Violence halts Afghan refugee flow

Many will wait to see if the country is safe first

A United Nations repatriation programme of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees has ground to a halt because of violence on Afghanistan's borders with Iran and Pakistan.

UN spokesman Yusuf Hassan said the violence was holding up about 40,000 refugees, with protests by poppy farmers and against electricity cuts on the eastern border with Pakistan, to factional fighting on the western border with Iran.

Afghan refugees (UNHCR figures, Feb 2002)

In Iran: 1.5m

Estimated returns in 2002: 400,000

In Pakistan: 2.2m

Estimated returns in 2002: 400,000

Under the repatriation agreement for Afghan refugees in Iran signed last week by Iran, the Afghan Government and the UN's High Commission for Refugees, the return is voluntary and the programme aims at helping 400,000 people to go back to their homes in the first year.

A similar programme launched in Pakistan just over a month ago has been successful in attracting refugees wanting to return home, but UN refugee officials caution that conditions in Iran are very different.

Click here for a map of the area

Mr Hassan said about 700 vehicles and 14,000 refugees were caught on the road between the Pakistan border post of Torkham near the Khyber Pass and the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad by farmers blocking the road in violent protests.

The demonstrators, who were throwing stones at cars, were protesting against government plans to stop them growing poppies used in the making of opium from which heroin is refined.

	Drug industry 2000: World's largest opium producer 2001: Production cut after Taleban ban on cultivation 2002: Fears grow of a resurgence in opium production  Afghan opium industry

Afghanistan is one of the world's largest producers of opium.

Mr Hassan said another 20,000 to 25,000 refugees were stranded on the Pakistan side of the border by protesters blocking roads in tribal areas to which electricity had been cut off for non-payment of bills.

On the Iran border, only 70 people had turned up at Milak-Zaranj, one of the two main border crossings, because of factional fighting, the UN said.

But a convoy of 146 Afghans crossed the border at Islam Qala, the other border crossing west of Herat in western Afghanistan, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said.

Iranian situation

In Pakistan, many of the refugees live in squalid camps, but very few of the estimated 1.5 million Afghans currently believed to be living in Iran are in camps.

UN hopes refugees from Iran will be keen to return home

Most are scattered around towns and cities all over the country, with the biggest community in the capital Tehran, and many having lived in the country for more than 20 years.

Those who arrived most recently and those with little stake in Iran itself will be the first to think of going back, says the BBC's Tehran correspondent Jim Muir.

Some 40,000 have already spontaneously crossed the border since February, - although some of that movement may have been seasonal labour migration or people simply checking on the situation inside Afghanistan.

But some Afghans in Iran have voiced concerns about security conditions in their own country, and will want to wait and see before committing themselves to return, our correspondent says.

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