More than five times the number of Afghan refugees returned home from Pakistan in August than in July, the United Nations' refugee office said on Tuesday, seeking to escape harassment in the host nation and stiffer measures on visits home. Pakistan is home to the world's second-largest refugee population, including 2.5 million Afghans, many living there since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Until recently the Afghan refugees did not need passports or visas to cross the porous border and visit families left behind. But Islamabad has begun asking for such documents following brief cross-border clashes in June between Afghan and Pakistani forces that killed four people at the main Torkham crossing on the disputed 2,600-km (1,616-mile) -long frontier.
The UN High Commission for Refugees said 67,057 refugees were permanently repatriated in August, up from 12,962 the month before and 1,250 in June. "The main reason for this is the closing of the Torkham border gate, because these people want to be able to go back and forth across the border, and that has completely stopped," said Baryali Miankhel, president of the Supreme Council of Afghan Refugees in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Torkham is 180 km (112 miles) north-west of Pakistan's capital of Islamabad and 170 km (106 miles) east of Kabul, the Afghan capital. "These people have brothers and other relatives on the other side, that's why the border restrictions are the main reason," Miankhel added. Under the UNHCR programme, refugees returning home get a special document permitting them to make the journey. In June, Pakistan extended Afghan refugees' right to stay until December 2016, but restrictions and harassment have grown, say refugees and the UNHCR.
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