West should share cost of hosting refugees: Pak.

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, NOV. 13. Pakistan has said that it is willing to reconsider the ban on entry of Afghan refugees if the international community is willing to share the burden of the costs involved in hosting them.

The Pakistan Interior Minister, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Moinuddin Haider, told mediapersons here on Saturday that it was beyond the capacity of Pakistan to provide relief and rehabilitation to the refugees fleeing Afghanistan due to the drought and the unending civil war.

His observations have come two days after Pakistan banned entry of new Afghan refugees and ordered strict vigilance at all the entry points bordering Afghanistan. The Minister has said he had briefed the chief of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees during her recent visit to Islamabad about the socio- economic problems posed by the presence of such a large number of refugees.

Pakistan had made out on the first day that the ban was to prevent saboteurs from entering its borders. But it is now clear that the decision has more to do with the socio-economic tensions triggered by the presence of an estimated two million refugees.

Pakistan is peeved over the attitude of the United States and the other Western countries that had aided and abetted various militant groups in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and abandoned them once the Soviet Union disintegrated.

It wants the West to pay for the dividends it reaped from the Afghan war. What is causing alarm in Pakistan is the recent spurt in the inflow of refugees. The worst drought in several decades and the civil war is driving people by the droves to migrate to greener pastures. Pakistan and Iran have been the favourite destinations of the Afghanis on the run.

According to estimates, over 30,000 Afghans reached Pakistan in recent weeks. Another factor could have weighed on the mind of the Pakistani authorities in imposing the ban. The ebb in the flow would send the signal to the rest of the world that under Taliban, things were returning to normal in Afghanistan. After all, Taliban now claims control over 95 per cent of the Afghanistan territory.

The Taliban has urged Pakistan to reconsider its decision on the plea that it would adversely affect Afghans who wanted to join their family members. The Taliban Minister for Information, Mr. Qudratullah Jamal, has been reported as saying in Kabul that ``we want Pakistan to treat refugees as they did before''. He has also denied that there is fresh exodus of people from Afghanistan.

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Section  : International
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