SPY EYES

Kamal Khan stands along with his five family members at the Voluntarily Repatriation Centre in Chamkani for Afghan refugees. All their belongings have been loaded onto a truck, ahead of them lies the 55-kilometre journey back to Afghanistan, a place now deemed safe enough to call home again.

Khan’s family is among many Afghans who are voluntarily choosing repatriation to their native country. According to the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Pakistan, Duniya Aslam Khan, overall voluntary repatriation trends indicate a 34% increase this year when compared to 2011.

Around 62,500 Afghans have already made their trip across the Torkham border, adding to the 3.7 million refugees that have been assisted by the UNHCR to return to Afghanistan since 2002, the largest voluntary repatriation movement in history.

Soon Khan’s three sons and daughter will able to step foot on their soil for the first time in their lives, but hope gives way to a feeling of uncertainty. Kamal knows where he wants to go with his family but is unsure of what they will do when they get there. “I felt like an alien in Pakistan when I came here with my family as a child. I have some relatives in Jalalabad but I have no home or land in Afghanistan. Yes, I wanted to voluntarily go back to my country but don’t know where we will stay or what the ground situation in Afghanistan is.”

He had migrated to Pakistan in 1980 during the Soviet invasion, settling in Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa’s Mardan district. “My father, mother and wife died in Pakistan, but now I want to return to my homeland because Afghanistan is our soil and I want to spend the rest of my life there,” he said.

Another refugee, Muhammad Gul, who too was along with his family, said: “I have no home in Afghanistan, but I am heading back with the hope that peace has been restored in the country so I can start my own business. I don’t know where we will stay and what we will do, but this is an opportunity for us to go back under the aegis of the UNHCR.”

The UNHCR has been instrumental in the repatriation. The new assistance package offered by the organisation includes provision of non-food items such as jerry cans, biscuits, soap, mosquito nets, sleeping mats, and winter clothes.

The refugee families were also offered limited transport assistance from the voluntary repatriation centres in Pakistan to the encashment centres in Afghanistan. This assistance package is in addition to a cash grant.

Since September this year, the UNHCR has helped unite families that originate from the same areas of Afghanistan. Nearly 1,300 Afghan refugees have returned home under this programme.

It is now time for the Afghan refugees in Pakistan to be known as citizens of their own country, said Afghan Consulate Deputy Director Abdul Hameed Jalali. He added that the refugees will have better income opportunities than they did in Pakistan and certain cities in Afghanistan, where peace has been restored, have been selected for their repatriation.