Afghan refugees returning home despite threats

26 Dec, 2001 10:50 PM4 mins to read

12.00 pm

KABUL/WASHINGTON - The flow of refugees back to homes in Afghanistan has increased dramatically as thousands of people ignore warnings of lawlessness and threats from al Qaeda fighters on the run.

In a sign of how the focus in Afghanistan was slowly shifting from all-out military operations to humanitarian efforts and restoring order, the Pentagon cancelled a scheduled briefing because "there is no news."

There are some 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 2.5 million in Iran, as well as around 1.5 million displaced within the country.

A UN spokeswoman said some 31,000 refugees had returned to southern Afghanistan through the Pakistani border town of Chaman since the start of December. More than 10,000 refugees had crossed back into Afghanistan through Chaman since Sunday alone, said UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker.

A Pakistani official said 800 families crossed on Tuesday and in a sign of confidence many carried televisions, banned by bin Laden's Taleban protectors.

Increasing numbers were also returning to Afghanistan from Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province but the United Nations did not have a total figure, said Bunker.

"People seem to be going back largely to urban areas," she said. "People are going back in search of work and economic opportunities they hope to be able to find now."

A World Food Programme spokesman said in Islamabad on Wednesday that armed militias were holding up aid trucks carrying food into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan, demanding a toll of $US100 ($245) per truck before allowing them across the border.

The United Nations also planned to start returning 4000 refugee families in northern Afghanistan to their homes on the Shomali plain this week, its first relocation project in the country, UN officials said on Wednesday.

More than 200,000 people fled the Shomali plain, of whom some 100,000 were in the capital Kabul while most of the rest were in the Panjsher Valley to where they fled during fierce fighting since 1996 between the then opposition Northern Alliance and the ruling Taleban.

As more details emerged about a British man suspected of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner on Saturday with explosives in his shoes, there were stronger suggestions he may have been part of a wider, possibly Islamist, plot.

A Muslim leader said Richard Reid was a "gullible" young Londoner who converted to Islam in prison. US officials told a newspaper the bomb's design suggested he had an accomplice. Air travelers now face extra security checks on their footwear.

US investigators were still checking whether Reid, who is being held in Boston, had links to al Qaeda or other groups. He was overpowered by cabin crew and fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he was spotted trying to set fire to his shoes.

The head of London's Brixton mosque said Reid, 28, was a member of his congregation and "very, very impressionable."

"I definitely believe there are individuals behind him," Abdul Haqq Baker told the BBC. "The gullibility of him is evident in the way he tried to ignite the bomb in his shoe."

Baker said it was possible Reid knew fellow Brixton Muslim, Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman facing conspiracy charges in the United States over the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks.

In a conflict not directly related to the US campaign against bin Laden but which has been influenced by its rhetoric at the very least, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan continued the biggest build-up of troops along their border in 15 years.

Amid frontier gunfire, New Delhi said it was being pushed into war by what it calls Muslim Pakistan's aid for Islamist "terrorists." It said its missile systems were "in position."

The old rivals, who have fought three wars since 1947 and have each had proven nuclear capability since 1998, traded fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and civilians fled vulnerable homes as India moved warplanes to forward bases.

- REUTERS

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