Afghan Refugees and Al Qaeda |
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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 byhundreds 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, al-Qaeda members have been
found involved in conducting a series of deadly rocket attacks against the
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. 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. 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 jehad 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. Jehad 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. The September 11, 2001 attacks and their impact on the
region, with Washington declaring Afghanistan the epicenter of international terrorism,
jolted Pakistan out of its complacence. With the threat posed by al-Qaeda and
the Taliban to the United States and its allies, Islamabad is now keen on
accounting for all Afghan refugees on its soil. For that purpose, a census
was started early this year because of the fact that as long as the refugees remain in
Pakistan unaccounted, it is not possible for Islamabad to prevent the rebels operating
from its soil. Thanks to the emergence of Pakistan as a global recruitment
centre for jehad during the Afghan war, it became easy for people from
different nationalities to move in and out of the country. It is pertinent to mention here, since the 9/11 terror
attacks, Islamabad has apprehended and killed over 1,000 alleged activists of
the al-Qaeda and the Taliban from various parts of the world. Fleeing from
Afghanistan they had hoped to find shelter in Pakistan only because of the
past connection. Pakistan has been
home to the single largest refugee population anywhere in the world for over
25 years now. According to Guenet Guebre-Christos, United Nations High Commission
for Refugees Representative in Pakistan, the census found that 1,861,412
Afghan refugees live in the North West Frontier Province, 783,545 in
Baluchistan, 136,780 in Sindh, 207,754 in Punjab, 44,637 in Islamabad and
13,097 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas. The Pakistani authorities announced in May 2005, the
closure by the end of June 2005 of over a dozen refugee camps located in the
area due to security concerns. There were at least two million refugees in Pakistan
alone before the US-Allied Forces attacked Afghanistan in October 2001. More
than 200,000 refugees have reportedly crossed the border since then. Many of
these refugees are desperate to return home but the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been urging them not to return
immediately, since Afghanistan is not ready to receive them. The primary
obstacle to large-scale repatriation now is security as tribal warlords continue to fight over the
spoils of war. Jobs and food are also both in short supply in a country where
six to seven million people are reported to remain on the brink of starvation. Following the Pakistan government's decision, the office
of the UNHCR has launched a special drive to help repatriate Afghans living
in refugee camps in the North Waziristan agency of Pakistan's western tribal
belt. "The UNHCR teams will visit all the refugee camps in North
Waziristan in the first two weeks of June 2005 to register those families
wishing to avail the refugee agency's assistance package for voluntary
repatriation", Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told media persons in the
capital, Islamabad, on June 9, 2005. Afterwards, the heads of the families
would have to travel to Bannu district of North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), located some 40 km away, in order to receive the Voluntary
Repatriation Forms (VRFs) required to secure assistance. The UNHCR standard
repatriation assistance package includes a travel grant of US $3 to $30 per
person depending on the distance to the recipient's destination in
Afghanistan and another $12 per capita to help them re-establish themselves
in their homeland. Jack, however, agreed that the UNHCR staff cannot
distinguish between a genuine Afghan refugee and a terror operative belonging
to either al-Qaeda or Taliban, who now want to cross over to Afghanistan to escape
arrest. The Pakistan government decided the eviction of the Afghan
refugees from the Waziristan area at a time when international aid workers
and Afghan officials were struggling to avert a looming humanitarian crisis
as thousands of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan pour across the border
fleeing Pakistani Army operations to hunt al-Qaeda-linked militants. Over
25,000 Afghan refugees have already crossed the Pakistani border into Afghanistan's troubled southeastern
provinces, many of them leaving Pakistan after decades with only hours to
pack what little they can carry, aid workers said. Because of the military operations
in the Waziristan area, many of the Afghan refugees were forced to leave
their belongings because they had no time to pack. Afghanistan's southeastern provinces bordering Pakistan
are a hot bed of the Taliban-led insurgency. The Afghanistan government, the
United Nations and most aid organisations have pulled out fearing attacks on their
workers. On the other side of the border, Pakistan is stepping up a military
campaign to hunt al-Qaeda-linked fighters in the quasi-independent tribal
areas. The government is closing Afghan refugee camps believed to be shelters
for hundreds of hardened militants from Afghanistan, Chechnya and Uzbekistan.
The United States has increased pressure on Pakistan to root out al-Qaeda
linked fighters. In January 2005, the Pakistani security forces had bulldozed
two refugee camps, Zarinoor One and Zarinoor Two, in the South Waziristan
tribal district. Later, the military operation was expanded to the North
Waziristan, leaving more Afghan refugees being caught in the crossfire. According to the Pakistani intelligence sources, the North
Waziristan is a more serious challenge to the military in flushing out
remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban than neighbouring South Waziristan. They
informed that the North Waziristan is a stronger base for militants due to
the presence of a large number of seminaries and because around 70 percent of
the local population supported militants. Since early 2005, the Pakistan Army
has carried out a number of search operations and killed and arrested a
number of foreign militants and their local facilitators in North Waziristan
after bringing the situation in South Waziristan comparatively under control.
Approached for comments, a senior Pakistan Army official said while
requesting anonymity: "The next six months in South Waziristan are
critical for the government. If we cannot build on successes that our forces
achieved in the last quarter of 2004, then all the efforts will go
waste". Already a major American television network (ABC) has
obtained videos not seen so far, showing fierce fighting between Pakistani
troops and al-Qaeda forces in South Waziristan. The videos made for
propaganda purposes by none other than the al-Qaeda itself showcase the
intensely violent fighting and unique difficulties that surround the hunt for
Osama bin Laden in the remote tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The videotapes
were reportedly made in January 2005 when the Pakistan Army undertook a major
offensive into South Waziristan where the fiercely independent Waziri tribe
resides and where some leading al-Qaeda lights are believed to be in hiding.
The Pakistan Army declared the campaign in Waziristan to be a major victory.
However, states ABC: "In at least four cases, the video shows that
Pakistani army troops were driven into ambushes. One scene shows the
insurgents tracking a Pakistani convoy from the mountains above before
opening fire. Another scene focuses on the fiery aftermath of an attack on an
army convoy". The footage also shows what appears to be new al-Qaeda
training camps inside Pakistan, similar to the ones that were dismantled in Afghanistan.
The tapes show a new generation of militants, some no older than 10 or 12
years, carrying automatic weapons. "These are infidels and they deserve
to be killed," a youngster tells the camera. Pakistani soldiers are also
shown leaving behind their dead and abandoning trucks full of arms and
ammunition, which are then collected by those fighting them. Those weapons
add to an already impressive arsenal, according to the tapes. In one scene,
the fighters can be seen using what appears to be a Russian multiple rocket launcher
against the Pakistani troops. Quite interestingly, the well-armed fighters
move with ease through the rugged terrain, using donkeys and mules.
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