July 14)
Thousands of refugees are beginning to go home after the government announced its plan to return some 2 million refugees to Swat Valley after months of intense fighting to root out insurgents.
Some areas are safe for return, but others are unsuitable as landmines still remain to be cleared and there is no clean water, gas or electricity. Some families have fled a second time to refugee camps and fear Taliban persecution.
Around 300,000 to 500,000 people were newly displaced by military operations against the Taliban in South Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan and the latest conflict zone, according to the International Rescue Committee.
Two million fled fighting in Pakistan's Swat Valley and nearby Dir and Buner districts in recent months due to renewed combat between the government and Taliban militants. The speed and scale of the crisis is said to rival displacement the size of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which displaced about 2 million people.
Forty-eight percent of the refugees are children, reports the UN. For Pakistan, this was the worst internal displacement crisis since the 1947 partition from India.
The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is verifying the registration of the current caseload of internally displaced persons, having verified approximately 2 million. Over 2,600 schools are housing many of the internally displaced.
There are 21 official camps supporting 260,000 of the most vulnerable in the North West Frontier province. About 120 newly displaced families arrive in camps every day. The majority of those in the camps are women and children who left husbands to care for land and houses. Some of the old and the young were separated from families during flight.
An estimated 90% of the displaced are surviving outside camps established by the Pakistani government. Most of the displaced have chosen to live with relatives and friends, but they are more dispersed and are difficult to register and reach. As resources of the host community are being depleted, displaced families are increasingly moving into camps.
Though the Government of Pakistan is planning to begin return of the displaced to cleared districts by June 20, 2009, return remains unsafe as violence among rival extremist groups continues.
The recent displacement in Pakistan is due to a government offensive launched in late April in response to the movement of Taliban militants into new districts closer to Islamabad and the collapse of a fragile peace deal with an extremist religious movement in the Swat region. About 15,000 security forces are fighting 5,000 militants in the mountains.
Learn more: IRC response to Pakistan crisis
The United Nations refugee agency plans to help 220,000 refugees return to Afghanistan this year, but the country is ill-prepared to cope with the influx, experts warn. With widespread insecurity and increasing violence, the country is not sufficiently stable to receive the masses of returning refugees.
According to IRIN, a news service funded by the United Nations, conservative estimates put the number of Afghans living in Iran and Pakistan at 2.7 million.
The UNHCR and other aid agencies say Afghanistan is buckling under the humanitarian strain. The country has received some five million returning refugees since 2002.
Afghanistan is in its worst shape since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, says European envoy Francesc Vendrell with eight years of experience in the country. Violence and insecurity remain rampant in many parts of Afghanistan, thwarting reconstruction and recovery. Girls' education has especially suffered in the recent rise of attacks on schools in the volatile southern provinces.
The number of Afghan civilians killed by insurgents and airstrikes by foreign troops has risen in the past year by 40 percent, according to the United Nations in the LA Times.
Escalating violence has also resulted in a rise of deaths and kidnapping threats to international aid workers. Four International Rescue Committee aid workers working to provide girls’ education were killed in August, with the Taliban taking responsibility for the attack.
Afghanistan is struggling to emerge from more than 25 years of conflict that have displaced more than 3 million people. In 2007, 176,000 Afghan refugees returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran. About 1.9 million refugees remain in Pakistan.
Read more about the Afghan-Pakistani border. See Reuters AlertNet for more background on ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.
Shamshatoo: Afghan refugees in Pakistan and their journey home (2003) Jalozai: The plight of Afghan refugees (2003)
Still in Need: Reproductive Health Care for Afghan Refugees in Pakistan (October 2003) Emerging Challenges: Closing Gaps in the Protection of Afghan Women and Girls (March 2003) Fending for Themselves: Afghan Refugee Children and Adolescents Working in Urban Pakistan (January 2002)
