Friday, August 19 2005 17:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

The Pakistan Government has ordered thousands of Afghan refugees, living along its northwestern border, to leave the country by June 30, 2005 or face expulsion. The action is being taken on the ground that both the tribal agencies situated on the Pak-Afghan tribal belt, North and South Waziristan, were being used as sanctuaries by hundreds of militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, thereby creating security problems for Pakistan. The authorities believe that some of the Afghan refugees are also associated with militants.

However, Islamabad-based diplomatic circles fear that Pakistan's decision would adversely affect the hunt for al-Qaeda fugitives hiding in the Waziristan area since the eviction move would help them go back to Afghanistan under cover of refugees.

The diplomatic sources, while quoting US intelligence sleuths stationed in Pakistan, said they believe that al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives, who had taken shelter in Pakistan as refugees, are now regrouping and moving back into Afghanistan. They added that the movement back into Afghanistan is still relatively small and is being conducted by al-Qaeda members traveling in small groups of Afghan refugees. The American sleuths further believe that the world's largest concentrations of al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives are in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the recent influx into Afghanistan from Pakistan is creating new dangers.

The diplomatic sources said that al-Qaeda members have been found involved in conducting a series of deadly rocket attacks against the United States (US)-led Allied Forces in Afghanistan in recent months. The return of some al-Qaeda operatives represents a serious threat to the US-backed Karzai Government, which has been unable to gain effective control of the Afghan countryside.

Until recently, al-Qaeda seemed to be trying to shift its base of operations to Pakistan with many of its leaders finding sanctuary either in the remote tribal regions along the Afghan border or in cities. In the tribal region of Waziristan, al-Qaeda operatives found support from sympathetic local leaders who wanted to defy Pakistan Government's efforts to crack down on Islamic radicals.

The Pakistan Government's decision to evict the Afghan refugees by June 30 this year will be conveyed through traditional drum-beating and via Radio to several thousand Afghan refugees living in camps in the North Waziristan area on the Pak-Afghan border. The refugees will be warned of facing the risk of being evicted and deported to a camp if they failed to leave on their own by June 30, 2005.

The Pakistani authorities will further ask the refugees to repatriate to their native provinces in Afghanistan as a first choice. Failing to do so, they will be asked to shift or be deported to a camp set up for them in Bannu district. North Waziristan is the second tribal agency after South Waziristan from where the Afghan refugees are being expelled.

Afghan refugees and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

Through the 1980s and much of the 1990s, there were more than two million Afghan refugees sheltering in Pakistan, almost 80 percent of them in the tribal areas. These refugees had become entrenched in the social and economic life of North Waziristan since the early 1980s, when they fled their country in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Afghan influx into Pakistan began in the late 1970s, following the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistan opened its borders to people from Afghanistan and actively encouraged the so-called jihad or a holy war against the Soviet occupations troops. It was state policy under the regime of the then military dictator, President General Ziaul Haq.

The war ended in 1989 but most of the Afghan refugees refused to return home as the situation in the war-torn country remained chaotic. There is a consensus among watchers of Afghanistan within and outside Pakistan that the open border policy practiced by the Pakistan Army has enormously damaged the country's social and political fabric. The current culture of Kalashnikovs, drugs and sectarianism in Pakistan is directly attributed to the Afghan policy and the free flow of refugees.

Jihad as a legitimate weapon by non-state actors took root, thanks to the state patronage first in Afghanistan and subsequently in Kashmir. And yet strangely, none of the successive Governments in Islamabad bothered to take a re-look at the Afghan policy. For a variety of reasons they did not even deem it necessary to order a head count of millions of foreigners on the Pakistani soil.