Deteriorating security in Afghanistan has slowed the rate of returns from refugee camps in Pakistan after a boom following the 2001 collapse of the Taliban regime, an official said on Wednesday.
The issue was raised at a meeting in Kabul on Tuesday between the neighbouring countries and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on facilitating the return of two million Afghans registered as refugees in Pakistan.
"We shared our concerns about the worsening security situation in some parts of Afghanistan which is a key barrier for a sustainable repatriation of Afghan refugees," deputy refugees minister Abdul Qadir Ahadi told reporters.
"In the past repatriation numbers were much higher, but in recent years it has slowed down due to the worsening security situation in the country," he was quoted as saying in a statement delivered at the briefing. The deputy minister did not give figures. Pakistan has registered more than two million Afghans and handed them identity cards valid until December 2009.
Increased attacks and security worries meant the UN refugee agency was only operating in 55 percent of the country, Maya Ameratunga, head of UNHCR's sub office for central Afghanistan, said in the statement.
UNHCR staff in the province of Logar - which adjoins Kabul - faced the risk of roadside mines, kidnapping and random shootings, it said. During the 1996-2001 Taliban regime about three million Afghans lived in Pakistan, many for work and access to education for their children which was poor under the ultra-conservative regime. "The ultimate aim is to repatriate Afghans within a reasonable timeframe," Pakistan's secretary of the ministry of states and frontier regions, Muhammad Jamil, was quoted as saying.
More 356,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan this year, only 150,000 of them registered and the remainder in a Pakistani crackdown on illegal exiles at the beginning of the year. About 130,000 returned last year. The peak for returns was in 2002 when 1.6 million came home, according to a UNHCR official.